Tuesday 27 February 2024

How’s this for a red sky in the morning?  I took it with the good camera (Nikon D5000 digital) at 07:08 on Friday and didn’t enhance it at all.  Was it a severe shepherds’ warning?  Not for us, it wasn’t: it was sunny and dry all weekend.

It’s daffodil time in my garden.  These spring bulbs are flowering in borders, pots, the woodland garden and, the ones rescued from being battered by the weather, in vases. There are plenty more in bud, so they should last a good long time.  The ones in the fence border by the river birch tree are the ordinary tall ones but the rest are dwarf varieties, which fare better in our windy weather: the pale, large-flowered Spring Dawn; tiny, sometimes twin-headed, Tête-à-tête and Jetfire with the orange trumpets.

The snowdrops are almost over but if you have a hankering for one last glimpse, my son forwarded a photo from the Cadwell Park facebook page for those with a love of gardens as well as motorbike racing!  Cadwell Park racing circuit is in Lincolnshire, my home county.

The purple plum tree, at the bottom of the garden, and the clematis armandii, that has draped itself around the hollies in the long border, are both in flower, pink and white, respectively.  The clematis seems to bloom twice a year in my garden.  The white-flowered periwinkle (vinca minor alba), in a hanging basket suspended from the cypress tree, is also covered in buds and blossoms.

When I went down the garden to photograph the daffodils, I was followed by a robin, hopping from fatsia to fence and keeping an eye on me.

A large potato, left in my veg basket, had sprouted so I cut the ends off to plant in a kitchen garden tub and the rest was chopped up and saved in water in the fridge to be cooked with one of my dinners in the week. I should be able to harvest a good crop later in the year.

While I drank my afternoon cup of tea in the fake conservatory on Saturday, I watched a playful grey squirrel in the courtyard, exploring the pots and eating bird seed.

This week I’ve been getting my daily half-hour sessions done again.  The fishpond surround has been tidied up, this year, before everything has burst into growth so I managed to get at the stinging nettles, stopping them from roving too far but leaving a clump for the butterflies behind the hydrangea which has also been pruned. 

From the drive (kitchen garden, which I tidied up last week), I pulled up lots of clumps of creeping campanula, which bears blue bell-shaped flowers and spreads all over the tarmac without any help from me. I’m hoping it will do its thing in its new position and hide the pond liner edges.  The blue-flowered, variegated periwinkle (vinca minor variegata) was supposed to do that but proved disappointing.  I keep forgetting that I’m not in charge of Nature!

Tuesday 20 February 2024

I could see the wild plum blossom in the school grounds from my bedroom window, yesterday (and that the wind had wrenched Lee’s flag from its pole), so I took my camera out to see if the tree in my own garden was in flower and it was.  The tiny white blooms look so lovely against a blue sky.  The viburnum tinus gwenllion in the long border is in flower, still, and now has glossy blue-black berries.  A crow landed in my next-door-but-one neighbour (on the other side of the garden)’s sycamore tree.

This week I tidied up the kitchen garden in four half-hour sessions, harvesting the Jerusalem artichokes to share with my daughter.  As usual; I replanted three of the tubers for next year.  The dead stems of the self-sown red valerian have been clipped back and the contents of the pots weeded or composted.  The rooted fennel seedling has been given its own larger pot and I found a lone spring onion in one of the troughs.  The rocket has been providing me with salad leaves all winter and is still going strong; the dead leaves of the strawberry plants have been removed and the pots topped up with compost.  Some bonus plants seed themselves in with the herbs and veg and I sometimes leave them in: forget-me-nots in the eau de cologne mint pot and feverfew and aquilegia in the parsley pot.  The first shoots of spearmint are already through, as are those of the sedum spectabile which, with the red valerian and potted buddleia attract the pollinators.

Dan D Lion has been marking out and digging his new courtyard garden.  He’s going for the jungle look and already has a trachycarpus fortunei and a fatsia, both very hardy but with a tropical look.  I have an arum italicum pictum for him, found in a pot when I began tidying up my own courtyard garden.

Watermark J discovered her bright pink camellia in flower in a pot of daffodils.  Hazel’s large red camellia bush, over the road, is covered in flowers and buds but my pale pink one is way behind with just a flush of colour on some of the buds.

I’m so glad to be out in the garden doing my daily thirty minute stints, keeping up the momentum as long as the weather allows and doing what I can, where I can: the lawn is still very squelchy. My aim is to have a beautiful garden to sit in when the weather gets warmer. It’s warm enough for gardening, anyway.

Tuesday 13 February 2024

Despite the cold, wet, windy weather and the forecast of snow – which we’ve so far avoided here – there seems to be a promise of spring with all the bulbs in the woodland swathe about to burst into flower: Spring Dawn daffodils, snowdrops and purple crocuses, and more pulmonaria flowers opening in the bouldery.  I’ve moved the pots of daffodils and tulips from where they’ve spent the winter, on the old barbecue wall at the bottom of the garden, to the patio steps. I’ve also changed the seasonal fakes on my kitchen window sill.  Gone are the grasses and lotus seed pod to make way for purple crocuses complete with golden stamens. The real bulbs and flowers were photographed on Saturday.

All gardens evolve.  We know this, but mine has evolved in an unexpected way and I am embracing the change.  I am wondering if the new school Portakabins will act as a shelter from the gales or will the wind rise over the top and be more turbulent on its way down into my garden?  Will the bottom of my garden be slightly warmer now?  I have lost my moongate view but the school will still have theirs so I’d better start tidying up to make it worth viewing!  I snapped the wonky photo (top right) from the attic window, unfortunately without checking my horizontals, as you can see.

When I went down the garden to snap the changes, yesterday, I found that the first Spring Dawn daffodil had been battered down by the wind before it had fully opened and was already being eaten by a small slug so I picked the next bud for the vase.  I shall enjoy that when it blossoms in the warmth of the living room.

I snapped the blackbird, at the courtyard feeding station, while I was having my lunch, last Tuesday, in the fake conservatory. I’m hoping to get out into the garden to do a bit of tidying this week. I’ve already netted out the leaves, duckweed and blanket weed from the ponds and seen all five goldfish: red, orange and the three shubunkins. It won’t be long before the frogs arrive to breed.

Tuesday 6 February 2024

On the last day of January we had a frosty start at the back of the house, and a ‘red sky in the morning’ at the front. I took these photographs at 7.30am. The following day I had an email from Hazel who can see anything that appears above my roof from her bungalow opposite: “So, alongside the sparrows and blue tits you have a giant crane???“

You may be forgiven for thinking she means one of those long-legged, ornithological cranes but they’re not native to Britain.  It was a giant, mechanical crane and it is the nearest thing to a giraffe that I’ll get in my garden, though it was in fact in the adjoining school grounds and part of the building programme, brought in to lift the Portakabin classrooms into position.  The crane certainly adds a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ to my view and I shan’t have to plant acacia trees!

On Saturday, it was sunny and quite mild for February and, since I’d seen aconites and crocuses on the grass verges as I walked back from the corner shop, I decided to check my garden for these harbingers of spring.

Sure enough, I found a shiny yellow aconite in flower in the long border and noticed plenty more heart-shaped leaves, promising further flowers.  In the front garden there was a lone Dorothy crocus: yellow with brown stripes marking the back of its petals. 

The winter-flowering honeysuckle, which has draped itself over the lilac stump at the bottom of the back garden, is full of tiny white flowers, but they are nothing like as fragrant as the Christmas box with its equally tiny blossoms. 

Any day now, the pulmonaria will be covered in blue and pink flowers: the merest hint of pink among its spotted leaves in the bouldery was all I could see and, in a tub by the garage, the stinking hellebore (helleborus foetidus) is covered in fat green flower buds. And it doesn’t stink!

The snowdrop tub, on the patio steps, is coming to life and behind it the echeverias have turned pink with the cold but will survive as long as they don’t get too wet. The blue pot behind that needs weeding; underneath are some Peruvian daffodils but it has no doubt been too cold for them so I must think of something else to plant.  Mysterious bulb shoots have appeared in the kitchen garden’s bay tub.  Did I plant them?  I can’t remember.  What are they?  I’ll have to wait until they flower.  Or are they spring onions?  Probably not.  I shall just have to be patient but in the meantime I shall scour last year’s garden diary for any mention.  In the potager border the rhubarb is sending out crinkly leaves from its pink crown.  I shall soon be back to my obsessive gardener mode – once the gales have died down!