In the mild midwinter ...

The wind is certainly making moan - every few days another gale - but it's not at all frosty, and there's absolutely no prospect at the moment of snow falling on snow.  Plenty of rain falling on sodden ground, though.  Today I tried digging over the ground where the dahlias had been in the hope of getting some tulips planted in there, but it was much too sticky for any planting.  At least we haven't had as much rainfall as the north of England, which is currently flooded.  It is still ridiculously mild; a little fresher today, but not anything like December ought to be. The plants think so too.  The cistus is flowering happily, presumably under the delusion that it's a Mediterranean spring.  Unfortunately the Iris foetidissima behind it has its orange berries on display, and it's not a happy colour combination, but never mind.  The Geum rivale is in flower too as is one of the Welsh poppies, there are still some pinks in bud and flower, hellebores are blooming all over the place and there's a Sweet William even having a go.  The early snowdrops are out, but the Galanthus elwesii is hidden because the geraniums haven't died back, and one of them is trying to flower too.  The daffodils are shooting already, and the little rhubarb plant that I planted earlier in the year has one perky little leaf out.  It's all wrong.  On the plus side, the winter flowering shrubs haven't been knocked back yet and there's a lovely display of winter honeysuckle.

The more opportunistic weeds - herb robert, bittercress - are still growing too, as is the grass.  The lawn is much longer than it ought to be but it's far too wet to cut.  The horses which are currently pastured in the field behind us occasionally come to the fence and look longingly at it.

There's another storm - heavy rain and gales - forecast for Wednesday.  But a little sun tomorrow, which will be welcome in this very depressing December.

The mild weather has meant that there isn't the range of birds turning up that we usually have in winter.  A male bullfinch dropped in the other day but otherwise it's mostly our regulars.

Belated bulbs

I'm still planting bulbs.  A lot of those removed from last year's summer pots - the ones that still looked in reasonable condition - have gone in the bottom of the veg patch, next to the place where next door's lily of the valley has spread under the wall.  I'm not expecting great things, and the plan (at the moment) is to dig them up and throw them away next summer, but it's worth a try.  I've given them some bonemeal each in the hope of giving them a kickstart.  Down there are the remnants of 'Jan Reus' and 'Veronique Sanson', at the back by the wall; in front are a couple of the yellow tulips rescued from under the dining room window and 'Purple Jacket'; in front of that are 'Cairo' and 'Antraciet' on the right and some more yellow tulips on the left.

Meanwhile I've managed to get the alliums ('Purple Sensation', 'Purple Rain' and unifolium) into the bottom border under the ash tree, along with tulip 'Menton'.  This is a stonking great late pink tulip which I first saw in a garden nearby; it's supposed to be good at resisting the elements, which will be a useful attribute in this garden.  I'm gradually getting the other new bulbs (and some saved from last year) into their winter homes; some more 'Cairo' have gone into a pot with crocus 'Gipsy Girl' and some wallflower 'Sunset Red', while the Tete-a-tete daffodils have gone into the windowbox as usual, with blue violas and crocus 'Blue Pearl', and a small Carex testacea to provide some structure.  Further planting has been frustrated by the weather; we've had a couple of bright, sunny half-days but otherwise it's mostly damp or wet, with wind.  Today we've had gales; the village Christmas tree was going up this lunchtime and it will be interesting to see tomorrow whether it's still upright!

Yellow chrysanths, wallflowers and winter jasmine

It's still mild for this time of year, though.  The hellebore, and its offspring in the front garden, is getting into its flowering stride; some 'Sunset Red' wallflowers that were never potted up last winter and are still where they were sown are coming nicely into flower, the chrysanthemums are still going and there are odd flowers on the Centaurea montana, pinks, cistus and a Welsh poppy. The birds still come for their crumbs, seeds and water, and the blackbirds are still enjoying the occasional apple, but there's no sense of urgency in their feeding - plenty of wild food still around, I suspect.

Another pigeon, another gooseberry bush

One of the recurring themes in my gardening is the task that can only be completed once something else has been done, and very often that something else is dependent on yet another job being done first.  Usually it's not being able to plant something until its new home has been cleared of weeds or otherwise prepared.  Today it was the burial of yet another dead woodpigeon, which - given the lack of suitably deep soil in a place where the corpse wouldn't be dug up accidentally - meant first clearing another bit of the overgrown gooseberry row and selecting a reasonably young bit of plant with roots to replant there.  A very mature gooseberry plant was eventually dug up; it had enormous roots and digging out took some effort, but in the end I managed to create an appropriately sized grave for the pigeon, with the new gooseberry plant alongside (with lots of homemade compost and Rootgrow to help compensate for putting it near where the old plant had been).  It was quite a satisfying job in fact, as I was able to get some couch grass roots out at the same time.  The robin was also very satisfied with my digging; it checked over the area very thoroughly when I came in for some tea.

The pigeon was found tucked in between one of the compost bins and one of the leafmould containers, in a confined and very sheltered spot.  I don't think a predator could have taken it in there (although there were a few small feathers about, which might have been pulled out of the corpse by a secondary predator such as a rat); I suspect it was a sick bird (it may have been another juvenile, I couldn't tell for sure given the state it was in) just looking for a sheltered place to lie down, as sick pigeons do.  (Perhaps other birds do that too? I don't know.)  I rather wish they wouldn't do it in this garden; I'm running out of places to bury them!

The dahlias have been cut down and dug up.  'David Howard' had rotted completely, while 'Jescot Julie' is still one enormous tuber, which looks partly eaten away and had a lot of little worm things and larvae on it when I dug it up.  I decided to leave it lying there overnight - the weather is still very mild for the time of year - in the hope that the local biological control (robin, wren) would deal with the pests.  Certainly they seemed to have gone by the next morning (though they may have retreated into the tuber, I suppose!).  All the tubers are now drying out in the greenhouse, where I've also started potting up the half-hardies from the summer pots - argyranthemums, osteospermums, nepeta variegata etc.  It's still mild enough for that not to be a desperately urgent job; the weather has been damp and very windy and there's no real cold in sight.  The birds are still coming to feed on the fallen apples (the green woodpecker was there today) but without much sense of urgency.

Hellebore in flower

Colour in the garden is mostly from the chrysanthemums and the winter shrubs, but the big hellebore (argutifolius?) under the dining room window has started to flower, and the orange Iris foetidissima seed pods are showing.  The Lonicera purpusii is hanging on to its leaves as usual, and flowering nicely.  There are also a few last roses but I doubt if they are going to open properly, and the dianthus plants are producing sporadic blooms (being cut for the kitchen windowsill).