WEIRD WINTER?

This came to me as we were walking near Bouth and the Winter Heliotrope was flowering in the roadside - there are still a lot of flowers in the garden if one looks carefully - I mean, not just the snowdrops - now coming out - nor the winter flowering honeysuckle (a shrub not a climber).

I have cut some of the scented flowers of the latter and put them in a base on the stairs windowsill. We also have some flowering currant sprouting in a vase in the kitchen.

There are the usual nutters flowering when they shouldn't ought - I have just picked a white pink, smelling faintly but still - in January?


Red campion have the occasional flower in the wood and the red rose A and P gave us is doing well by the shed.

The hellebore - the Corsican one I think - is well into flowering and, of course, that anthemis by the path . . . 

It makes me wonder if we have a new mutation - an all year round anthemis - flowers whatever the weather.
Actually I do not believe this - it would lose the flowers etc if we had a really hard snap.

In fact we woke to a bright morning and a covering of hail.

 Now the wind is getting up and rain is on the way - AGAIN!

This does not mean I have not been in the garden, I have, a bit. The rose bed is manured and I have gathered many sticks, some for the wood shed and other stacked in the trees for wildlife. Sadly the wall of the shed nearest the house has disintegrated (It was made up of old failed paintings nailed to a trellis.)

Yesterday we went to the funeral of an old family friend of R in Cheshire. She loved nature and gardening. She painted watercolours and we have one in our living room as a reminder of a lovely lady.