After the murky weather leading up to New Year, 2025 started with a week or so of chilly weather, including some snow. It didn’t last long in these parts, but there was a good deal of ice, and the bright, clear weather brought freezing temperatures at night. The greenhouse temperature dropped to minus 2.9C. Patchy snow on the ground and ice – not good gardening weather. But there’s always plenty of other things needing doing, so I took the opportunity to defrost the freezer; another frozen fingers job.
Cold weather always means birds coming in search of food:
Lefty, of course, as well as sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds, fieldfares,
chaffinches, bullfinches and tits of various sorts. A wren managed to get into the porch,
presumably looking for a warm roost for the night, and had to be
extricated. A song thrush also appeared,
taking advantage of a sheltered (and therefore unfrozen) spot by the patio to
root around for grubs. I hope it stays
around for the Big Garden Birdwatch later this month.
The New Year flower count was reasonable: winter jasmine,
winter honeysuckle, mahonia ‘Winter Sun’, viburnums, rosemary, snowdrops, some
campanula, the vinca in the front wall, meadow grass, and two ‘one-off’ flowers
surviving from the autumn, a solitary wallflower and a stem of brunnera. Fuchsia ‘Hawkshead’ just about made the
count, but the flowers were really too far gone to get more than an honourable
mention.
