THAT BRITISH WEATHER, WINTER FLOWERS?

Glad not to be at the Winter Olympics - minus 20C. Siberian weather. 
I have bought some nyger seed to see if I can attract those birds who like the finer things in life, particularly goldfinches. 
The messy strawberry bed calls for a complete tidy and make over and I must stir myself, but first another coffee, hands wrapped around the mug.
Then outside and I find the strawberries are not worth keeping - scrawny and old - so up they come - well, half the bed and by then my fingers were numb. Returned with a barrow load of compost and finished top dressing the long bed. Have pruned the roses, black currants and red currants between sleet showers.
Had to come in to thaw and began to make mushroom soup - Crank's recipe. Will make about 4 or 5 pints (3 litres). Just onion, potato, mushrooms and milk with butter and thyme. I have left out the parsley.

So there I was with a blog written (almost) and then it snowed. Well, I could not ignore it so - 

out with the camera, the magic tracery of trees under snowfall, the green of the daffodil leaves, even a frozen looking wood pigeon on a high branch all captured with the lens. Fortunately snow, when the sun is not shining, is easier to take. So not a lot of gardening done. In fact, as we do not have a greenhouse, just sheds and a clapped out cold frame rate his is a quiet sort of compost spreading time of year.

but given a hour or two

the sun was out and the snow thawing hard in sunshine even though it was still very cold with ice around. The garden glowed in the crystal clear air and colour, such as the witch hazel, glowed.

Is had to nip down to the pond and take a panorama shot up the garden, rake some moss off the path and pick up sticks shed by the trees.

And next morning I looked out of the bedroom window and we were above the could level in thick mist and steady drizzle.

Our weather is ever changing and this can make gardening a challenge, especially with the rain we now have with global warming - I read that all but one of our record wettest years have been since 2000! Of course if we had the same weather every day we would have nothing to talk about (except this Brexit mess 😒).

To move on - what brightens up the garden in winter? In a way the birds are like winter flowers filling the place with colour and variety - 

 

 

 

 

 

So just like I feed the plants, I feed the birds, our own little dinosaurs.