Sometimes your garden makes you feel pretty stupid.  Nature is a bit that way, anyway–so perfectly designed that humility is the best attribute of any gardener.

Many years ago, I purchased a young witch hazel tree (Hamamelis hybrid) from Sky nursery in Shoreline–the tag is long since gone.  The tree already had a few flowers at four feet tall, so I knew it was a bright yellow one.  I planted it near the street and looked forward to its fast growth and lovely flowers in the late winter.

The sad reality is that the tree grew very slowly and only seemed to bloom rarely.  I would check it in the late winter and see no sign of flowers, save for maybe a few here or there.  I kept telling myself it just wasn’t mature enough.

Well, low and behold, as I perused the garden last week, what did I see in full bloom!?  My witch hazel!

So, the stupid part is that this tree has likely been blooming wonderfully every year, and I just never noticed because I was looking for flowers in January instead of November!  How sad that I missed it all this time!

It is tough to photograph, as the higher branches have wires above them that ruin the shots, but you get a feel for what this 15 foot teenage tree looks like right now.

There are a lot of flowers.  I am unable to smell them, though, but I’m pretty much nose-blind.  I’ll have to have someone else try.

Other November 1st (we should call it November Day, the opposite of May day) beauty nearby in the garden include the few remaining leaves of the Aronia:

This is nearly an all-season shrub, with nice white flowers in spring, tasty berries in summer and blazing leaves in autumn.

The Asian pear espalier also has some impressive color:

One late dahlia that had wintered over in the driveway bed finally is blooming.  I don’t know why the dahlias in that particular bed get such a late start, but they always do.  And the blooms don’t survive well in the weather and with the desperate, hungry bugs.

The last views below are of Hakone grass that we have in a pot near the front porch.  This grass never fails to please, and it is blooming now, which you can barely make out if you look closely.

I’m going to go out and look around some more to see what else I might have been missing all this time!