Tundra

Snow plastered against the Leylandii hedge

The garden is in shut-down mode.  Winter is definitely still here.  We had a centimetre or two of snow on Thursday night, with a freezing wind that plastered the snow against anything east-facing, then more on Saturday morning.  Some intermittent above-zero temperatures have thawed the snow in patches, so there's a sort of piebald effect on the ground - neither a bright snow-covering nor a snow-free landscape, just a sort of untidy mess; the ground is frozen hard, cracking and creaking underfoot, and the garden has a bleached and colourless look.  And a bitter, unrelenting east wind.

'Blue Pearl' crocuses braving the wind

So no gardening at the weekend.  I should have retreated to the garage to sow some seeds to germinate indoors, but it was just too cold.  Even venturing out in search of a few flowers to cut for a vase didn't yield much: one Viburnum 'Dawn' bloom, a very few winter honeysuckle flowers and some Viburnum tinus - and all of those had to have the snow sprayed off them so that they didn't suffer frost damage.  Even the crocuses seem to be cowering in the wind.  The only ray of light was from the old flower-heads of the Big Yellow Thing (Bupthalmum? - a sort of Inula, anyway), which I leave in place for architectural effect in winter; every little dried flower-head had a little tuft of snow on it, which looked slightly comical.

The birds have been coming to feed regularly - mostly the usual suspects, though we had a greater spotted woodpecker on the nut feeder this morning.  The woodpigeons look particularly unhappy, with the wind blowing their feathers apart unless they can face into it.  We had some sun today which melted some of the ice on the pond, so at least there's water for drinking and bathing.

No relief in sight in the weather forecast - it's more of the same, right into, and probably beyond, the weekend.  That takes us into April, with lots of the March jobs still incomplete; and a freezing Easter weekend means that I can't take advantage of the days off to do them.  British Summer Time starts on Sunday.  Where's spring?

Waiting for daffodils

I'm still waiting for the first daffodils to open in the garden.  There might have been some open by now, but I cut those that were most advanced to put in a vase indoors, where they've provided some welcome colour.  For the moment, the garden is still in snowdrops-and-aconites mode, with a few crocus here and there; mostly 'Blue Pearl' in pots, though there's the odd big purple one (I think they're 'Remembrance') tucked into corners.  At the bottom of the garden the 'Whitewell Purple' crocuses planted last winter are trying hard, but they're too delicate to make any impact, and either the cold winds, or the birds (or quite possibly both) are taking their toll on the flowers.  The anemone blanda in the same bed are starting to bud; I'm hoping they've settled in well enough to make something of a show this year.

Clearing the bleached remains of last year's uncut grass behind the garage, I found that the pulmonaria that had settled in against the garage wall had seeded and the plants are flowering happily; so there's a little colour there.

Garden work last weekend included some rose pruning (must get that done this month), and a start on pruning the buddleia.  There are rather a lot of stems this year; I must remember to rub out some of the buds to keep it more manageable.  I also cleared a way through between the raspberry canes, pulling up some of the canes that had spread, and the gooseberries, and re-laid the 'path' (old newspapers etc, topped with flattened cardboard boxes and then with twiggy stuff that can be stamped down into a sort of mulch).  The first rows of broad beans have also gone in.

The weekend weather wasn't bad, but very mixed - Saturday was a bit of everything (chilly, dry spells, rain, hail, sleet ....), though Sunday was bright, often sunny and a good day to be out.  It's not as cold as last week, though still not warm, and no sign of it getting much better.

The birds are still busy - both robins and both song thrushes around, and a woodpecker was drumming in the distance the other morning.

Still winter!

This is Cheltenham Gold Cup week, and true to form it has snowed, as it so often does.  Not much - a few showers early in the week, which left the fields all dusted white and some stuff blowing around on the road, but nothing disruptive (the south-east and near Continent had heavy snowfalls, though).  The weekend was indeed dry, but bitterly cold, with a biting easterly wind - three-pairs-of-gloves gardening weather, and even then I had to keep coming in to warm my fingers up.  There have been some very hard frosts at night, and not always a thaw during the day.  It has since warmed up a fraction, although the pond is still frozen over; rain is forecast for tomorrow, but it may be brighter at the weekend.

Despite the cold, I got a few odd jobs done in the garden.  While the pond didn't need filling at all last year, I did rather neglect it and hadn't cleared any of the weed from it.  Lots got pulled out at the weekend.  I was expecting to see some wildlife in there, but nothing came out - no dragonfly nymphs, newts or even water snails.  Maybe the weed had deterred them?  I'm surprised about the snails, though; there has always been a good population of them.  They help keep the water clear, so I may have to get some more.  I also started clearing weeds in the veg patch in preparation for spring sowing. There's still no sign of the garlic and onions, so I bought some more garlic and planted it; it needs cold weather to make the cloves split, so I hope it's not too late.  I doubt if this week's cold weather will have any effect on newly planted cloves; I imagine they need to be actively growing for the splitting to happen.

Interesting how plants flop in extreme cold and bounce back afterwards.  The snowdrops went really limp but have perked up again; the bergenia too.  The bergenia is in flower, and the first of the brunnera (the 'Jack Frost' seedling by the gate) is also coming out; I also found a few flowers on the violets down the bottom of the garden, where they're shivering in the teeth of the easterlies.  They didn't flower last year, seeming to put their energies into spreading around. The 'Blue Pearl' crocuses are coming out, and the first daffodils will be ready for cutting this weekend; they're not out yet, but they're at the stage where they should open in a vase indoors.  They're always late here; it's rare for us to have any for St David's day!

There are some seedlings sprouting in the cold frame.  I'm afraid I've done it again: sown something without labelling it.  It's obviously something I was sure I would recognise when it came up, but at the moment I can't tell what it is!  There aren't many seeds that would germinate in the cold frame in this weather and at this time of year, and it's something sown a pinch of seeds at a time rather than singly, so I'm guessing it may be parsley.  There again, it could be rocket.  Time will tell, I suppose.

The tamer birds have been coming regularly for food, and others hanging around in the background.  At one point we had three robins at once, with a bit of a territory-scrap.  The song thrush is still about, and a wren; and in the snow the other day we had six partridges huddling miserably under the potentilla.  The pheasant is about quite a bit, and seems to have a favourite roost on top of the Leylandii hedge.  It looks a bit exposed to me, but he appears to like it.

Spring?

Back home after our skiing holiday (wildlife highlight: huge herd of wild reindeer crossing the mountains a few miles away).  In the UK February has been cold but mostly dry, apparently, and there has been at least some wind, to judge from the fallen twigs from the ash trees.  The garden looks much the same as when we left (snowdrops, aconites, rather more cyclamen coum and the hellebores coming out), but there's a much more springlike feel to everything.  Maybe it's the light; when the sun came out on Saturday there was a touch of warmth in it, and it was an early spring sun rather than a winter one.

The birds have also returned.  Strange how they seemed to disappear for a couple of weeks after the snow melted; but they're back now.  Even casual bird-watching on Saturday racked up a good number of species: all the usual tits (blue, great, coal and marsh), finches (chaffinches, greenfinches and at least two goldfinches - maybe more, as there was a largish flock of finches in the big ash tree a couple of times, with much of the sweet twittering that goldfinches do), a nuthatch, two robins, a wren, blackbirds, song thrush, starlings, sparrows and dunnock.  Groups of partridge and the occasional pheasant are also around.  Nesting may be starting; a song thrush was having a good soak in the pond, and a female blackbird was bathing busily too (nesting is a dirty job).  The smaller birds have revived their interest in the seed container, which is now emptying daily again - probably another sign of them being busy sorting out partners, territories and potential nest sites.

Since our return the weather has been quite mixed: pleasant on Saturday, murky on Sunday and sunny for the last couple of days, with some quite cold nights.  The forecast is for a few damp days this week.  I hope the weekend is dry - there's a lot to get on with in the garden!