Damp and dank

December weather has been pretty miserable this year: wet, wet and more wet, little sunshine and very little frost.  Although it has felt chilly a lot of the time, it has been damp chill rather than real winter cold.  Christmas Day bucked the trend, with a light frost first thing and a sunny day, but since then it has been damp, dank and foggy.  The next couple of days are supposed to be brighter (but unseasonably warmer).

Gardeners used to be expected to ‘put the garden to bed’ in the autumn, by cutting down all the non-evergreen perennials, pulling up annuals and generally tidying up anything that wasn’t wanted for spring.  The thinking now is that we ought to leave most of this stuff in place until spring (other than sweeping up fallen leaves to prevent them from messing up paths and the lawn) to provide a habitat for overwintering wildlife, and in general I’m all for this.  What I don’t get is the other argument, put forward by proponents of the New Perennial Movement or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, that we will all enjoy looking at the architectural forms of the dead seedheads and plant stems, especially when they are glittering with frost during the winter.  This might well work in places where they get frost in early winter, but what happens in the west of England is that in autumn the dead plant stems get rained on, collapse, fall to the ground and rot there in a nasty heap, and any frost that we get (not a lot in the greater scheme of things) doesn’t much enhance the black and soggy remains lying spread across the flower beds.  Some plants are worse than others; my persicaria covers a fairly generous area which is now just carpeted by the blackened, ruinous mess of the persicaria leaves and stems but is fortunately disguised by other plants in front (including the Big Yellow Thing – bupthalmum – which I do leave as an architectural skeleton because it stands well through the winter and the goldfinches like the seeds).  Crocosmia is a little better in that its leaves don’t go quite as soggy, though they too are prostrate now.  My Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’ seems resistant to anything I do to keep it upright and, being partly succulent, the stems rot quickly once any cold weather gets to them; it and other seedheads are lying at all sorts of angles.  A little tidying up is probably in order, just enough to make things look a little better without robbing too much wildlife of its shelter!

Any work in the garden at the moment rejoices the heart of one of our three robins (there have been skirmishes between them), who comes and sings to me while I’m working, and likes to examine what I’ve been doing in case I’ve turned up anything edible.  My most recent foray into the garden was to clear fallen leaves from one of the veg beds, spread old leaf mould on there and plant garlic cloves; the robin was delighted until I covered the planted area with fleece, to protect it from the larger birds and the dog (or fox?) that uses any clear ground as a toilet.  There has been no gardening this past ten days or so, partly because of the weather and short days and partly because of the seasonal celebrations and the resulting festive-induced lethargy, though there’s still plenty to do out there.  I have got most of the tulip bulbs planted, but other garden jobs are piling up on my conscience; I ought to use the better weather in the next few days to get on with them. 

Still plenty of birds in the garden; in addition to the usual wildlife, a nuthatch has been coming to the fatballs, and a male bullfinch has been munching on the flowers of the winter honeysuckle (a favourite winter treat for them).  A mistle thrush had a set-to with a fieldfare over the fallen apples this morning, and there are lots of holes in the lawn where the squirrel has been digging up buried nuts.  Another job that needs doing is to clear out the excess vegetation in the pond; the water lily and iris have tangled up together and have created a raft of solid growth across half of the surface.  Lefty the lame pigeon managed to wade out to the centre of the pond for a drink the other day; and it’s not as if the water level is low given the high rainfall over the past few weeks.  There ought to be a foot or more depth in there, rather than a couple of inches to wet a pigeon’s feet!

Plans for the dark days

During the year I’ve been earmarking various garden jobs as ‘to be done in the winter’.  The plans include digging out what used to be the herb garden, and tackling the bed behind the front garden wall, especially the end by the holly tree.  The herb garden never really worked; the idea was to have it as near to the back door (and hence the kitchen) as practicable, but the Mediterranean herbs like rosemary and thyme sulked, possibly because the soil was too rich for them, and the oregano and chives ran riot.  The latter two are still in there, along with a big clump of dianthus, competing with weeds such as the horrible creeping potentilla, creeping buttercup, couch grass and another invasive grass whose name I don’t know.  The plan is to dig the lot over, removing as much as I can, and plant it next year with temporary inhabitants such as dahlias or annuals so that I can repeat the process again next winter if necessary.  The bed in the front garden once held alpine strawberries, and some of them or their descendants are still fruiting away, but there are a number of undesirables (ground elder!) that need removing.  I have plants that I want to put into that bed, and winter is a good time to do that unless I decide to bite the bullet and try to move Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’ a foot or so to one side – early spring would be a better time to do that.  I would also like to get my pruning saw in to the two big hazel trees before the sap starts to rise in early spring, and to try to do something about the damson tree whose main stem is leaning across the entry to the dump corner and sinking lower and lower.  And some of the veg beds still need to be mulched as part of my new ‘no-dig’ regime.

The problem that I can see looming up before me is that it’s mid-December and already I’m behind with even the ‘must-do’ winter jobs.  I haven’t yet got my tulips planted, and that’s the top priority now that most of the fallen leaves have been gathered up, at least from the lawn and veg plot.  Last year’s hellebore leaves need cutting out; some have been done but there are still a few to tackle.  Another ‘must-do’ in winter is to prune the two freestanding apple trees; the little one can be done now, but the cooking apple tree needs to wait until all the apples have fallen off (some are too high for me to reach).   I know that the latter tree can take two afternoons to deal with, factoring in time to consider just what needs cutting out, and to find suitable level-ish spots on which to position the stepladder.  And I always overestimate just how much time is available in winter to do jobs.  I forget that it’s mostly cold and/or wet, which does rather dampen my enthusiasm for getting out there and cracking on with things; and digging weeds out of wet ground is a messy business.  Also I forget that the days are so much shorter in winter.  At the moment there isn’t much good light after 4pm even on bright days and, although the days will start getting longer in a week or so, it does curtail the working day.  All too soon it will be March and I’ll need to start seed-sowing!

Aucuba and iris seedpods

Winter jasmine and parsley

There’s not much good cutting material for indoor vases, but I’ve had some sprigs of old faithful Aucuba japonica teamed with seedheads of Iris foetidissima going for a few weeks now.  Another vase has some winter jasmine with the last of the parsley seedheads, which makes a lovely bright and fresh-looking little arrangement, especially in sunshine.  Sunshine has been at a premium lately, but we have had the odd bright day; the general weather theme has been showery or downright wet with some strong winds, a very few frosts but overall not unusually cold for this time of year.  However there’s still January and February to come!

November birds

Fruits in November: apples still on the tree, attracting the birds

The writer Thomas Hood’s poetic verdict on this month was “No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds – November!”.  Perhaps that was true of London in his day, but surely he was being a little hard.  Fruit may be limited to late apples, but plenty of them; and, if thinking botanically rather than culinarily, there are a good number of shrubs and trees that have fruit (berries) well into early winter.  Flowers admittedly can be in short supply at this time of year, especially in Hood’s lifetime (early 19^th century) before so many winter-flowering shrubs had been introduced from China and elsewhere, and leaves are mostly limited to evergreens and other wintergreen plants (though I suspect that Hood wasn’t a gardener and that his knowledge of plants wasn’t the best).  The lack of birds, though, seems surprising.  One assumes that London sparrows were just as plentiful as in other months; Hood was an invalid for much of his life and maybe didn’t get out much to notice the birdlife of the city.

Cotoneaster berries, popular with the birds

November is actually the month when the birds return to our garden after their moult, and certainly there’s been no shortage of birds here.  They’re generally shy from mid-September to mid-October or whenever the weather starts to turn colder; once they have moulted, and set about finding a territory for the winter, they reappear in search of food and shelter, and of course the migrants from the colder parts of Europe turn up too.  When we went on holiday there were relatively few visitors to our garden, mostly sparrows and woodpigeons, with the odd robin and dunnock, and a couple of blackbirds skulking around the cotoneasters in search of berries.  By the time we returned in early November the garden was alive with birdlife, and I’ve counted over 20 species since then.

In our absence, of course, the bird feeders were empty, so it wasn’t our seeds, peanuts and fatballs that brought them in (although I suppose it’s possible that some of our regulars were hanging around in the hope that we’d come back and put more out).  The garden has matured into quite a good habitat for birds, with plenty of shelter, untidy corners for foraging in, berries and seedheads to eat and a pond for bathing; most of it not put there primarily for the birds, but partly with them in mind, and they’re welcome to make use of it all.  

We seem to have a very healthy population of blue and great tits at the moment; they obviously bred very well this year, and there are always a few scouring the bark of the trees for insects, as well as hanging around the bird feeders.  (Sadly, one great tit was found dead outside the back door this morning; he has been buried under the big cotoneaster by the drive entrance.)  The coal tit and a long-tailed tit have also been about, as has a wren, and a goldcrest put in a brief appearance one day (I suspect that they’re around quite a lot, but being small and not distinctively coloured they’re easy to mistake for bluetits at a distance).  There are lots of sparrows and at least three dunnocks, in an uneasy relationship with one another (they’re not social with their own kind, though they hang out with sparrows), and of course at least two robins (another uneasy relationship).  We’ve had a male chaffinch, and there’s a substantial flock of goldfinches that appears from time to time; and the starlings have discovered that the fatball container is being replenished.  The blackbird population has increased, possibly because of winter migrants; a song thrush has come for a bath, and the early cold weather in Scandinavia has brought in the usual large numbers of fieldfares and redwings, the latter, with some help from the blackbirds, already stripping the holly tree of its berries.  Two greater spotted woodpeckers (male and female) have been visiting the peanut feeder, and the green woodpecker has been at the windfall apples, which are also attracting three magpies (until we chase them off).  Add to all of that the woodpigeons, collared doves (which have reappeared after an absence of a few months) and the pheasants, and we have quite a variety of avian visitors.

Other flying visitors have been about too: late one afternoon, as it was starting to get dark, there were three bats fly-catching outside the dining room window.  I had thought they would be hibernating by now, but it was a relatively mild day and they had obviously been tempted outside.  Normally we see bats when it’s already fairly dark, and all you can make out are the shapes, but there was enough light this time to see them quite clearly.

In his poem, Hood also described November as ‘No sun’, and while that’s not been totally true of this month, sunshine has certainly been at a premium.  It has been a grey, murky or downright wet few weeks.  In the past couple of days the weather has perked up, turning sunny and clear but colder, with frosts the last two nights, and it’s set to continue this way for a few days.  The greenhouse has been bubble-wrapped (re-using last year’s wrap), but I’m holding off switching on the heater; the temperature hasn’t dropped below 2.7C this autumn so far, which is just enough for overwintering the plants (houseplants having been moved indoors).  The colder weather is making it all the more important to keep the birds' needs in mind!