WHEN IS A

 Garden not a garden, when it is a quagmire. 

Big decisions made. We can no longer manage all this two acre garden so - not really rewilding areas but just letting it go (unless, when it is done, we change our minds.)

And we are not the only thing that is getting older, the shrubs threaten to be trees, and perennials insist on spreading, need dividing etc, bulbs get congested - snowdrops on the surface.

I must cut back the buddleia outside the kitchen window early again to let in more of the weak wintry light.

There are cries of too hot for October in the south east, it is 40C in Spain and here it is warm too but only 16C and RAINING. I have suggestion for the government - a sun tax for the south and a rain rebate on tax for the rainy areas - sort of levelling up?

Dug up some potatoes I had forgotten. They had sprouted in the kitchen cupboard and been shoved in an empty corner of the veg beds. 

Sunday brings a drier morning and a huge wedge of geese flying north, so evocative. I cut back the buddleia and light floods into the kitchen. Wasps are about but not as many as ladybirds. The latter are seeking somewhere to overwinter.

There are also butterflies on the fruit, here a comma and a red admiral.

And suddenly it is Saturday again and colder, only 10C, but sunny (when it is not pouring down).

We still have flowers in the garden, the michaelmas daisies falling over the paving.

Then there are marigolds, okay, calendulas outside the kitchen.

R has been away at a school reunion (Glad Hearts Adventuring) so I have been doing odds and so on. Potted up the Sarah Raven tulips and alliums, bought some yellow crocus which have been put near the kitchen window and replaced the battery in the oil tank sensor.

Suddenly there is sun and went up to the wood despairing at the long wet grass. The contrast between the leaves on the magnolia and the old ash was great and branches of that ash hang down over the woodland path. Pray the dieback stays away.

The beans are done, the sweet peas dead, but lichen can light up a dull corner. 

Then I come upon this and smile.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE

A mow makes. Finally got mowers back from service and have lightly scalped the grass.

Gardener came and has built two new compost bins by the far wall. In time, when the old bins are empty they will be removed and then will have to decide if that area just reverts to grass or . . . ? 

R has been dividing and replanting snowdrops. I trimmed back the miscanthus a bit more and finally managed to get the bonfire to burn - ash on the blackcurrants next to the emerging chives.

Before the mowers returned I tidied the shed, just in time. Then a seedling order from Sarah Raven arrived - sweet peas (yes, I will not give up), ammi and verbena bonariensis.

Would not want to be a frog as heron paying regular visits.

We went for coffee at friends and I took some white phlox and red alstroemeria. I did warn him the latter tends to spread.

We have had all weather - rain, wind, hail and even sunshine. Actually no snow yet - only on the fell tops.

Inside the extension the Canna lily is glorious. Outside the Madame Lefebvre tulips are the same but vulnerable to the wind. As I have said before they were one of my mother's favourite plants - what an amazing colour - a blast to the senses.

It was, I think, named after Louise-Rosalie Lefebvre (18 June 1755 – 22 September 1821), also known as Madame Dugazon, was a French operatic mezzo-soprano, actress and dancer.

         

We have several big trees in the garden, the largest is this sycamore - registered as a Notable Tree by the Woodland Trust.

Sometimes one digs up the past. I know someone who might recognise this tile.

The introduction of a nyger seed feeder has brought in a shower of glorious goldfinches but one snag of where the feeders are on the cherry tree is that the pheasants and squirrels trample the daffodils below. I leave you with one of the birds.

JANUARY

Why does it always seem to be 4 pm?

It is Saturday. We went for a walk and saw our first lesser celandine lighting up a hedge bottom. From my window I watch a procession of pheasants pass my window. First three plump hens, then one skinnier hen and finally a cock pheasant strutting his stuff, a bit Trump like. I am not sure if five is enough to declare I have seen a bouquet of pheasants but that is their collective noun.

A trip to the lower lawn reveals we have a disastrous problem with a large area bog. Somehow the drain we put in is not doing its job and the water is soaking into the turf, then gathering in the old, now filled in stream bed, and reemerging further down - where, in fact, I bogged down the lawn tractor.

Here and there a pearl of white signifies a snowdrop just emerging but not yet open. The year is almost stirring despite the cold and flurries of snow.

The garden is almost devoid of wildlife though a caught a pair of rabbits scooting up the bottom lawn this morning and mole hills have started to appear. Also there are other birds - a feather in a bush, I think a pigeon.

Then we have a sprinkling of overnight snow.

And now there is evidence of rabbits - tracks everywhere. And on the track to the house, tyre marks from the paper delivery, footprints and dog prints from a walker taking the bridleway.

 

And still we get spectacular sunrises.

And then we get up on Sunday and all the snow has gone. Still some ice on the pond but not a lot - that will please the moorhens. 

So what to do in the lockup, tidy the dead bits from the garden - the lemon balm is well dead. 

So I made some Covid blackcurrant jam with fruit from the freezer.

We walk the lanes, drink endless cups of tea - well, almost - I never seem to get past half a cup and throw the rest away.

Tuesday and a glorious day, morning light makes the garden glow. 

Then Wednesday and it RAINS. Sam the gardener comes clad in his waterproofs. Shifts some manure and cuts back all the dead vegetation between the house and the garden. Now we can see a long way. A bit early to do some of the buddleias but what the . . . 

R shoots out to the supermarket. I make marmalade. Well something to do on the lock up. I have also ordered some plants from Sarah Raven as I had a £10 voucher - and ended up spending much more - on cosmos, verbena, ammi and sweet peas.

I have just read a marvellous book by Leokadia Majewicz about her terrible time as a Pole exiled by Stalin to Russia as slave labour when a girl. Then I realised she was the elder sister of an old friend and artist George Kosinski who now lives in America. It is a small world sometimes. 

Finding reading matter with libraries closed is hard. Accessed Jo Nesbo's Knife via Borrow Box, a library on-line site, but could not read it as it was so depressing and we need something to cheer us up.

And just as I am about be really glum P send photos of our grandchildren in Oxford and I see snowdrops flowering on the upper banking. 

And now I notice the stream disappearing into its bed near the compost heaps. I think it is draining into the soakaway for the septic tank, well I hope it is, but it could just be running underground to emerge somewhere else, like where the ground has become a quagmire? Water has a way of insinuating itself into unwanted corners, leaking in unwanted places and generally just being a nuisance. Mind you I say that in a place where we usually have no shortage of the stuff. I might feel differently if I lived in a desert.

Waiting for a vaccination.

IT IS WINTER

I think.

It is Friday, I am on a fibre free diet as I am due to have a long pipe with an eye on the end stuffed up a rather personal orifice next week - Covid test tomorrow.

So, walked the garden - I have never known it so wet in the lower lawn, the grass is dying due to the water logging despite there being drains there. Near the end I went along below the hedge at the back of the house and, I do not believe it, something shiny caught my eye. It was the BMW car key I lost in the spring and spent days searching for! Not much use now as I have changed my car - for one of the BMWs with the dodgy battery so my hybrid is running on petrol at the moment.

Rain comes and goes, if there is sun sometimes a rainbow.

The veg garden still has broccoli and winter spinach, pots outside are flowering.

R has been making apple chutney and filling the kitchen with the smell of vinegar.

And just when we have had more than enough of viruses and lockdowns and so on the sun comes out, just for a moment. Backlit euphorbias and the liquidambar, still not in full autumn colour, a calendula and the erigeron come to life.

The garden shines (probably all the water everywhere).

And down in the pond, where we want water, the moorhen swims.

Since the rat invasion I have been banned from having bird feeders outside the kitchen - someone in the house does not like the outside rodents. 

So I am limited in my ability to take photos of our avian life. any way here is a pied wagtail on our roof.  We have the grey version in the garden as well. 

Some of the paths need more chippings and the grass grows where I do not want it to, does not grow where it needs to.

In the lockdown in the spring the weather was glorious and we were in drought, now it is dark, damp and cold - more difficult to deal with.

One good thing is that I complained to Sarah Raven about my non-germinating sweet peas and I have had an email to sat another packet is on the way. So I shall try again beginning with a piece of damp kitchen paper - fingers crossed.

I am stuck at home as in isolation till the investigation tomorrow post covid test. The garden seems full of rabbits and there is a mallard drake on the pond.

Enough - cup of black coffee or water.