White Christmas

Galanthus elwesii on Christmas Day

We had no snow for Christmas - like the preceding week, the weather was mild and damp - but we did find the first flowering clump of snowdrops of the winter (Galanthus elwesii) - so a white Christmas of a sort.

A White post-Christmas

Two days later, however, and here we are with another dump of the white stuff - about 4 inches overnight (not forecast).  I've been out again shovelling snow, and knocking it off the same lot of shrubs as last time.  The sun is out and it all looks very pretty, but it will freeze tonight so tomorrow is going to be rather icy.

There has been very little gardening in the meantime; too much to do festivity-wise, and the weather  has mostly not been encouraging.  I have managed to cut off some of the branches damaged by the first fall of snow, but not all; there were more than I had realised.  The other Viburnum tinus ('Gwenlian', further down the garden and out of sight behind other shrubs) also needed surgery (more still to be done there; it is seriously overgrown).  Other forays into the garden have mostly been to fetch vegetables (kale, and the last of the little carrots in the trough in the greenhouse, which we had for Christmas dinner), to cut evergreens for Christmas decorations and to feed birds.  Bird notables this week have been a pair of bullfinches, eating buds on the winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii), which fortunately still has plenty of flowers on it, and a wonderful sighting of a red kite hunting low over the field opposite the house and even over the lane outside our front gate; it was riding a stiff wind, with wing- and tail-feathers tilting and angling as it fought to hold its position in the breeze.  Sadly the camera was out of reach at the time!

Looking a lot like ....

Christmas doesn't normally look like this, so it looked a lot like .... well, Norway actually.  The forecast gales passed us by, but the cold weather arrived as promised, with about 6 inches of snow on Saturday night which brought Gloucestershire pretty much to a standstill on Sunday and Monday.  Unlike our usual wet stuff, this was a heavy thick blanket, sitting densely on the trees and shrubs and pulling them down, and lifting in big solid slabs when shovelled up.  It all looked very wintry, and pretty when the sun came out on Monday and Tuesday, but it limited movement out of the village, especially as it was very cold on Monday night and the roads became very icy.  However, since it isn't Norway, it hasn't lasted long; temperatures slowly started to rise on Tuesday, and rain today (Wednesday) has cleared about half of the snow away; however there's a lot of wet that is going to have to make its way somewhere!

One good thing about the snow - I haven't seen the vegetable garden looking so tidy for a long time ...

A tidy-looking veg plot ...

A thick blanket on the viburnum

The snow had to be knocked off several plants to prevent them from being damaged, including some of those I was praising last time - the hellebore and the little bay plant among them.  Rosa dupontii, which was flattened by the fallen holly branch in the early summer but recovered remarkably well, is prostrate again under a covering of the white stuff.  Worst-hit is the big Viburnum tinus at the side of the house; it has thick clumps of leaves at the ends of long branches, and some of those branches have snapped under the weight of the snow.  It was scheduled for some major surgery in the spring, with those branches about to be cut off anyway, but that will have to be brought forward once I can get out there with the pruning saw.  Nearly all the doubtfully-hardy plants were already in the greenhouse or, in the case of a penstemon and the phygelius, tucked up in a corner; I have my fingers crossed for one pot with another penstemon and osteospermum, which had been looking really rather nice! (although the red chrysanthemum in the pot behind them is now looking very sad after the snow.)  The blue echeveria, which was up against the patio doors so benefitting from some indoor heat, was eventually moved under the bench for protection, but last night, with the temperatures forecast to plummet, I relented and popped it into the greenhouse, snow covering and all, where I think it had better stay for the winter.  We've been trying to keep the birds well fed; apples for the blackbirds, fatballs and seeds for the smaller ones.  A pied wagtail turned up, as did a greenfinch and a few chaffinches, and at one point we had three robins on the patio, eyeing each other rather warily.  The highlight, however, was a brief visit by a redpoll, something I don't think I've ever seen in the garden (and I'm not sure I had seen one anywhere at all).

Penstemon and osteospermum

Ahead of the wind and cold, I managed to get most of the autumn leaves stacked for leaf-mould, and last year's lot was spread over a layer of cardboard on one of the veg beds.  That particular bed has been fallow for a while and has a few big tree roots from the adjacent ash tree, so I'm hoping that the cardboard and leaves will add to the organic matter in there; I plan to put salad crops in it in the spring.

Fatsia japonica

My comments about plants looking good in December made me notice and appreciate a few more plants that I'm apt to take for granted.  Before the snow flattened everything, other good lookers were the hebe (despite the blackened remains of the peony behind), the Fatsia japonica and a pot containing a fern, cyclamen and Carex 'Evergold'.

Hebe

Carex 'Evergold' and friends

Looking good for December

Helleborus argutifolius

December is a month in which the garden doesn't look its best, but it's at this time of year that you really appreciate the plants with good shape and evergreen, or wintergreen, leaves.  Right now the big hellebore (H. argutifolius I think) is a highlight, just coming into flower though it's the bold shiny leaves that are the big attraction at the moment; Viburnum davidii is also looking good, standing out from its tatty surroundings, as are Mahonia 'Winter Sun' and my little bay tree in its pot.  And I'm grateful for the orange berries on the Iris foetidissima, although they would look better if their stems and seed-cases weren't so dead-looking.  There are other plants that would look good if they weren't so crowded out by other things (Epimedium sulphureum, I'm thinking of you); December is also a good time for looking around and seeing all the tidying up that is needed!

Viburnum davidii

My bay plant

Iris foetidissima berries

Hedychium and osteospermum, ready for the greenhouse

The hedychium (ginger lily) in the big pot on the patio was also looking pretty good, but it and its accompanying dahlia, lily (a proper lily) and osteospermum have been dug out and brought into the safety of the greenhouse for the winter.  This proved easier said than done.  They were obviously very happy in that pot and the hedychium and osteo had expanded greatly, which made them difficult subjects to pot on.  There was no question of taking the whole potful into the greenhouse - it literally wouldn't fit through the door - but I don't have other pots big enough for them in their enlarged state.  In spring the hedychium will be split in two, but I don't think this is a good time of year to start sawing it in half, so it has been 'potted' up in an old plastic compost bag with a load of the old compost around it, and I hope it'll be ok in that.  Two of the stems that were dying back have been cut off, and I've shortened the other two (so that it will fit under the greenhouse staging!); it has also started to throw up a new shoot (just visible in the photo, on the extreme right), which suggests that it's hardier than I have given it credit for.  I've now got three plants, all divisions from the one original plant, so perhaps next year I'll try one of them in a border with winter protection and see what happens; if it doesn't survive, there are always the others to fall back on.  Now all I have to do is find something to put the osteospermum into, and I've a feeling it will be another old compost sack!

The dahlias have now all been dug up and are drying off in the greenhouse.  The two oldest 'Bishop of Auckland' tubers had a lot of slug damage; one of them and parts of the other are destined for the bin, but there are easily enough good tubers for next year.

Pinks - looking good for December!

The weather this past week or so has been mostly fairly mild and mizzly, so such flowers as there are have not been hit hard yet.  There's wind and rain on the way, to be followed by more cold weather, so the pinks have been cut for a vase indoors - looking very good for December.  I also cut more of the winter honeysuckle today, and there was a bumblebee buzzing around in there - I hope it finds shelter before the cold kicks in!  Also still in flower is a prostrate plant with white flowers that has seeded itself in one of the camellia pots; it looks like bacopa, and I don't know whether it's hardy or not, but we'll soon find out.

Bacopa??

Having said a few weeks ago that we had had very few wildlife casualties to bury this year, there have been two this past week; a nuthatch found dead under the ash tree at the side of the drive (probably left by a cat, as they patrol that area), and a few remains of a female pheasant on the lawn.  The latter is probably the work of one of the sparrowhawks as nearly all of the victim has gone, leaving only a few feathers and a bit of breastbone.  Live birdlife is still very active, though; this week's sightings included a male bullfinch (eyeing up the buds on the winter honeysuckle) and a jay enjoying the last apples on the tree.