WHAT A GREY DAY

 For sitting by the wood burner and toasting your feet. Under high pressure the weather does not change much. 

R is interested in getting in a garden company to do stuff - which as all I do is fall over and cut a little stuff back might be a good idea.

Still have some lingering photos a bit late but here they are and then I can archive them.

So, the stream (drain) from the field at the back is pouring water into the garden and the leaves from the trees are blocking channels causing overflow etc etc. I wonder how much an acre of paving or concrete would cost. Then it could just be lots off pots?

Just been to Winchester Cathedral and we think we have water problems. Here is the Gormley in the Crypt - flooded.

This is how it feels to walk our lower garden.

So we are now on winter time and all is going dark. We have Bonfire night ahead and this endless US election. Floods in Spain and drones bombing all over the place. There is enough misery in the world without Putin putting his boot in (rhyme). Why cannot everyone be nice to one another? 

So we have had another gale and sticks are everywhere, rooks sit in the tops of the leafless trees and caw loudly.

Oh! For spring.

Just had an email from my cousin in NZ where it is spring. Too old to move out there now. What I need is a lot of money, a private plane and a house in Nelson or on the Coromandel for the winter.

There is not a breath of wind here, it is overcast and chilly and damp. The pheasants seem happy though. Video is a bit gloomy.

Now the iCloud will not recognise my password - Aaaaargh!

A COLD COMING

 We have of it, more snow, then rain, then slush, etc etc.

So instead of the garden I go to the dentist having been attacked by a home made ginger biscuit. I need a crown. 😒

Up the back field the sheep are showing signs of the raddle bag but it is cold.

And on the Mill Dam above the old Spade Forge there are a pair of Mute Swans - down on the town canal they have been dying off avian flu.

By the next day after prolonged rain and a burst in temperature, well to 8C, the snow had all but gone. There is colour in the garden, a soggy orange peel fungus, mahonia coming into flower and the wonderful red stems of the Acer sango-kaku.

With all the rain and melting snow the stream is in fine fettle tumbling down from the trees.

So come Thursday and a night of heavy rain finally gives way to drier weather (for a moment). Long enough for us to get out in the garden, R tidying around the snowdrops whilst I shift manure onto the compost heap and compost onto flower beds.

I move the green bin the council give us for garden waste to a less prominent place - with all the other stuff, by the cold frame. I lift the lid on the garden box so the wasps will not nest in there this year. Of course I use the green bin for storing water as we recycle all our own garden waste.

The Euphorbia characias wulfenii sparkles with raindrops, the ivy, a weed everywhere, is now displaying its glorious fruit - the birds will be around to feast soon.

Not dark completely by five o'clock now, winter is easing into a new year.

Having rabbited on about a small stream, in our garden here is the Leven at Backbarrow in spate.

It is not quite at the flood it was when the hotel was washed out and the river came over the top of the bridge in 2009 and washed the parapet away. 

Now Saturday and we await a cold blast from the east - a bit of Putin chill from Siberia. Most of the flowerbeds are manured or composted and I have tidied the shrubs that were growing over the path to the pond. R was in the kitchen and looked out of the glass doors to find a squirrel sitting there, bold as brass, staring at her. It finally ambled off.

As I have mentioned Mr Putin I wonder how many hits I will get - it went silly last time - some algorithm doing a big search?

A cold coming it is as temperatures stuck at 1C. Actually it is a going - to the hospital for the follow up for my knee replacement 18 months ago - finally! They just rang yesterday and said can I go today, Sunday! So I said yes - anyway gets me out of a walk and shovelling well rotted horse manure or compost.

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.