Snowdrops have been centre stage for some time now and beautiful though they are, there are lots of other flowers now blooming away, doing their best to attract the bees that are brave enough to venture out in our winter weather. The main colour that is showing at the moment is still such a lot of white, but now with touches of yellow, blue, purple and pink.
What a difference a bit of sunshine makes – after a week of much milder weather, today the sun is shining, the snowdrops have now opened and are now showing the different markings on their inner petals. Spring is definitely in the air at the moment and the flowers in the shady half of the garden brighten up all the dark corners and make the most of the sunshine coming through the trees, before the leaves come and put them in the shade once more.
At last we have enough snowdrops flowering to be able to talk about them. The three special early ones by the front door that should have been out before Christmas, flowered just after New Year but didn’t enjoy the frosts that we have been having. These are a lot bigger than the wild snowdrop and in the frost the stems collapse onto the soil ( just like a hellebore ) until the weather warms up a bit, when they will stand tall once more. In the bad weather the best place to enjoy snowdrops is inside the house!
Did you know that snowdrops have a beautiful delicate perfume – I didn’t until I brought these inside. Should have waited to photograph them though, a couple of hours later they had opened right up and you could see all the different markings on the inner petals.
As soon as I got up this morning, I could feel that it was going to be a special day. When I got downstairs to do the breakfast, I was greeted by this wonderful sunrise –
Before moving here 20 yrs ago, I just looked after the garden of whichever house we were living in – not really interested – just keeping it tidy. It wasn’t until I was having to come down to Devon, house-hunting, that I saw the most wonderful gardens and discovered what gardening was all about. The first gardening book that I bought, thank goodness, was “The Green Tapestry ” by Beth Chatto, and the scales fell from my eyes.
At this time of year as we are waiting for the new wave of bulbs to appear and start their flowering bonanza, once more I am so thankful for all the evergreens (or golds etc ) that I have planted around the garden. Not only do they add structure and form to the garden, but they are the backbone to all the other planting, when they in their turn take centre stage.
The early risers were caught out this year with the abnormal weather that we had in November and December. They gaily rushed headlong into flower, as they usually do, just to be frozen solid and covered with about 10 inches of snow. We usually have quite a lot of flowers out for Christmas, but this year – nothing. The snowdrops are now up but even the ones that should be out before Christmas are thinking twice about flowering.
Is this the last of the snow, I do hope so. We had a lot more last night, on top of yesterday’s, which had frozen solid, and have had more this morning. The garden now just looks like a lot of amorphous blobs – outlines of different plants and leaf shapes are all blending into one rounded shape.
It seems that the words of the Christmas Carol ” In the bleak midwinter” are a bit too real for comfort.
To see the effects that fog and frost produce is truly magical –
I don’t think I have ever seen the garden look so pretty.
