GARDENING GETS GOING

R has been transplanting the snowdrops whilst I clear more from the rosebed and put the plants in one of the veg beds. The raspberries have been retied where they have come loose but they are ageing and will need replacing. I have pruned some low new growth off the gooseberries so they are 'on a leg'.

The primroses and wild daffs are a treat and other daffodils are coming on well. The little burst of finer warmer weather has brought the rhubarb forward. (see below)

I have stripped the ivy that was trying to climb the big sycamore but, no doubt, it will be back.
I considered treating the lawns for moss but then there would be nothing but bare earth so have left it alone.

The stipa gigantea has been cut back and the stems are like bamboo canes - now I have to think what to do with them.

So the signs of spring are here - lamb gangs mucking about in the lane having crawled under the gate, golden saxifrage by the stream and contrails in the sky.

I think I prefer the black and white version.

And Mr Pheas. is strutting his stuff - there are at least four hen pheasants in the garden, a veritable harem.

Water is an important part of the garden (which makes it so boggy) whether tumbling though tree roots, disappearing into the bed of the stream and emerging either in the ditch or as a new spring in the lawn, or at the pond.

I have taken the step of giving my strimmer away to my son-in-law who needs it more which means I shall have to rely on the more old fashioned scythe - much quieter.
The rose bed is almost empty and waiting to be moved further down the garden. One pleasing thing is the depth of soil, both here and in the veg beds - a good spade and a half to two spades - so loads of preparation and top dressing has been successful.

And then there is the promise of things to come like the unfurling rhubarb leaves, so long delayed by the cold weather.

Finally I have succumbed to badgering from R and the other R to do a bit of painting - something I find hard work and do every ten years or so - so here it is - last spring under the cherries.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

The Siberian wind whips in wrenching twigs from the trees, whipping up leaf litter and heaping it into corners.  It seems we are all victims of stuff from Russia at the moment!? The cold is back and finishing off the destruction of any half hardy plants like the osteospermums, the aeoniums and so on. This begonia was left out and has not survived. Many plants have been burned by the cold wind, their leaves brown and brittle. 

So all the talk is of the Beast from the East but whether they are talking of weather or something more Putinesque - ?

Having lived through the Cold War I am not a fan of doing it all again - Brexit, Trump, Putin, Johnson - time to disappear into the garden.

Mind you, if you leave a marrow out over the winter it can end up looking like this - a shadow of its former self! The daffodils are struggling forth, though delayed, and the snowdrops are all but over - soon to be divided and replanted in any bare patches so we can have a greater carpet of white next year. It is best to do this when they are "in the green" after flowers.

To the left a hebe burned and blowing in the icy gale. To the right the fatsia near the back door, surviving but a bit scorched.


The flowering currant has gone into suspended growth, buds waiting to open, waiting for a little warmth.

There is some colour around though, some unexpected - I had forgotten I had planted tete-a-tete daffodils in this pot with the box ball and up they have come albeit struggling with the competition. The box will need transplanting when the daffs are done.

Other colour includes acer twigs, and hamamelis flowers plus the male skimmia well in bud. I shall have to check on its partner up by the gate but I think she will be all right through the wicked wintry weather. (Mm! A bit of alliteration going on there.)

So to thoughts of the new rose bed, of no dig gardening and out with Charles Dowding's book on Organic Gardening. 
I have been surprised at the depth of soil in the old bed but that will be useful, good soil is always useful. 

And so to a video of our wild wood pigeon with a bad leg - too many pigeons around - twenty in the field below the house this morning - but I feel somewhat sorry for this one.

SPRING?

No chance? - the springs in the garden were frozen, the stream dry as all the water is locked in the earth.

Lost a few plants in the freeze, the half hardy ones like the osteospermums. The eucalyptus was almost bent double in the gale at the end of last week and I shall have to pick ups sticks again as the place is carpeted.

Before the freeze there was warm spring sun and I sat out with my coffee listening to the birds singing.

Then Russia sent us an east wind, straight from Siberia, with night frost and a bitter wind. It struggled to get above freezing even during the day. So fleece on and in the garden digging and shifting compost before it all went rock hard with the cold. I dug out a thug of a Day lily from the lower rose bed, it took almost an hour and I think I may not have got all of it.

Spring was here and flowers were appearing everywhere, not just snowdrops 

but small daffodils, winter flowering pansies, small irises and crocuses,

primulas and the wild primrose, primula vulgaris.

 The quince on the wall by the shed that D gave us has been flowering on and off all winter but is now doing really well.












The bird box (robin or wren) on the big sycamore had never had anyone living in it so I have moved it somewhere I hope will be more suitable - fingers crossed. Robins are in full voice declaring their territories.

The bottom hedge is now sporting hazel catkins - another portent of spring. - ha ha.

I have tidied out the main shed and taken an old Dimplex radiator and a decrepit lounger to the tip - spring cleaning?

The amaryllis, now over and in need of sustenance are repotted and on my windowsill. The bulbs are a bit small so may never do well but I will give it a try.

The garden has dried out with the frost and wind - feels like -10C - and I have done more buddleia pruning, strawberry bed clearing and even attacked the rosa rugosa by the washing line.

There is nothing much gardening wise to do so, some time ago, I set myself the challenge of writing poems with titles of veg or fruit.
Here is one -

BROCCOLI

A tight white perm in a green collar

turned up against the heat,

hair so brittle it might crumble 

under the drier if overdone.

Usually Edna emulates her friends -

planted in a Thursday row

in Ida’s steamy salon

reading Homes and Gardens,

slowly growing rigid curls,

good enough to win a prize -

crisp and curd white 

above their cheddar smiles.

But now she has cast aside

her pristine Calabrese,

defies her white roots
and sprouts a purple-tinted rinse.

And to finish - a few wintry shots of the garden left over.

And the weather forecasters say it its going too get cold again this weekend - 😞

MARCHING ON

All of us need to escape from time to time but the recent bad weather left me at a loose end - cannot garden, play golf - one can spend only so much time beside a fire reading or watching the bullfinches from the sofa in the kitchen.

The feeding through the cold weather has, I am sure, enabled many small birds to survive the winter like these blue tits. We must have upwards of twenty in the garden and probably the same number of chaffinches. 

One thing the snow did was to reveal which are the new molehills. I then shovelled up the soil, mixed it with wood ash and top dressed the fruit bushes.

Over by the hedge the problem with the new spring was revealed - where the grass had grown more - so I know I will have to extend the drain further than I thought when I put it in.

And I have not quite stopped rabbiting on about the recent snow so here is the house and garden - 
 

And ice on the pond gives me abstract images like these two, the left reflected light, the right at the outflow.

Enough snow stuff - time to move on, March on, as it is has been, according to the weather forecasters, spring since the start of the month 😕.

It must be tough being a heron and flying all the way to our pond to find the frogs below a thick layer of ice. The mallard, however, managed to discover a small area at the edge where there was open water and dabbled as best they could.

I have now finished the digging up of the strawberries, emptied the compost heap and started to move more plants to the holding bed - roses and perennials.

After the ice melted the ducks were back sitting in their favourite place by the pond outlet.

Now it is milder and wetter. The primroses are suddenly coming out in the woodland edge and we have daffodils. Now it is really starting to feel like spring and the seasons are marching on.

There are times, like at the moment, when I feel my body is incompatible with gardening - I hear a cry from the kitchen - 'Get a gardener to help,' - but I rather like to be in control, do it myself.

I know - then I cannot complain about the creaks and twinges.