This year St. Patrick is just a week late, last year he was a whole month late, presumably because of the ice and snow that we had last March. St. Patrick has only just started to open, but better late than never. With a sudden drop in the temperature over the last few days, flowers seem to be on hold for the moment, as if they don’t want to open any further, just in case.
St Patrick has arrived!
The beautiful warm sunshine that we have enjoyed for about two weeks has unfortunately gone, the wind has turned from the warm south and is now coming from the icy north! The warm spell has meant that new growth has been popping up everywhere, I hope that it doesn’t regret it when temperatures drop to near freezing at night. I keep reminding myself that at this time last year we had snow and freezing temperatures, so we haven’t done too badly this month with the warm spell that brought an end to all the awful rain which lasted for months. At last, our garden is drying out and at we have been able to cut the grass and clear away all the dead foliage from last year, what a difference just doing that has made!
Newly emerged foliage of Meconopsis Lingholm, so hairy you could stroke it.
For over a week now we have had lovely warm sunshine, it has been wonderful working in the garden without a coat and feeling the sun on my back once more. Bit by bit, all the tidying jobs that we weren’t able to do because of the non stop rain over the winter, are now getting done. I think I can say that half the garden is looking nice and tidy. If the lovely weather continues, then maybe in another week I will have a tidy garden once more! The sunshine has made such a difference to the flowers, lots are now flowering, but most of the snowdrops are now over, they don’t like the hot sun! I will start with G.Baxendales Late, the only one that is still looking bright and perky.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that one of our next door neighbour’s oak trees had split during one of our gales, and was now needing attention from a tree surgeon. The first tree surgeon he contacted wanted to charge him £3,000, eventually he found one who would charge£800, a bit of a difference!
Here you can see the oak in the centre, with the branch on the right that has split away.
In the two weeks since it split, while waiting for the tree surgeon, it has split even further. It’s just as well that the split is on the garden side because just over the hedge to the left is the road that runs through the village.
While working on the tree, the surgeons decided that the whole tree had to come down as they felt that the tree had been weakened, having so much of its trunk removed. This shows the scar left the first day after the right hand fork had been taken out.
They all came back the next day and first of all set up traffic control as they were cutting over the road. Next, the electricity was cut off as the wires run through the branches of the trees. Can you see the young man in the centre of the photo, the way they swing around in the tree tops with their chainsaw is amazing.
More of the crown of the tree has now gone, it was sent whizzing down to a chipping machine in the road below. One more branch on the left is still to be cut down. All this activity was making the squirrels who live in these trees very anxious. We normally only see them jumping from tree to tree in the winter when the leaves have fallen, they weren’t at all happy.
Just the trunk remaining now.
All gone. It took about 150/200 years to grow, all gone in 6 hours. Very sad.
I think the time has come for us to start replacing the trees that have to come down. The squirrels are always burying acorns and conkers in our garden, so as our neighbour also lost one of his chestnut trees last year, I think I will have to pot up any that shoot up in the garden and take them round to him to keep his bit of woodland going.
Everywhere I look at the moment, the eye is taken by all the hellebores that are flowering, from white through to plum coloured ones. Most of the snowdrops are starting to “go over” and the hellebores are shouting “look at me” and vying with the narcissus that are also starting to flower. These first hellebores are all growing along the driveway in the front.
The last of my snowdrops has just started to flower and will continue for another month. The original ones that started in the New Year are now over but plenty are still flowering. The late ones which have been flowering for a couple of weeks now start with Galanthus Wareham. A silver stripe is prominent down the centre of the pleated leaves.
There is quite a difference in the woodland since the end of January. Most of the snowdrops are up and flowering, some have even have finished and I am waiting for just one clump to open up to the sunshine. Thank goodness the awful storms have finished for now, no more branches coming down and now there is some heat in the sun which is shining on and off most days, between the showers! Last month when I took the photographs I forgot to include the borders in the back garden that are either side of the archway into the woodland, the planting in the borders is similar to the woodland. This first one is the border to the left of the arch.
We have just had Foliage Day where we can appreciate all the different colours and textures of the leaves in our gardens. But there is more, now is the time to look up and see the beauty that is around us in the tree trunks and stems in our gardens. Some of mine have been planted purely and simply because of their colour, so that we will have colour in the garden through the dull grey winter days, one was discovered a lot later when it grew and developed adult bark on its trunk. The most obvious grouping that we have is up the drive where we have our various silver birches and Cornus alba sibirica Westonbirt.
As soon as I started looking round the garden to see what sort of foliage I could photograph, it was obvious from all the new shoots that there were, that most, but not all the photos would be of the new foliage that was bursting forth in the garden. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because we have had a very mild winter so far with only a couple of little frosts, I just hope that we don’t get some arctic weather in March that will then burn all the new shoots. I’m starting with some fennel shoots just outside the back door.
This is a seedling of the parent plant, the parent seems to have died, can’t see any shoots anywhere near where it used to be.
At the moment the weather can’t make up its mind what it should do, one minute it is beautifully sunny, the next, raining again. During a spell of sunshine lately I managed to nip to the woodland to see if the Tommies were open in the sunshine, the Tommies I’m referring to are of course Crocus tommasinianus, a species crocus which is thinner and smaller than the Dutch Crocus and goes beautifully with all the snowdrops.
