The turn of the year

 

Mahonia 'Winter Sun', brightening up the garden

It’s been a funny old year in several ways, and not a great one in this garden – but I’ve said a lot about that in recent posts, so I won’t repeat it here.  Suffice to say that my gardening New Year resolution is to get back to basics and sort out the important stuff first and foremost.  There have been a couple of sunny afternoons this week which have got me outdoors again and making a start on the overdue clearing-up jobs in the greenhouse and garden: cutting up and composting plants such as the tomato plants (which had been surviving – just – on the damp atmosphere in the greenhouse without watering), unusable brassica plants (there are still a couple of usable cabbages and developing broccoli spears) and the fallen climbing beans, and spreading the used tomato-bag compost on one of the veg beds. 

The weather this year wasn’t great either; nothing extremely dramatic, but there were long periods of static weather systems that were either not at all typical for the time of year or not at all helpful to the gardener.  The year started cold and, except for a couple of unseasonably warm weeks in February and again at the end of March, it remained mostly cold through to near the end of May, April being very dry and May being very wet.  The summer brought a spell of heat in July, but also some chilly weather, and there was little sun in August; the autumn gave us some very wet and windy weather in October, although September wasn’t too bad and November was overall milder and less damp than usual.  There was wind and snow at the end of November, then December has been mostly misty, murky and mizzly, unusually mild but with very little sun, and in the last few days quite windy. 

Some plants have been enjoying the recent mild weather and a few are putting out new shoots, and the winter shrubs are all flowering well. The forecast is for rather colder but a little drier weather in early January, which might make it easier to tackle more jobs in the garden.  Happy 2022!