ISHA ISHA

 All fall down. What a name for a storm, and now Jocelyn. I mean perhaps Ruarri, or something?

Floods and wind, the electric gate needs replacing, and now I have hearings aids I can hear every zephyr. 

Even the Berberis from Cally gardens has gone lopsided.

R has been clearing up the flower beds and I have raked out the debris from the stream so now, hopefully, it will not spread across the garden, so soggy. 

J has been round and will give me a quote for tidying up the broken branches. D has been and told us we need a new gate motor. I have been to the doc only it was the wrong day so I came home.

I have put all the scruffy amaryllis into one big pot with compost and some pelleted hen manure. I have found a couple of rabbit holes hidden away by the top fence but they are hard to get at for one who tends to fall over a lot.

And the wind has reached 150mph in The Faroes, raining again, though the heron was back on the pond and I saw a treecreeper ascending the big cherry tree.

The Amaryllis we got at Christmas is looking splendid.

The gardener did not come today and I do not blame him. It is dark and the rain is spattering on my window.

However we do have our first daffodil buds and the snowdrops are great - this is really due to R diligently spreading them. (This is my main gardener and she comes free(ish).

We do have colour here and there like the quince and the viburnum.

So now nearly February and where has the time gone? (Probably asleep or reading a book?)

Our bench is on its back again.

There are floods in the low fields.

All in all things can only get better.

Can't they??

Should I write to the King and ask him how the op was?

2024 AND TREES

 So here we are in 2024 and it is still raining, floods in the fields and squelch across the garden. At least we have survived the festive season, just.

I have just found how difficult it is to type accurately when having the hiccoughs, am stil findin it ard.

The garden is best left alone at the moment perhaps to avoid damage - when it is so wet.

So a bit on trees, big trees. These I photographed on our last visit to Holker Hall, big trees are amazing things.

 

There is something about trees, especially the trunks, that is majestic.

The big ones are all older than I can ever be and much more attractive than I could be as a skeleton - the spread of branches, the strength of the trunk.

I look at the wrecked garden and decide to stay in the house. Where it is warm. If the oil man ever delivers.

So the last year sprawls into the new, what was going on is still going on - very depressing.

Then it is twelfth night, well day, and the decorations are down - AND the sun is shining - and it is not raining.

We went to the garden centre in Beetham today, really for a coffee, but ended up buying a big pot in which to dump all the weedy amaryllis I have around the house, a christmas rose for R and a female skimmia for our lonely male skimmia.

I will really need to get out there and tidy away the debris.

There is still colour on the liquidambar despite broken branches and the viburnum is flowering as is the winter flowering honeysuckle.

And we have one rose flower and the beginnings of rhubarb. It is a month of silhouettes and shapes. Not all the world is asleep - the moles are hard at work messing the lawn.

Then there are the stirring snowdrops bringing hope in the dark days.

The sun shines and lifts then whole mood of the garden even though we are in frosty weather.

When we were in lockdown with the Covid the blue sky was untarnished by contrails - alas no longer - 

Roll on spring.