I noticed this morning that the Glastonbury Thorn is showing signs of buds opening. I’m not sure if it’s being late for Christmas, or very early for Easter!
Category: Garden
snowflake
Classic snowdrops (galanthus species) don’t survive in my garden, for some reason. However, the similar (but very much larger) snowflakes (leucojum) do OK. The first one is tentatively starting to flower.
tree re-potting
Decorations were of course taken off before Twelfth Night, but I didn’t want to put the tree straight outside into the very cold weather we’ve been having after its annual sojourn indoors! But the weather has changed today, so time to move and re-pot it.
It has just done its third Christmas here. Being a slow-growing “Picea Glauca Conica” I hope to keep it going for at least another couple (and, although not exactly a “typical” Christmas tree shape, it has negligible needle drop, which is a welcome thing).
still very cold
Winter-flowering clematis flourishing the in continuing cold.
forsythia
The first flowers are opening on the forsythia that (as is my personal tradition) I brought indoors on New Year’s Day.This morning, the calendar that each month has a photo of plants in my garden arrived, glossy with the promise of good things to come.
catch-up
I went over to Oak Cottage on 21st December for a pre-Christmas visit, the first time I’ve managed to go there for about nine years. I really couldn’t face travelling via London, partly because the Worcester-Paddington Hitachi trains are desperately uncomfortable on my back, and partly because I didn’t feel capable of doing the Underground in the pre-Christmas weekend rush. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for such autistic things to become more intense, or more allowed, in the period following diagnosis. Anyway, I went via Birmingham and Cambridge, being collected by Sim from Ispwich station.
It was a very pleasant stay. I’d been a bit worried that Charlie – the most recent puppy, who is very nervous and defensive – would be a problem, but he seemed to remember me from Green Mount and settled down OK after the first ten minutes or so. Anne was, as I’d gathered, beginning to lose the plot a little, but we had several good long chats of reminiscences and it all went fine. A couple of good long chats to Sim – about Green Mount and suchlike. Phoebe drove me back to Ipswich on Mon 23rd, and we pent nearly all the journey talking about autism stuff, in a very useful, enlightening, and productive way.
The journey back, by the same route, was fairly vile, and not improved by a rail replacement double-decker bus from Coleshill to New Street. I got home about 9pm.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were largely quiet recovery days. A brace of partridge for Christmas dinner, as I’d been unable to get a pheasant – probably the first time I’ve had partridge for over 50 years. Soup from the carcasses subsequently, of course, and I’ve frozen some as well.
Despite my best intentions, I did end up making a start on printing Green Party newsletters on Boxing Day. On 28th I sent a list of “state of play” to Alex Mace, for him to chase up the outstanding artwork, all of which (except Warndon) duly arrived by New Year’s Eve. I did manage to finish all outstanding newsletters by lunchtime, so some 26,000 in the last fortnight, each one through the duplicator twice and the folding machine once.
I noticed that the winter-flowering clematis has started to open – nearly the latest I’ve ever known it (last year was 4th November – it’s an extremely variable plant!). Weather this morning was vile, so I didn’t manage to get out to cut my traditional New Year forsythia until it cleared up around lunchtime. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for a couple of days, needing a lot of sleep, and aching not only in the usual wrists and ankles, but in my upper arms and thighs. It’s an odd feeling, almost as if there are large bruises, but there’s no sign of any discolouration. I’ll take things fairly easy for a bit.
bush cherry
I ordered a cherry (“Porthos”) a little while ago. Of course, it arrived in the middle of the period of lying snow we’ve just had. The half-barrel for it to live in arrived yesterday, as did several bags of compost. So today it’s planted. I’ve stuck in some lithospermum plants that were being horribly overgrown by other things elsewhere … given how pot-bound the cherry was, I don’t think they’ll be any kind of competition for the next year or so.
I have some doubts about the cherry – it claims to be the world’s first bush cherry (ie not a shrub or tree), a description which it will need to live up to, as I have absolutely no room in the garden for anything big. The RHS says eventual height 1.5 to 2.5 metres … I’ll try to keep it at the lower end of this (assuming it survives). But gardening (for me) is partly about experimenting and taking risks, some of which don’t quite come off …
Brrrr….
I’d been fretting a bit because we hadn’t had a frost here yet. Normally, they’re in the first week of November (last year was 6th), and they put a bit of a brake on caterpillars and suchlike. However, still not really a frost, but a decent sprinkling of snow this morning …
bringing in the bin
Bringing the bin back in to day, I noticed that the Iberis sempervirens (perennial candytuft) is starting to flower. This lot never does very well – the front garden is north-facing, shaded by a wall, and very poor soil, so it’s unusual for it to be ahead of the one in the back garden. Still, a bright spot among the wind-blown sweet wrappers and other debris that I regularly collect and remove!
winter jasmine
The first few flowers are out on the winter jasmine – a cheerful sight on a somewhat grey day.
