In spite of a sharp frost the other night, the flowers in the garden are looking surprisingly good. The temperature had been at 0 degrees C most of yesterday morning and had then risen to plus 2 once the clouds covered the sky. All over the garden, primroses are starting to pop up.
Galanthus Faringdon Double, has decided to open up at last. Usually it is open by Christmas, but not this time, I think it is in too shady a spot as the Euonymous next to it is overshadowing it. Once the flowers are finished it will be moved as I don’t want to cut the Euonymous back, it has taken years to reach the size I want it.
What is a gardener to do when the wind is howling and the rain lashing against the windows, and this is how it has been for days now, it seems like weeks. I decided to play around on my lap top. In the past I have been asking various people for advice on how to make a collage of my photos and have got different answers each time, usually saying that I will have to buy some software. Eventually I asked Google and they came up with a website which looked as though I could understand it and it was free! I got a bit stuck in the middle of the instructions, but a quick e.mail to my son soon sorted that out. What you now see is the result of my playing around with shapes.
Snowdrops and Crocus flowering last February.
At last I feel human once more, having been fighting a virus for 3 weeks,which once more started the muscle problems that I have. I have only just ventured forth into the garden today to see what is happening with all my plants and I found my first snowdrop! Everywhere looks very wet indeed and the woodland is littered with twigs and branches that have come down in the storms recently, thankfully though, no more trees damaged this time. I’ve had plenty of time to look through the years photos, it was very difficult to decide which to put in and which to leave out, I’ve tried to make it as short as possible, but make yourself a coffee you might be here for a while! To start with, last January, I’d forgotten that we had a few spells of snow, but nothing serious,
just enough to make us feel that winter had arrived at last.
I wasn’t expecting to find many flowers at all this month, but once you start looking, it’s amazing how many you find. The weather has been quite mild for December so that is why any flowers that have ventured forth, haven’t been bitten by any frost. The first one is right outside the back door and will keep flowering on and off all winter as long as the temperature stays above zero, it is a quince or Chaenomeles.
There are just a few flowers out at the moment, but the branches are covered with hundreds of buds, if the weather stays mild, it should be beautiful by Christmas!
I reckon we are about 3/4 of the way through sweeping up all our leaves, when I look up into the canopy, I can see so many more leaves that are just waiting to drop into the garden. Please don’t misunderstand me, I love my trees a lot, I think they were the real reason why we bought this house. I love their age, their huge trunks, the patterns they make against the sky, watching the squirrels dashing about , leaping from branch to branch, listening to the owls that call in the night while sitting in the branches, and being able to grow clematis and roses up them so that the trees look as if they are flowering in the summer with a waterfall of colour.
Here we have the two oaks that shed their leaves onto the back lawn, the one on the left is ours and the one on the right belongs to our neighbour. These leaves are just waiting to drop.
When you come upon something in the garden, completely unexpected, are you like me, standing looking at it with a soppy grin on your face? When I put the car away in the garage this morning and started walking up the drive, I was greeted by this beautiful flower, Iris unguicularis.
So beautiful, so pristine and so unexpected in December. It is usually after Christmas when they flower here, so I wasn’t expecting to see it so soon.
I counted 5 more buds, so there should be flowers for a while now.
Something has had a bit of a nibble at this flower, even so it is still beautiful, speckled with raindrops. I think this variety is Walter Butt, I have another clump of Iris unguicularis in the back garden which is darker when it flowers and is the species, so off I went, but not a bud to be seen. Never mind, the ones in the front made me smile when I saw them, what has made you smile today?
In my previous post I mentioned that I must take some hardwood cuttings from the field maples, Acer campestre, which are in the garden, so that I can make a hedge, which hopefully can eventually be planted at the left hand edge of the woodland.
This tree has branches sweeping down to the ground so I thought it could do with a bit of pruning anyway. The books say, look for branches that are the same thickness of a pencil, ok, I found a few here so started snipping.
In just a couple of minutes I had 10 shoots that were approximately the right thickness, although some of my twigs were thicker than others. The lower side shoots were cut off ready for planting.
I decided to sacrifice just part of one of my raised beds in the veggie garden, dug a trench, in fact I needed 2, and put silver sand at the bottom to aid drainage.
There we are, 10 hardwood cuttings, my mini hedge just waiting now to be a proper hedge. That’s all I can do, now it is up to nature to do the rest! I should be able to tell you next year if they are successful or not. All it took was 15 minutes of my time and this hedge didn’t cost a penny!
The sun is shining today and the garden sparkles with colour. I always used to think that November was a wet, dull , cold month, but this year I have had to change my opinion. We normally have a lot of rain in November, but not this month, we have had a few frosts, but nothing serious, just enough to make the leaves look more interesting.
The colours in the garden this week have been absolutely amazing. I took my drive round the neighbouring village a week too soon, if I had waited they would have been far more intense, must remember for next year. For foliage day this month, I will have to come clean and admit that some of my photos – mainly of the Cornus sibirica Westonbirt – were taken 2 weeks ago, before they all blew away! They weren’t ready last month, the colour hadn’t changed, and I knew I had to photograph them before they dropped so that I would have a record.
The view from the landing window of the front drive. Cornus are showing their beautiful beetroot coloured leaves.
