THE CATKINS ARE COMING

Yo-ho, yo-ho. 

I have been rumbled, so R says. I love gardens and plants and design but not gardening! She said this as she tidied the biggest flower bed though I had been weeding, well hoeing, the asparagus bed. 

All is not helped by an attack of vertigo, bad back and general desire to be asleep rather than  digging and shifting compost.

R is disappointed that the fallen tree up the garden has partial hidden the sweep of snowdrops into the wood.

And we have our first catkins on the hazel despite the attempts to eat the shrubs by the roe deer.

We are plagued by tiny gnats that have come from the compost of some of the house plants. Have put gravel on the top of the compost and sticky yellow cards above. Still plagued despite catching hundreds.

We bought a hellebore at a garden centre in Shropshire a while back - a lovely white one - here it is! A bit disappointing though lovely in its own right. Elsewhere we have kale and the rhubarb is starting to come into leaf.

There are other signs of spring - birds calling, buzzards circling, the heron searching for emergent frogs - but no lambs in the back field yet.

Elsewhere quince and viburnums flower - yes I know I included a pic of Viburnum bodnantense Dawn in the last blog but it looks so good. Actually only wrote the last sentence after I realised I had - not the same photo but very like it.

I am not allowed down the garden at the moment if R is out in case I topple over. Mind you a cup of tea and a nap is more the thing.

Must do my exercises for the vertigo but now have a bad back - excuses, excuses.

So I nipped out to get a rose or roses for St Valentine's Day from the garden centre - 'Sorry, we don't have any." So had to be a deep purple cyclamen. 

Jemima and friend are back on the pond. As the lower banking is not cut I wonder if she will nest in there again?

Went out today, R to tidy the back bed, me to tidy the compost heaps and try to light the bonfire - far too wet of course. And then it started raining.

Time for a cup of tea, the crossword and some rest.

GALANTHING INTO FEBRUARY

 And it's getting brighter, I think.

And I have been in the garden cutting back Cardoons and Elephant Grass.

Now, I have raised a discussion as to whether chaffinches and brambling cross breed. We had this on the trail camera -

Now it is probably a juvenile chaffinch but I can across photos of birds like this one - with a stripe on the head - and someone suggested it might be a chaffling. I mean, probably not but . . ?

Back to the dark messy garden, twigs fallen all over the place, and a gardener hoping for drier weather like this - sun through the ash branches but must cut back that ivy.

Some chance.

Anyway the garden is lit by swathes of snowdrops and promise of spring.

Some of the house plants do not look happy. I am sure I have not overwatered, if at all but the droopy aeonium has been repotted.

We went to Potato Day in Greenodd but they had no asparagus for us to use to replace lost crowns. There seemed to be plenty of seed potatoes and much else. Rosey bought a honey berry having seen it on TV.

When the world is deep into winter and monochrome there are still things to see, if a bit abstract -

Wood, dead or living takes on interesting shapes here enhanced by using monochrome photography.

It is Sunday, a frost last night and the sun is shining. A robin calls from the big cherry and I can hear the church bells a mile and a half away in Ulverston ringing in the crisp air.

And the garden? - Snowdrops, snowdrops, snowdrops.

But there is other colour 

and there is scent from the viburnum and the sarcococcus by the back door.

BIT PARKY THIS WEEK

 Which of course means stay off most of the garden. Only ended up on my backside once today and that was on ice by the bottom gate.

It does mean great sunrises - 

But in the garden there is lying frozen hail. I was woken the other morning at 1 am with it thundering on the roof.

The cold has flattened the octopus geranium and its tentacles are lying on the ground. However the four pots of Madame LeFebre tulips, here are two, are showing signs of life.

Elsewhere we have snowdrops though some are half hidden in them wood where the tree came down.

There is colour, in the undersides of the magnolia leaves and in the swelling flowering currant buds.

Yet it is when the sun comes out, not often enough, that the garden lights up.

And at last it is noticeable that the nights are lightening up, well, the late afternoons.

It says in the paper that Torvill and Dean are to skate again so our heron might need a lesson or two.

But nothing lasts and the tide has brought in fog.

Finally my phone is dead, bought by my son in Mumbai many years ago for about a fiver. Got an iPhone and spent half a day setting it up after half a day trying to get my PAC number from my provider - well I could not ring them on my phone could I.

JANUARY

 January, Sick and tired, you've been hanging on me etc.

By Pilot of course but could easily have been Wet Wet Wet!

But a sliver of hope in the slightly lighter evenings and we now have a few scattered snowdrop flowers.

Back to water - everywhere - and it is going to be cold so frozen water everywhere.

Rain.

And then when all is washed away the sun comes out and the moorhen is back on the pond.

Admittedly a bit of a weak sun but when we go out the back door (the one at the side) the sarcococcus fills the air with perfume. And I have noticed it has self sown so plants for free.

There, not a lot really in the garden - you have to look for leaves and shape etc.

Good old curly kale and euphorbias to delight the old grey senses.

 

I have been neglecting the feeders somewhat - run out of niger seed for the goldfinches bit the tits still come for the sunflower seed. One trouble is that wherever I put the feeders the pheasants come calling and trample the vegetation underneath until all we have is bare soil.

So we started with Pilot - here is a cold afternoon photo of a pylon. Not quite as attractive as a tree, just different. They are a blot on the landscape and I still do not see why they could not be run underground  like the electricity cable to our house.

The hours creep on apace - was I really in HMS Pinafore?

WAITING FOR THE SUN

It is good when I receive a communication from the other side of the world, albeit asking for some of our rain. Well William, if I could find a carrier I would send it to you.

Here is the new spring in the lawn and the path below. The old hydrangea heads must have blown over from the compost heap. We have springs because we are a conjunction of two geological strata and the water runs between them.

I was walking around the garden and the hole in the woodland left by the fallen tree from a year ago is plain to see. And that is not the only holes we have - mole holes which also act as a conduit to water.

Occasionally the sun shines - lights up miscanthus heads, leaves still on the apple and the small black berries on the privet.

Elsewhere, apart from early showings from snowdrops and daffodils, the day lilies are sprouting and we even have first signs of rhubarb - forcing pot on.

At least the air must be clean here, probably because a lot of it is off the sea.

This means then lichens thrive as here on an old bit of pear tree (is that canker?) I hope not - must keep and eye on it and prune and burn if it is.

 It is Sunday and it poured this morning but has  settled now to showery. I have been out with the blower blowing away soggy leaves from the big sycamore.

R bought a bag of tulip Queen of the Night and I have put them in the pot J and D gave us for Christmas.

The heron has been eating our frogs again.

Then the sun comes out at dusk, rainbows and a magenta sky, and lights up the Acer Sango-kaku.

On an non garden note have been thinking of Scottish holidays (which has always included garden visits - Inverewe, Arduaine, Achamore House, Logan etc.) and here are a couple of old non garden photos - 

Suliven from above Kerkaig Falls and, below, The Summer Isles from Fox Point, one of R's favourites.

Suliven is a bit of a big cobble and I am glad I do not have to strim its slopes - could be worse, could be Stac Pollaidh.

One day will get back to Assynt and Coigach but not this year.

It is 3.35 pm as I type and already getting dark - cup of tea time.