Jostling for attention

We're not safe from cold weather yet - there is still the risk of a little snow in the coming days - but spring is definitely on its way, and with it the need to get on with all the jobs that are jostling for my attention.  The pond, which was getting clogged with weed, has been cleared up a bit; I've decided to leave a full overhaul until the autumn, to minimise disruption to the wildlife (as it was, I fished out, and returned to the water, several newts, including babies).  One major job that's now out of the way is pruning the buddleja.  It's a very mature shrub, and the operation always produces lots of prunings; I like to make as much use of these as possible, and dealing with them takes a couple of days.  Strong, long, straight stems are used to make beanpoles and stakes.  Branching tops are put aside for use as supports for peas and other small plants that need propping up.  Fragile, twiggy bits are used to make a path through the fruit bushes; these are conveniently alongside the buddleja, which makes things a bit easier, but I have to start by clearing up the twiggy remains of the previous year's path.  The cleared area gets a layer of old cardboard (flattened-out old boxes etc) - this rots into the ground over the year - and on top of this I throw down the twigs and walk on them to crush them.  It's a rough-and-ready sort of path but it works well enough.  The soft prunings - the leaves, old flowerheads and some of the very smallest twigs - go in the compost bin, and to accommodate them I always need to clear out the bin whose contents have been rotting away over the winter and re-fill it with material from the other bin, mixed with the prunings.  Reflecting, as I did so, on how I was going to use the rotted compost, I remembered that it's nearly time to prepare a trench for the runner beans, so a bagful was used to get that job done too - and that required digging out some couch grass that was colonising that bed.  And, looking up from the bean trench, I noticed that another stone has fallen out of the top of the wall behind the apple cordons; I had been planning to do some repair work there this winter, and it would be useful to get it done before the apples start producing shoots and before the lily-of-the-valley, which also lies in front of the wall, appears.  I might tackle that over the Easter weekend, weather permitting, as well as lifting, splitting and teasing the weeds out of the crocosmia.  And that's only a few of the jobs that are shouting "me, me" whenever I look out at the garden.

Meanwhile there are even more jobs needing doing in the greenhouse.  Normally by this time of the year I've started a lot of my seeds off, but so far only the tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and chillies are sown (on a windowsill indoors, and doing well so far; and a pot of basil seeds has just joined them).  The dahlias have now been potted up, or at least those that have survived the winter in good enough condition to grow on; in addition to 'Bishop of Auckland' and 'Ambition' (quite a few tubers of these now),  and 'Sam Hopkins' purchased last year, I now have tubers of the fashionable 'Cafe au Lait' (bought from the supermarket, a snip at 4 for £7).  Greenhouse planting should now be a little safer; I think I have identified, and blocked up, the mouse's entry point.  There's a very small gap between the greenhouse frame and the wall against which it stands (it's a lean-to), which I had blocked with scraps of bubblewrap (I was thinking of draughts, not rodents); the bubblewrap filling has disappeared.  I've replaced it with some more substantial bits of plastic (old yoghurt pot lids) which are not so removeable.  Sorry, mouse.

Some of the plants in the greenhouse, especially those such as the penstemons and osteospermums that were brought hastily in to protect them from the Beast, are now being stood outside during the day, and the cold frame propped open; it will soon be time to wean plants off the relative warmth of indoors and make space for the new seedlings.  The temperature in the greenhouse has dropped to low single figures several times this winter, but it can't be too bad in there as there are buds on some of the fuchsias and flowers on one of the osteospermums.  It's only the forecast of frosts in the next few days that is stopping me from taking the bubblewrap down; I tend to leave it up too long, and of course it reduces the light levels in there.

Colour is very slowly returning to the garden.  The big daffs are starting to bloom; the lesser celandines in sunny spots are coming out (they are actually weeds but acceptable ones); and a few slightly battered violets are showing among their leaves.  Two of the orchids in the lawn have also put their leaves up, so they have been protected from trampling and, eventually, mowing.  The hellebores look quite good; the one by the hedge has produced a self-sown offspring with white freckled flowers, so I may try to move that to a better place.

Lesser celandines - any colour is welcome at this time of year!

Big daffs starting to come out under the plum tree

A few sweet violets

Having said last week that I hadn't seen any signs of nesting, the very next day there was a sparrow gathering grass, and a day or two later a hen blackbird had a beakful of moss and a crow flew over carrying a stick.  The sparrows are jack-in-the-box-ing in and out of the hedge, pigeons are canoodling in the plum tree, dunnocks frisking at each other and chaffinches chasing off rivals.  The insect world is livening up too: a small ginger bee and a bumblebee have been about (the latter enjoying the crocuses), and the first butterfly of the year - a male brimstone, as usual - appeared at the weekend.

On the down side, one of our male pheasants has been killed - two wings and a bit of connecting bone were left on the lawn yesterday.  It looked like a sparrowhawk job.  I don't think it was my friendly pheasant, as one answering his description is still around, and seeing off rivals.  I wonder if his fondness for standing under the shrubs is partly that he's protected there from aerial assault?

MiniBeast

And, after the Beast from the East, we've had the MiniBeast: the same thing again but not so severe.  The weather started to warm up encouragingly in the post-Beast thaw, although even the more comfortable temperatures and rainfall took a week or so to get rid of all the snow.  Then last weekend the wind turned back to the east and brought more wind, low temperatures and snow; again, the actual volume of snow wasn't all that great but it formed small drifts in places, and froze to give us icy roads for a couple of days.  Conveniently for those who had to get out and about and into work, it was again the weekend that was the worst.  Three days on, the roads are clear again, although there are still significant patches of snow where drifts built up against hedges and walls, and in places out of the sun.

Still snow on the lawn

The wildlife seems to take it all pretty much in its stride, especially these past few days where the cold snap has been fairly brief.  As soon as the temperatures start to rise the birds seem to perk up, start singing again and get on with life; I haven't seen any actual signs of nesting yet, though a few birds have toyed briefly with bits of grass, as though they were aware that they would soon be wanting this stuff.  The sparrows are popping in and out of the leylandii hedge, so I would guess that they're choosing suitable nest sites in there; it's a real sparrow condominium.  I've put some wire netting loosely round the nestbox, enough to allow access by nuthatches or bluetits but not (I hope) the woodpecker.  A peek inside showed that something has been in there (there were droppings in the bottom), probably as a winter roost - but it will soon be a des res for a nesting pair.

One of the male pheasants has been about quite a lot.  He likes to stand in shelter among the shrubs, and is happy to wander about near me when I'm working in the garden.  In the snow yesterday he scraped out a spot in the lee of a euonymus so that he could stand out of the wind but warm up in the sun.

Spot the pheasant, hiding ...

Crocus chrysanthus 'Cream Beauty'

The plants bounced back from the first lot of snow and will do so again this time.  The little 'Tete-a-tete' daffodils in pots started to bloom after the Beast, and they, the crocuses and the hellebores seem to have survived the latest freeze.  The big daffs are still only in bud, and they will have been knocked back by the weather; but colour is starting to come back slowly to the garden.  I managed a small posy of pulmonaria and viburnum, the only flowers suitable for cutting at the moment.  A vase of supermarket tulips is going over, but I find that tulips mostly age well; even when they are faded like old tissue paper and on the point of falling apart, they still have interesting colour and shape.

Helleborus x hybridus

Crocus tommasinianus 'Whitewell Purple'

Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete'

Pulmonaria and viburnum

Tulips - fading but still decorative

Between the freezes I managed to get a few garden jobs done.  A sunny day was spent pruning the apple tree, with the pheasant poking around below and a buzzard circling overhead (and helicopters going to and from Cheltenham races passing by).  The autumn-sown broad beans had had a high failure rate, so the empty spaces were filled with sowings of 'Imperial Longpod' and I added a double row of the same alongside; and the shallots were planted, with some fleece on top to allow them to get roots down before the birds can get at them.  The garlic is coming up nicely, including one of the elephant garlic bulbs which has finally put up a shoot (something had nibbled the top of this, so an old inverted hanging basket has been put on top to protect it).  The leeks don't seem to have done well, though; quite a few have disappeared.  Other jobs included cutting the old leaves off the epimediums to allow the flowers to show, removing spent flower stems on the sedums, Lilium henryi and the Big Yellow Thing (bupthalmum is its proper name, but BYT is easier) and some belated tidying of rose bushes.  Outstanding jobs include pruning the buddleja, which was looking a bit sad after the first lot of freezing so I thought it best to leave it for the moment; and potting up dahlias and other things in the greenhouse; the forecast is for temperatures to remain a little below normal, but I'm hoping that the greenhouse will be warm enough to get them going.

Emma and the Beast

Road to nowhere

So the 'Beast from the East' finally bit.  The east of the country bore the brunt of the first onslaught of snow mid-week, while we got away with the low temperatures but dry weather; but then the Beast met Storm Emma coming up from Iberia bringing damp air, and the result was a substantial dump of snow - lovely dry powdery stuff, quite unlike what we usually get.  It also brought gale-force winds which swept the snow into drifts; the actual snowfall probably wasn't much more than a few inches, but the drifting was impressive - open areas such as the fields were left with relatively little snow (and our patio and paths were almost completely free of it) while it piled up high in the roads, to hedge-top height in places, cutting the village off for the most part (a very few brave souls with 4x4s made it out via the back lanes).  Four days later the main road to the village is still blocked, although temperatures started to rise yesterday and it's all now thawing.  There is still a reasonable depth of snow on the lawn, especially where it had drifted (over 2ft in places).

Snow on the lawn

There's a pond somewhere under there ....

The strong winds blew some of the fine, powdery snow through the narrow gaps around garage doors and greenhouse windows; several villagers have found little piles of snow in their garden buildings, including me.  I was a bit bemused to find it snowing lightly inside the greenhouse!  I put some newspaper over the heater to protect it, but some snow gathered behind the bubblewrap and built up on some of the lettuce seedlings (which are to be discarded anyway, because of the mouse).

At least some of the wildlife made advance preparations against the cold.  One day a little woodmouse spent quite some time gathering crumbs put out for the birds and taking them under the patio door steps.  Is he the Beast from the Greenhouse, I wonder?

The Beast from the Greenhouse?

The wind, once it picked up, made it difficult to put out crumbs for the birds - they just blew away - so the apples and fatballs were the mainstays of my bird-feeding.  Various blackbirds enjoyed the apples, as did a mistle thrush which commandeered one apple, sitting by it all day and chasing off all comers.  A song thrush appeared once, only to be seen off by a blackbird, and a fieldfare called by too.  There were some very anxious-looking dunnocks, trying to warm their feet by standing on one leg at a time and tucking the other up, and scavenging for any scraps of food they could find.  A greenfinch and bullfinch also came - the bullfinch enjoyed a bath this morning - and so did a marsh tit, the first I've seen for a year or so.

There hasn't been a lot of gardening done lately, for obvious reasons!  I need to prune the apple trees and the buddleja, but not in this weather.  Before the snow I did manage to sow my tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and chillies, which have been germinating on a radiator indoors and are now starting to shoot.  At this rate it will be a while before I entrust them to the temperatures in the greenhouse.