No, not me, I’m still safely tucked up at home, I mean my first narcissus, Rijnveld’s Early Sensation which has always been out by Christmas Day in previous years. This time though it was still in tight bud by the end of the year and has only just opened now. It is strange that it is late when most of the special snowdrops are early.
Looking very cheerful in the woodland at the moment, N. Rijnveld’s Early Sensation.
Cards and presents are written , wrapped and posted so once more I can concentrate on the garden and my wander round this morning showed me a very wet and soggy garden, but with lots of little snowdrop snouts and noses peeping up above all the leaves that still need clearing away. Usually I clear away the leaves in the garden first and then tackle the leaves in the woodland after New Year, but this year everything seems to be starting earlier than usual, so I will have to be very careful when working in the woodland.
G. Faringdon Double was my first snowdrop to appear at the end of November, I have deliberately not bought any snowdrops that are supposed to flower in the autumn as I feel they really belong in the winter, but this one seems determined to get earlier and earlier each year!
As we are almost coming to the end of our second lockdown, I have had plenty of time to wander round the garden looking for new blooms. There are plenty of late summer flowers still hanging on, but now the winter flowers are starting to show nice and early. Looking back at last years posts it seems that last year everything was a bit late, this year we are back on track with the previous years flowers. The first flowers to make me go and fetch my camera were snowdrops in the woodland!
Galanthus Faringdon Double always seems to be my first snowdrop to emerge so is very precious for that reason.
On one hand the colourful leaves are telling me that the gardening year is almost at an end, they are falling each day and soon the trees will be bare, ready for winter. On the other hand, some plants wait until now to wake up and produce their flowers, they must like the shorter days and colder temperatures, even frost.
The tall nameless Acer coloured up nicely before the leaves started to fall. I think about half the leaves have fallen now, still more to go though.
During this last week the colours in the garden and the surrounding countryside have changed considerably, the green is gradually fading away and changing to yellow, orange and red. Also the leaves have started falling with a vengeance which means leaf raking every few days, never mind, its supposed to be good for the waistline! The sun is lower in the sky which brings a different light to the garden, illuminating areas that are usually in deep shade, I love this time of year, everywhere looks so different.
One of the first plants to change colour is my little Acer palmatum atropurpureum dissectum which is in a pot in the back garden. It has been a dark purple all summer and now is such a bright pink/red.
I thought I would update you on the Calor Gas saga now that I have a shiny new gas tank at the side of the house. I received a letter from Calor Gas telling me that they were coming last Friday with a new tank for me, also telling me that I didn’t have to be there, they could install it without me. I was ready for them at 8am and I waited and waited, eventually gave up and made my lunch at 12.45pm, when I went back into the kitchen at 1.45pm, (my kitchen is at the front,) having watched the news while I was eating my lunch, this is what I saw on the drive.
The hugge lorry/crane was parked right by the house, my old tank had already been lifted out, mine is on the far side, and the man was in the middle of installing the new tank in exactly the same place as the old one, so all that fuss about nothing!
There is a definite autumnal feel to the garden now, the days are shorter, the sun lower in the sky and it is certainly a lot colder this week than last. This howerver doesn’t stop all the flowers from flowering, some in fact have just been triggered into flowering mode, just when I thought everything had finished for this year.
I thought my variegated yucca had decided not to flower this year, when all of a sudden, I noticed a few days ago, that it had started putting up a flower spike. I hope it manages to flower before the frost really gets going.
Having had days of very heavy rain and storm force winds means that I now have time to catch up with my blog as gardening can’t be done at the moment. Gales last night brought a large branch down from one of my ash trees, but more of that later. I will start by going back to the removal of the Leylandii hedge which then sat on the drive for a couple of weeks until friend Simon had time to come and remove it.
I hadn’t realised that he was coming in the farm tractor!! I’m amazed there was enough room for him to come up our little single track road and he must only have had a couple of inches to spare getting through the gateway!
Without a doubt, the star of the garden at the moment are my Colchicums. What started off as 3 bulbs increased over the years and was eventually divided into two clumps. The original clump stayed more or less as it was, but the few that had been moved have been very busy underground increasing nicely. They have increased so much that I think I could move some to a couple more places.
This is my original clump and is always the first to flower.
Back in January, long before lockdown started, I found a man in my garden from Calor Gas who provide our heating from a large tank at the side of our house. A huge tanker comes every 8 weeks and tops it up so that we never run out. The tank has been hidden behind a 7ft Leylandii hedge for over 30 yrs and it seemed as though everyone was happy.
How wromg could I be!
The Leylandii hedge can be seen at the back left, this has now been cut to the ground and the beech hedge has been cut down by half.
