Back to work

Snowdrops outdoors ...

... and indoors

Home again after a short trip away.  After a series of gales, the weather has settled down and is currently dry and intermittently sunny; good gardening weather, so it’s back to work – there’s plenty to do!

It’s also unseasonably mild this weekend, so much so that I had to take my gardening jacket off this afternoon while working outside. The early snowdrops are in full flower, and the first hellebores are out.  I found a few ladybirds sunning themselves on the blackcurrants, and a bumblebee flew past at one point.  The robins are singing lustily, with a pair showing a wary tolerance of each other on the patio, and a pair of woodpigeons were mating in the apple tree.

Ladybirds on the blackcurrant bushes

This weekend was the Big Garden Birdwatch.  I ‘watched’ two days running, with very similar results on each occasion, both a good reflection of our usual bird visitors, including the bullfinches and a goldfinch.  A song thrush showed up also; it had been around a couple of times recently, and I was glad to be able to record it.

The gales did little damage to us, other than dislodging the trellis screening the dump corner.  The trellis had been very precariously propped up for a few years now, so its collapse wasn’t a surprise.  It had been acting as a support for the honeysuckle, which in turn supports a white-flowered clematis.  Both of these were in need of tidying up, so I cut the honeysuckle free from the trellis, which has been repositioned nearby (also rather precariously), and pruned the clematis back to low-growing strong buds.  There was an enormous amount of weak or dead top-growth to remove – but I didn’t prune it last year, and probably not the year before that … in fact, I’m not sure when I last pruned it, so it’s hardly surprising!  And now it, and the honeysuckle, no longer have anything to support them, other than a few thick sticks pushed randomly into the ground.  The next gales will probably bring the whole thing down again, and I’ll have to find another solution!

The cold spell knocked back the broad bean plants, but they have recovered and are throwing up secondary shoots from the base.  The garlic is also coming up, and there is lamb’s lettuce (corn salad) and lots of rather tatty chard, but otherwise the veg plot is not very productive at the moment.  I took advice from a gardening website and cut and stored the remaining radicchio heads before the cold hit in early winter, and was a bit dubious as to whether this would work; however today I took the last radicchio out of the summerhouse where it had been seeing out the cold weather, and once the (very dead-looking) outer leaves had been removed, there was a healthy head inside.  A tip to note for next winter!

The last radicchio, stripped of the dead bits

New Year flowers

2024 started wet.  After a few weeks of very rainy weather, the ground was sodden; there were (and still are) the inevitable floods in the usual flood-prone places, but fortunately we’re on much better-draining ground.  The downpours eased a day or two into the new year, and we’re now having a week of dry, cold and frosty weather (to be replaced by milder temperatures and more rain and gales at the weekend).

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'

I managed to get outside briefly to do my usual New Year’s Day flower count, which produced a measly 9 plants.  There were the five stalwarts: winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum), winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii), Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’, doing its best to live up to its name, despite the dismal weather, viburnums (both V. tinus ‘Gwenllian’ and V. x bodnantense ‘Dawn’) and rosemary.  But the cold spell earlier in the winter has knocked back nearly all the plants that sometimes have a bloom or two hanging on from the previous year’s flowering, except the Vinca major in the front wall, which has a couple of flowers on it.  There were some early spring flowerers that had got their act together in time: two primula plants by the entrance to the drive, and the snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii) by the pond.  And some meadow grass, which flowers pretty much all year round, weather permitting; but that was all.  As usual, there were a few ‘nearly there’s: the hellebores by the terrace, and a speedwell plant in bud; a reminder that 2024 flowering is already under way!  I’ve already crunched a few daffodil shoots underfoot at the side of the lawn, and marked them off to remind me to tread more carefully there.  There are even tulips (‘Exotic Emperor’, an early variety) nosing up through the compost, and orchid foliage showing in the grass.

Nearly there: hellebores in bud

I’m looking towards the Big Garden Birdwatch later this month and keeping an eye on what species we have visiting, apart from the usual suspects.  We have at least five blackbirds battling it out over the apples, in competition with a fieldfare; three bullfinches (two males and a female) have been hanging around, and occasional goldfinches and a chaffinch.  A kestrel was being seen off by a crow the other day, and three buzzards did a fly-over of the garden this afternoon.