Opening 2022

Open or not?

It was a relatively warm start to 2022; a mild December finished with the warmest New Year’s Eve ever recorded (16C / about 62F in London) and 2022 began with the warmest recorded New Year’s Day (17C / about 63F n London).  Not quite so warm here, of course, but still well above the norm.  This was followed by a few days of much chillier weather, with a couple of frosts overnight, and now things are swinging back to single figures C during the day.

The mild weather was evident when I went out to count the number of species with open flowers on 1^st January.  Of course, it depends on what you consider to be an open flower.  One of the early snowdrops (the Galanthus atkinsii down by the summerhouse) was showing the outside of its flower but wasn’t yet actually opened; but really, you can’t see inside a snowdrop flower anyway unless you get right down to its level, so does it count or not?   Let’s say not, in which case there were 15: the usual winter shrubs:winter jasmine (jasminum nudiflorum), winter honeysuckle (lonicera purpusii), the winter viburnums, especially Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ and the rosemary; several out-of-season blooms on the senecio (or whatever it’s called nowadays); a few blooms on some of the hardier perennials: Comfrey ‘Hidcote Pink’, the little red chrysanthemums, the alpine strawberries, some rocket running to seed, and one flower on each of the purple/blue campanula by the drive (one of the spreaders - portenschlagiana or poscharskyana?) and the vinca major in the wall; as well as a few weeds: daisies, euphorbia palustris, and meadow grass.  And a day or so later a creeping buttercup flowered in the lawn.

I discounted a few plants with summer 2021 flowers still hanging on grimly, but in too poor condition to be reasonably regarded as ‘flowering’: the rose ‘Blush Noisette’, the gazanias (now moved into the greenhouse for protection from the frosts) and a couple of antirrhinums.  Likewise a number of early-flowering plants were showing well-developed buds: the snowdrops as mentioned above, the hellebores and the choisya.  And the first daffodil leaves are nosing up in the lawn just beyond the buddleja; some supports have been put in place to stop me walking on them.

The birds have been visiting in search of food, especially on the colder days.  They are mostly the regulars – good numbers of blue and great tits especially – though a brambling dropped by one morning.  A pied wagtail was around one afternoon, scrapping with one of the robins, and a long-tailed tit (they haven’t been much in evidence these past few weeks) came to the fatball feeder one day.  A tawny owl was calling the other evening from somewhere very close.  We have three robins in the garden, and two of them are starting to tolerate each other’s presence as a preliminary stage in their courtship; while we still have to ride out the worst of the winter, they are obviously already starting to think ahead to spring!