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!