STILL WAITING

 For summer up t' north.

Yes heat in the south but here rarely escapes the teens in Centigrade. 

And WET!

I have picked our six or so damson trees and almost three fruit a tree.

The blackcurrants are pruned and some of the damson suckers removed. I used some of the pruning to shove in the veg bed for future trees. They root so easily if left alone. 

R weeds on assiduously. 

I know R does not like my Elephant grass but I do. I suppose one day I will come home and find it gone?

The bay tree outside the kitchen window was too big and we have bay elsewhere so out came the saw. It may not be up to Monty Don's standard of lopping but it will do.

The rosa rugosa by the washing line is both flowering and fruiting as is the white version in the top hedge.

And is autumn upon us - the euonymus is turning - too early I cry.

We have eaten our first Bramleys and there are conference pears ripening on the kitchen windowsill.

The big white hydrangea is gathering its pink tinge - ?autumn.

This rose was a gift from our children and is called The Poet's Wife.

Sometimes wandering a garden with  camera one sees interesting shapes and so on - this monochrome of spreading branches was taken at Holker Hall.

And her we have alchemilla leaves and creeping thistledown.

Sometimes when mowing the lawn I have to rest and do so on and old hen box from our previous owner backed against the far wall. From there I can look across the garden through the white birches to the eucalyptus. I am sitting under an ash tree suffering with dieback so that makes two of us - and as it is over the wall in the farmer's field not much I can do.

Hello, it has gone dark again and there is a warning out about thunder and heavy rain - what a surprise!

WHITE IS RIGHT?

 For all the colours in the garden, and I include green, white is so important. And the biggest white we have are our Rambling Rector roses, one a mass by the old well and the other to the top of the old ash.

There are more whites - 

Deutzia,

Elder,

Daisy bush,

Philadelphus Belle Etoile,

White rosebay,

And the grey thornless hawthorn we saw first Holker Hall, Ox-eye daisies sown on the upper banking.

So having mentioned whites I suppose we should say a bit about light greys like the cardoon,

the chewed up mullein - taken a handful of moth caterpillars of the leaves, and one of my favourites the variegated horseradish.

Elsewhere we have three grey foliaged tree in the bottom garden - there weeping pear, the poplar and the eucalyptus. In fact despite being blown over in a storm the poplar is now tallest.

So after that what have we been up to? The newish bed with roses is a carpet of creeping buttercup and we have been filling wheelbarrows with it.

The lower banking has been strimmed and I have cut back the vegetation around the pond. Yesterday we had a visitor -

No wonder we have no frogs, toads and newts at the moment - or none I have seen. They might be hiding.

It is so good to have a little warmth and sunlight filtering through the trees.

So, having rabbited on about white and grey here is one of our glorious peonies.

WE HAVE HANKIES

 

Yes we have handkerchiefs on our Davidia. We were given it seventeen years ago by my brother and sister-in-law and it has finally flowered.

We watch the tv, visit gardens like Holker Hall and everywhere are thousands of tulips (at some expense) but it is beautiful. We have a few around, must get more for next year. So we potter - well I do, my main gardener R weeds away whilst I fail to light bonfires, put in some purple sprouting broccoli and cosmos, and write blogs. The other gardener A has mown and so on. He got out my mower for the first time after servicing and petrol poured from the filter - a stuck float or something. I await the mower man.

The white comfrey has spread and R has decided to experiment by cutting one plant back hard to see if it will regrow. Talking of regrowth the big osier that was damaged by the snow and was cut right back is sprouting like an unshaven chin.

To the woods, to the woods - that reminds me of an Abbott and Costello film - where the primrose banking and bluebells are in fine fettle. We do have some cowslips and violets too but the wild garlic will have to be watched as it is acting like an alien invasion force.

The red rhododendron is flowering though the yellow azalea is not yet out. The scented rhododendron is almost over, its petals fading and falling.

Here is the glorious sight of a dug and manured veg bed waiting for plants. The other bed alongside it has still got broccoli and for some reason Sweet Williams in it. Another bed waiting is suddenly showing potato leaves - I must have missed them last year when digging them up.

So where does it all come from? 

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.