Gath'ring winter fuel

Crocus 'Whitewell Purple'

With all this wind, a lot of twigs (and a few bits of branches) have come down from the ash trees.  The neighbours' one in particular has shed a lot onto the veg plot.  I had been piling them up on a vacant bed, but have now filled three compost sacks with them; a good store of kindling for the fire!  A much smaller pile is sitting by the summerhouse, having fallen out of the big tree in the field, and today I found the first crocus (Crocus tommasinianus 'Whitewell Purple') of the year flowering happily among the debris.  The snowdrops (G. atkinsii) nearby are fully out; not a bad display considering I thought I had dug them all up!  I planted the dug-up bulbs in a pot (for want of anywhere better just at the moment) but they aren't doing anything; perhaps I'll revert to the traditional method of moving them 'in the green'.

Galanthus atkinsii

Cyclamen coum

Daffs already in bud!

As for the wind, we had more gales last week and there are yet more forecast for tonight.  It's mild and damp, and the spring flowers are thriving; there are daffodils in bud under the plum tree and in the front garden and it's not even February yet.  There's also a nice clump of Cyclamen coum down under the winter honeysuckle; rather out of sight and out of mind, but welcome all the same.  I'm not taking chances with the weather, though.  I've cut off the old leaves from the epimediums to let the flowers come through unimpeded, but E. sulphureum, which is facing the prevailing wind, has a 'hat' of old cut leaves on top so that the flowers aren't blasted by the gales.  And yesterday we had a short snow shower; it clearly wasn't going to lie, but it was a warning that winter isn't done with us yet.

A satisfying weekend's gardening: shallots planted, one-and-a-half veg beds dug over and a bean trench started, a self-sown ash stump which had been difficult to remove dug out, old hellebore leaves removed, wisteria and small apple tree pruned, and various other small tasks done.  And last week I dug over and weeded a patch in front of the pear cordons so that the daffodil bulbs (Narcissus 'Silver Chimes') and Allium cowanii could go in (better late than never!); the last of the tender and tender-ish plants were also removed from their pot and put in the safety of the greenhouse.

Not a bad tally for the Big Garden Birdwatch, given that the mild weather is keeping many birds out in the

Viburnum, comfrey and wallflower

fields: eleven sparrows, four woodpigeons, two of blue tit, great tit, blackbird and dunnock, and a robin, wren, chaffinch and greater spotted woodpecker.

This week's cut flowers are Viburnum tinus 'Gwenlian', comfrey 'Hidcote Pink' and wallflower 'Sunset Red'.

Blowing away the frost

Frosty weather

The English winter is starting to resemble the English summer: not so much two days of sun and then a thunderstorm, as two days of frost and then more gales.  A few frosty nights and chilly days have given way to damp and murk, and today we are having the first blast of a storm which has blanketed the east coast of the US in snow.  We won't get any snow, just more rain and high winds.  Business as usual.


The frosts were hard enough not to clear in the shade, and even where the surface frost melted, the ground was still hard.  The tender plants are mostly all tucked up in the greenhouse, but the outdoor plants did look quite striking with the frost on them.  The end of last week and the weekend were very mild for January - I found a ladybird on one of the blackcurrant bushes.  Yesterday I pruned the big apple tree, trying to resist the temptation to cut away too much wood; taking out all the watershoots would just result in more of them, and I hope I've stayed the right side of the line this year! I also managed a little digging over of bits of the veg plot, and tied up the broad bean plants.  That should really have been done earlier, as the wind had flattened them and they were flagging in the frost.  They've since perked up nicely, although they're a little bent!  I hope their tops will straighten up now they're tied to their supports. Otherwise it hasn't really been weather for doing much outside.  The shallots have arrived, so planting them out will be a priority once the soil is workable again.

Geranium leaves

Viburnum davidii in the frost

The tits and sparrows have been enthusiastically enjoying the fatballs, getting through them at a great rate; they're now rationed, at least until the weather gets chilly again.

That's more like it ....

Winter honeysuckle

At last, some colder weather. There have been one or two light frosts, and brighter weather with less rain and wind.  It's nice to see the sun from time to time!  The plants that were flowering are looking a little less enthusiastic this week, but the winter-flowering shrubs are still looking good and Lonicera x purpusii (the winter honeysuckle) provided a scented display for cutting.  Today I chickened out and stayed inside; although it was beautifully bright there was a cuttingly cold wind.


Most of the tenderish plants in the summer pots have now been potted up and brought into the greenhouse, where they are tucked under the staging with the heater for company and a few sheets of bubblewrap to make a rough tent around them.  The white-flowered osteospermum has filled out well and has been split into three, and the Phormium 'Tricolor' has also bulked up well.  Most of the bulbs have now found a home (but not all! and I'm running out of suitable places for them).

A fatball container has been put out for the birds to help see them through the cold spell.  It took the robin all of 5 minutes to find it, and it has been a big success with the tits and sparrows also.  The dunnocks have been enjoying the bits that get dropped.  The bullfinches haven't been back as far as I've seen; presumably they've exhausted the oregano seeds and moved on elsewhere.

A taste of spring

Galanthus elwesii

Pink pinks

The weather has become a little less mild (but still above zero) with less wind and rain (but still damp and breezy much of the time); the forecast for next week actually suggests that temperatures will dip below freezing some nights.  I need to re-secure some of the greenhouse bubblewrap, a couple of panels of which have become detached from their fixings.  It hasn't mattered much up till now!  The few houseplants that were living in the greenhouse have been brought indoors for better protection, but some of the osteospermums and argyranthemums are still in their outdoor pots; I need to get them under cover.  I must also bring in the larger of the two blue echeveriums; it spent all last winter outside (admittedly up against the patio doors so it would have benefitted from some of the indoor heat), but I don't fancy risking it a second winter.

Now that the Christmas greenery has been taken down and sent for recycling I've started cutting flowers for the house again.  Quite a bit of choice at the moment!  There's a little posy of snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii), some slightly battered pinks and a lovely off-white hellebore with a slight pink flush and pink rim.  I'm sure that latter one is new.  Many years ago I bought a couple of hellebore plants and, having nowhere to plant them out at the time, I left them on the path under the dining room window.  I was less careful about deadheading in those days, and they seeded into the cracks in the path, giving me a nice collection of hellebores of various colours, but I don't remember this particular one.

The winter aconites are also in flower, and the comfrey has been blooming for a few weeks now.  No shortage of stuff to cut in the coming weeks unless we have a really cold snap!

Pink-and-white hellebore

The garden is still very wet (and smells strongly of tomcat, which isn't nice).  What little time I've had to spend outdoors has been used to tidy up a bit and do a little light pruning; although this isn't the time of year to prune cordons I've thinned out some of the spurs on the apple cordons while I can see what I'm doing (no leaves to get in the way), and removed a few spurs that are too low down.

The birds are almost in spring mode, quite sprightly and apparently minded to pair up.  We had two dunnocks feeding together the other day, which isn't usual at this time of year.  The bullfinch has been back a few times, on one occasion with another male bullfinch; the attraction has been the seedheads of an oregano plant that was never deadheaded.  There are a few chaffinches around too.  And, as usual in wet winter weather, one or more moles is tunnelling enthusiastically under the veg patch; I hope my tulip bulbs by the wall haven't been disturbed.

In the mild midwinter ...

The wind is certainly making moan - every few days another gale - but it's not at all frosty, and there's absolutely no prospect at the moment of snow falling on snow.  Plenty of rain falling on sodden ground, though.  Today I tried digging over the ground where the dahlias had been in the hope of getting some tulips planted in there, but it was much too sticky for any planting.  At least we haven't had as much rainfall as the north of England, which is currently flooded.  It is still ridiculously mild; a little fresher today, but not anything like December ought to be. The plants think so too.  The cistus is flowering happily, presumably under the delusion that it's a Mediterranean spring.  Unfortunately the Iris foetidissima behind it has its orange berries on display, and it's not a happy colour combination, but never mind.  The Geum rivale is in flower too as is one of the Welsh poppies, there are still some pinks in bud and flower, hellebores are blooming all over the place and there's a Sweet William even having a go.  The early snowdrops are out, but the Galanthus elwesii is hidden because the geraniums haven't died back, and one of them is trying to flower too.  The daffodils are shooting already, and the little rhubarb plant that I planted earlier in the year has one perky little leaf out.  It's all wrong.  On the plus side, the winter flowering shrubs haven't been knocked back yet and there's a lovely display of winter honeysuckle.

The more opportunistic weeds - herb robert, bittercress - are still growing too, as is the grass.  The lawn is much longer than it ought to be but it's far too wet to cut.  The horses which are currently pastured in the field behind us occasionally come to the fence and look longingly at it.

There's another storm - heavy rain and gales - forecast for Wednesday.  But a little sun tomorrow, which will be welcome in this very depressing December.

The mild weather has meant that there isn't the range of birds turning up that we usually have in winter.  A male bullfinch dropped in the other day but otherwise it's mostly our regulars.

Belated bulbs

I'm still planting bulbs.  A lot of those removed from last year's summer pots - the ones that still looked in reasonable condition - have gone in the bottom of the veg patch, next to the place where next door's lily of the valley has spread under the wall.  I'm not expecting great things, and the plan (at the moment) is to dig them up and throw them away next summer, but it's worth a try.  I've given them some bonemeal each in the hope of giving them a kickstart.  Down there are the remnants of 'Jan Reus' and 'Veronique Sanson', at the back by the wall; in front are a couple of the yellow tulips rescued from under the dining room window and 'Purple Jacket'; in front of that are 'Cairo' and 'Antraciet' on the right and some more yellow tulips on the left.

Meanwhile I've managed to get the alliums ('Purple Sensation', 'Purple Rain' and unifolium) into the bottom border under the ash tree, along with tulip 'Menton'.  This is a stonking great late pink tulip which I first saw in a garden nearby; it's supposed to be good at resisting the elements, which will be a useful attribute in this garden.  I'm gradually getting the other new bulbs (and some saved from last year) into their winter homes; some more 'Cairo' have gone into a pot with crocus 'Gipsy Girl' and some wallflower 'Sunset Red', while the Tete-a-tete daffodils have gone into the windowbox as usual, with blue violas and crocus 'Blue Pearl', and a small Carex testacea to provide some structure.  Further planting has been frustrated by the weather; we've had a couple of bright, sunny half-days but otherwise it's mostly damp or wet, with wind.  Today we've had gales; the village Christmas tree was going up this lunchtime and it will be interesting to see tomorrow whether it's still upright!

Yellow chrysanths, wallflowers and winter jasmine

It's still mild for this time of year, though.  The hellebore, and its offspring in the front garden, is getting into its flowering stride; some 'Sunset Red' wallflowers that were never potted up last winter and are still where they were sown are coming nicely into flower, the chrysanthemums are still going and there are odd flowers on the Centaurea montana, pinks, cistus and a Welsh poppy. The birds still come for their crumbs, seeds and water, and the blackbirds are still enjoying the occasional apple, but there's no sense of urgency in their feeding - plenty of wild food still around, I suspect.

Another pigeon, another gooseberry bush

One of the recurring themes in my gardening is the task that can only be completed once something else has been done, and very often that something else is dependent on yet another job being done first.  Usually it's not being able to plant something until its new home has been cleared of weeds or otherwise prepared.  Today it was the burial of yet another dead woodpigeon, which - given the lack of suitably deep soil in a place where the corpse wouldn't be dug up accidentally - meant first clearing another bit of the overgrown gooseberry row and selecting a reasonably young bit of plant with roots to replant there.  A very mature gooseberry plant was eventually dug up; it had enormous roots and digging out took some effort, but in the end I managed to create an appropriately sized grave for the pigeon, with the new gooseberry plant alongside (with lots of homemade compost and Rootgrow to help compensate for putting it near where the old plant had been).  It was quite a satisfying job in fact, as I was able to get some couch grass roots out at the same time.  The robin was also very satisfied with my digging; it checked over the area very thoroughly when I came in for some tea.

The pigeon was found tucked in between one of the compost bins and one of the leafmould containers, in a confined and very sheltered spot.  I don't think a predator could have taken it in there (although there were a few small feathers about, which might have been pulled out of the corpse by a secondary predator such as a rat); I suspect it was a sick bird (it may have been another juvenile, I couldn't tell for sure given the state it was in) just looking for a sheltered place to lie down, as sick pigeons do.  (Perhaps other birds do that too? I don't know.)  I rather wish they wouldn't do it in this garden; I'm running out of places to bury them!

The dahlias have been cut down and dug up.  'David Howard' had rotted completely, while 'Jescot Julie' is still one enormous tuber, which looks partly eaten away and had a lot of little worm things and larvae on it when I dug it up.  I decided to leave it lying there overnight - the weather is still very mild for the time of year - in the hope that the local biological control (robin, wren) would deal with the pests.  Certainly they seemed to have gone by the next morning (though they may have retreated into the tuber, I suppose!).  All the tubers are now drying out in the greenhouse, where I've also started potting up the half-hardies from the summer pots - argyranthemums, osteospermums, nepeta variegata etc.  It's still mild enough for that not to be a desperately urgent job; the weather has been damp and very windy and there's no real cold in sight.  The birds are still coming to feed on the fallen apples (the green woodpecker was there today) but without much sense of urgency.

Hellebore in flower

Colour in the garden is mostly from the chrysanthemums and the winter shrubs, but the big hellebore (argutifolius?) under the dining room window has started to flower, and the orange Iris foetidissima seed pods are showing.  The Lonicera purpusii is hanging on to its leaves as usual, and flowering nicely.  There are also a few last roses but I doubt if they are going to open properly, and the dianthus plants are producing sporadic blooms (being cut for the kitchen windowsill).