Frost Flowers!

Ribbon candy....

 While a number of plants at my house form ice chrystals, verbesina virginica is always spectacular!

Frost and Seedpods

Monarda punctata

Frost flowers on verbesina virginica

Last year... The temps got down to 7°  and the frost flowers grew with each day that the temp was below freezing.

Dog fennel frost flowers

The frost flowers on the verbesina are well known and often posted all over the internet... These frost blooms on the dog fennel... seem to be less documented.

Blooms on the plum tree... They're calling for temps in the teens tonight, with chill index in the single digits... How is that going to affect my plums?

The cat has attitude....

This hardy lemon... doesn't seem especially hardy...

Monarda seed pods

Verbesina seed heads

Agalinis purpurea seed pods...

Dog fennel

I hope everybody stays warm in these record setting freezing temps... And... Here's hoping someone collects the bounty on that d... groundhog...coulda done without the 6 more weeks of winter...

Polar Vortex

Brrr....

Got down to 7° here, and all the schools closed...

Record setting cold, and y'all can keep it.... I garden here to get away from those winter freezes.

Picture of needle ice

The frost flowers on the  verbesina virginica  grew (larger) with two consecutive days of below freezing.
Interestingly, the yellow verbesina doesn't develop these.

One more pic of frost. I can appreciate the beauty in this stuff, as long as I don't see much of it...

That nasty cold ruined my flowers.... This hellebore was gorgeous... now just brown.

Also ruined the camellia blooms...

As far as our winter edibles... The raccoons have been keeping the beds dug up, I'm not having any luck (so far) getting cool season edibles to grow... never mind the record cold...