Tuesday 27 December 2022

I have good garden intentions – but not yet!  Time to make a list: a way of staving off having to do anything while saving time and getting organized for when you do have the energy and inclination! 

This is where my birthday present from Lisa in 2011 comes in handy: a gardening notebook, recycled over and over again, it being too nice to throw away.  I merely tape another notebook between its pretty covers and off I go, once more, jotting down my plans.

Yesterday the sun blazed down out of a blue sky and we went into the garden, my camera and I.  Soon realized I’d been duped: it was perishing cold but I stayed outdoors long enough to get an idea of what needed to be done.  What needed to be listed in my note book, in other words.  The thing that strikes everyone at this time of year is how bedraggled everything looks.  The pots of pelargoniums that got left out on the patio steps look dismal especially next to the bright green fatsia in the courtyard border and the pot of echeverias in the corner.  First on the list: compost the pelargoniums. 

My son remarked on the hydrangea by the goldfish pond, saying it looked eerie, like something out of a sci-fi film!  But look at the cordyline foliage, just peeping into the photo.  Nothing wring with that.  The fence border is a tatty mess but beyond the dead tansy stems and dormant hardy fuchsia, the hanging basket of silvery foliage (snow-in-summer and dianthus Neon Star) looks just as good now as it did in summer, albeit not in flower at the moment.

The perkiest thing in the kitchen garden must be the purple sprouting broccoli but then you’d expect that of a winter crop.  Just about all the other vegetable containers only look fit for composting apart from the trough where a curry plant is looking spendidly silvery.  So is the one in the front garden.  The red hips belong to the rosa glacua and the green shoots to grape hyacinths: promise of better things to come next year.  As is the pot of tulip shoots at the bottom of the back garden. In the potager most of the herbs still look remarkably neat, not least the sage, growing next to the rosemary, also nice and green and looking fit for harvest and the red cordyline in the foreground.

On Christmas Day I harvested some sage to make sage and onion stuffing to go with my portion of roast chicken and vegetables. I was sure I’d had some in the freezer but I was wrong and I was determined to have some of my tasty home-made stuffing. Here’s my recipe:

Sage & Onion Stuffing

For two portions, heat half a tablespoonful of oil and a tablespoonful of butter in a wok, cook half an onion (chopped), until soft.  Switch off the heat and stir in 50g fresh bread crumbs (I use an old coffee grinder to mince the end piece of a loaf of sliced bread), seasoned with salt, pepper and half a tablespoon of chopped, fresh sage.  Press the mixture into two ramekins: one for the freezer and one to bake in the oven for half an hour at 200^oC while you’re roasting the chicken and vegetables. Delicious!

But I digress. Back to the garden and my note-booking!

It’s worth noting which plants still look good and then you have the bone structure of a garden that looks beautiful in winter and makes you want to venture forth.  Examples in my garden include the fatsia and trachycarpus fortunei, both pictured at the start of this blog; spotted laurel (aucuba japonica); Christmas box, festooned with red berries, turning black; the leaves of the arum italicum pictum at various spots in the garden where it has self-seeded; the potted bay in the arms of the olive tree, both looking lush in the courtyard; the trunk of the river birch, especially when the sun shines on it; viburnum tinus Gwenllian, a bit shaggy because I failed to keep it clipped into a neat lollipop shape, but now covered in flower buds and a yucca, looking fresh as a daisy, surprisingly. I moved it to a spot in the woodland garden where its spiky leaf tips wouldn’t stab anyone.

Tuesday 20 December 2022

Yesterday, thank goodness, I saw that the big freeze was over for the time being.  The weather had turned blustery, the temperatures had soared from 3 to 12 degrees and all signs of snow and ice had disappeared.  I could brave the pavements once more and the goldfish were no longer in danger of suffocation.  It was a different story last Thursday, however, with more snow pictures on my camera.

This photo was taken from the landing window when I was caught by the colourful streak in the sky on my way down to breakfast. The second flower stem on my pelargonium had opened on the window sill and was providing a splash of scarlet against the snow.

The back garden was also coated with snow. Beyond the crimson-leaved jasmine on the patio steps, a robin is posing on the edge of the big, blue, ceramic pot. Here is a close-up.

Watermark J was very pleased with her dog rose (rosa canina) which arrived from the Woodland Trust on Wednesday. She thought they had packaged it up well and WhatsApped this photo, texting that she was waiting for a sunny day to plant it. Any time now I should think, as long as the ground is no longer frozen!

With the paths being so slippery, I have been stuck inside, only virtually venturing out with my zoom lens. The blackbirds are making the most of next door’s unharvested apples so the pathetic apple cores that I sling out after my lunch are mostly overlooked for now. The male blackbirds are wasting energy by shooing off rivals when there’s plenty for everyone! The robin continues to pose in case any Christmas card or calendar makers are in the vicinity.

Worried about frozen and burst pipes (far too late in the season, I know), I carefully trod in safe spots till I got to the outdoor tap with my bag of bubble wrap and string. The hose’s nozzle was firmly frozen into the water tank beneath but I managed to disengage the other end and tie on a bit of protection.

I snapped this male house sparrow through the fake conservatory window, once I was back indoors.

Tuesday 13 December 2022

On Thursday I awoke at six to our first scattering of snow.  I had to wait till it got light enough to take the photos.  These were taken just before eight.  My son texted me to say it was slippery underfoot and he advised me to stay in.  I needed no encouragement to go into hibernation mode!  Walking to the local supermarket through puddles & sleet, last Tuesday, was not pleasant.  Our street is so uneven that the dips fill with rain and it’s like negotiating a series of lagoons.  If it freezes it’ll be like an ice rink and I’ll be stuck in, I thought!

On Friday, I scrunched down the garden path through frosted autumn leaves to the compost bins with the kitchen waste bucket. I spotted a robin and a male chaffinch in next door’s tree. I hadn’t seen a chaffinch since January! By the time I got back down the path with my camera they’d flown away to be replaced by a dunnock.  On the other side of the garden, a pair of blue tits were pecking about in the river birch amongst its catkins and the robin had, meanwhile, made it’s way to the courtyard’s feeding station and was perched on the witch hazel.  I heard a chirrup and saw the house sparrow in David’s trachycarpus fortunei, nearby.  I got quite a few snaps before my battery went but I was cold by then and glad to go indoors, charge it up and replace it with the spare.  As I sat in the fake conservatory, a throw over my knees, while sipping my coffee and plying my knitting needles, the robin kept me entertained at the fat balls outside. 

I’ve taken in an assortment of bird food before the garage door gets frozen shut or snow banks up, stopping me from pulling it open.

On Saturday with temperatures down to zero I stayed in but on Sunday it was up to three degrees (cue for a song!) and I was able to walk to the post box with my letters & cards.  The pavements were glittery but not slippery.  Yesterday there was a fresh covering of frost in the back garden.  This photo was taken at 0845hrs.

I hope the big freeze doesn’t last too long: it’s playing havoc with my social life, such as it is!

Tuesday 6 December 2022

On Thursday, I had an email from Hazel-over-the-road: ‘I’ve spent the last half hour watching a tiny goldcrest on the big tree outside my bedroom window. It’s beautiful.  It’s even been balanced on the windowsill – peeping in at me.‘ 

It’s a rarity in my garden. I last saw one in April 2018, with only a handful of sightings from 1990 to 2016, then more during the next two years.  I took this photo in November 2017.  You can just see its golden crest. 

Here is the entry in my garden diary for the day I snapped it:

Thursday 30 November 2017

We woke to snow!  Hadn’t prepared: bougainvillea & pelargoniums still outside, outside tap not lagged and wellies still in garage.  Snapped a little bird at the feeding station only finding out it was a goldcrest when I downloaded the camera!  My first photo of a goldcrest and the first time I’d seen one at a feeder! 

You can see by the goldcrest photo and diary entry, that we had snow in November 2017.  Someone told me it was forecast for this week.  I must remember to bring in the rest of my pelargoniums.  I shall leave the American agave, which appears to have produced an offshoot, and the echeverias, planted in an urn by the front door.  They stay out all year, sheltered from the rain by the roof over the door step.  These plants don’t mind the cold as long as they’re not sodden.

I caught Alan Titchmarsh’s gardening tip on Classic FM.  He always does one on Saturdays at about 8.45am but I often miss it and it’s usually a tip I’ve heard before.  Not this Saturday, however, in which he advised cutting all the old hellebore foliage back because it made a shelter for the mice which nibbled at the flower buds.  I used to cut it back in spring when the new foliage began to come through but I went into the woodland garden with my secateurs.  Alan’s hellebores must be much beefier than mine which would have had trouble hiding the skinniest of mice, besides which, although I have wood mice in the garden I haven’t noticed my hellebore flowers being nibbled.  I left them to be chopped back in spring. It was perishing cold, in any case, so I was glad to get back inside after taking some photos.

The kaffir lilies are still going strong and I picked three with some rudbeckia seed heads to make a posy vase for the dining table on Friday.  I was very disappointed by the nasturtiums this year. They usually seed around, providing me with a cheery, late summer display as well as leaves and flowers for my salads, but this year I had only one puny plant, very late in the year, at the side of the potager. Its one flower bud shrivelled in the cold before I could snap it. Periwinkles send out flowers at odd times throughout the year and there is currently a white one in the basket hanging from the cypress tree.  In the front garden, the fiery leaves of spiraea Goldflame look particularly colourful against the plain green foliage of the phygelius.  The tree fern (dicksonia antarctica), planted in the fence border, has developed quite a trunk, considering how small the plant was when I bought it in July 2016. The colourful little leaves in the foreground belong to an azalea which has flowers of shocking pink in May.

Despite the cold, the goldfish are still swimming about, faithfully guarded by the fake heron and my recycled mini greenhouse shelving!