I’ve had this “amaryllis” since my first Christmas here, so it’s its seventh year. I was worried that it might decide not to blossom, as it put a lot of energy into making a baby (offset) bulb, which I took off and potted on last summer. However, two flower spikes are coming.
Rain all day, which has not been good for me. Increasing arthritis in my fingers means that I’m prone to dropping things, and I’ve been fairly immobile with back problems as well.
The rain finally cleared at teatime, leaving a brief but rather spectacular winter sunset.
The garden rarely sees much of me between the end of November and mid-March, bar a quick sortie to pick veg or put peelings in the compost bin. But this morning I noticed that the daffodils have started to come up, both in the front bed and in the pot outside the French window. A quick investigate shows no signs of the ones further up the garden yet.
It’s a few days yet until the Solstice, but this start of new season’s growth is in a rather real sense the turning of the year for me.
My bare-root patio peach tree (peach pygmy “Bonanza”) arrived this morning – whoopee! I didn’t want to leave it indoors, for fear of it thinking spring had come, so have planted it outside straight into the half-barrel it will live in. I’m a little worried, but outside temperature is around 5C, and I’ve coddled the base of the trunk and over the roots with a wodge of fleece … fingers crossed!
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The first-ever flower on my winter jasmine! It’s from a self-rooted bit I took from my Mum’s about 18 months ago, so is still a youngster. Still, it’s a cheerful sight when I look out of the French windows.
Somewhat battered, and the leaves are turning colour and falling off, but the Etoile de Hollande is still producing flowers for the coffee table.
It’s much the latest I’ve managed to have real flowers, as opposed to dried ones, since I moved to Worcester (nine years ago tomorrow), though the magnificent rose I had in the front garden when I lived in Tottenham occasionally produced buds as late as Christmas Day.
The first flowers are opening on the winter-flowering clematis, I’m pleased to see. It’s about when I’d normally expect them … last year they didn’t appear until mid-December!
