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!
Granny Grubbypaws' Garden 