trade-offs part 3: junipers

When I was a kid growing up in California, I remember saying to my father "Junipers! what a cop out! What a waste of garden space!" I went on this tirade for some time. Junipers were what someone planted when they didn't want to think about their garden, when they couldn't think of anything else to plant, when they didn't want to care about their garden. I thought of it as not only the foolproof plant, but the living equivalent of concrete: survives anything, looks the same all the time. I also hated that it was prickly, the spiders loved building spider webs on it, and that it was so often sheared into hideous gumdrops. It had a scent, an evergreen resinous scent, but I didn't appreciate it very much. Give me flowers.

Now that I'm older, and living in a colder climate, I've learned to appreciate junipers. I appreciate their various forms, from upright to weeping, trees to groundcover. I appreciate their durability. I'm noticing their various colors. In California, winter junipers look the same as summer junipers. Not so in New Mexico, when the winter brings out a whole different set of shades, from blue to bronze to purple to reddish. The trade-off for having the colder climate and the more limited plant selection is that the junipers change colors for the winter, and the color lasts as long as the cold weather does. I've learned to like the smell, which I now find as comforting a smell as pine. The prickliness of the leaves doesn't bother me much now. But I still hate how people shear their junipers , and I still don't like the look of spider webs on them.

All of these photos were taken within the last 2 days (and a couple more in part 1).