End of month view: January

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

Tags

end of month view, extreme weather, snow, spring, winter

Always the last one to the party, that’s me. But I didn’t want to wave January goodbye without documenting what has been an extraordinary month – even for this most extreme time of year.

Of course we spent most of the month under deep snow, so for the first couple of weeks there wasn’t much gardening going on. I had a close encounter with a proper bona fide blizzard, in which I discovered that our Toyota Rav 4, previously considered embarrassingly poncy, outperforms a Landrover in a snowdrift, and I lost my precious loquat tree to a heavy snowfall of 8″ in a single night. Note to self: loquat trees have brittle branches and need tying up in snowy weather.

There’s a viburnum in full flower under here somewhere

Once the snow had melted, it was time to assess the damage. The most serious was caused not so much by the snow but by months of wet weather followed by howling gales during that blizzard I was talking about.

An ex-tree, and possibly an ex-ladder too

This was previously an unassuming ash tree, some 40ft tall and minding its own business in a corner of our garden. It went largely unnoticed until it crashed down our back slope, its roots terminally loosened in the muddy soil. Thankfully there was nobody around at the time: our ladder copped it though.

Otherwise things have been mostly soldiering on through. I am eternally thankful I managed to remember to cover at least one of my ginger lilies (Hedychium gardnerianum) with a Heath Robinson affair involving cardboard, lots of fleece and some bricks: the other one I didn’t get around to so this is going to turn into an Interesting Experiment. We haven’t had it very cold here, minus 4-5°C at most, but it has been very wet, so if the one survives and the other doesn’t we’ll know what’s to blame.

My little ginger all snug in its fleece jacket

And as the snow melted, it revealed all those lovely heart-lifting little jewels from their hiding places under the blanket of white, lifting the cloud just long enough to remind me that spring will arrive again, one day, as inevitable as the turning of the world.

Battered but not beaten: the first daffodils appeared on the slope this month

It’s been a wonderful year for snowdrops: perhaps it’s just me but they seem bigger and fatter somehow

..and the bulbs are poking through the ground everywhere: a new one appears every day. These are the early tulips, only a couple of months away now.

End of month view: January

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

end of month view, january, snowdrops

So here we are then, at the turn of another year; and so I took a look back at what things were like this time last year (one of the many benefits of following the End of Month View meme kindly hosted by Helen at The Patient Gardener).

This may become an annual event: I see that last year, the first time I did this, I was also comparing and contrasting, though on that occasion I was monitoring change over a mere three or four months; this time it’s a whole year’s worth.

I had thought I’d hardly achieved anything during the year – the frustration of competing and always, it seems, more urgent claims from small children, animals, work and the running of a somewhat chaotic household.

But from comparing these photos I discover things have actually, in some bits of the garden at least, changed quite a lot.

They say the longest journeys start with a single step. Perhaps I should just stop beating myself up about how little progress I’ve made towards the dream garden in my head; and start celebrating the fact that I’ve made any progress at all. Because as long as you make just a little progress every day, before you know it you’ve changed your little corner of the world more than you ever thought possible.

And besides, just think what I could achieve by January 2013!

The Vegetable Garden:

This time last year it looked like this…

And now….

Actually I’m rather regretting having taken this picture so far back: the shot I took last year is taken standing just behind the far tree in this picture. I cannot believe that just a year ago I was looking at bare ground here.

In just a single year I have dug over all that scrubby-looking grass and turned it into an incredibly productive vegetable patch that has fed my family almost completely: I have only had to start buying veg from the shops this month for the first time since last March, and that’s only because I didn’t get around to planting my kale out early enough.

The patch of black-polythene-covered veg patch you can see in the distance (the whole of the 2011 picture) is about 80ft of veg garden; the grassy bit in the foreground is the bit I’m going to expand into this year, I hope. I’ve just got a greenhouse to move, then I can start the same old routine of cutting back hedges, putting in rabbit fencing and opening up the ground. Can’t wait.

The Fruit Garden:

In 2011:

..and now:

Not a lot of change here, then, apart from a lot more grass (and some optimistic scaffold boards). But there is much planning afoot in the background and I’m just about to start work on this bit too: in fact this week should see me cutting back those hedges and covering the grass with black plastic ahead of a serious bit of fruit cage construction and path layout. If you want to know the details: there’s more on t’other blog.

The Herb Garden:

in 2011:

and now:

This is one of the areas I’ve been working really hard on, though there’s not anything too spectacular to show for it yet: I find when you’re developing gardens that things tend to get a whole lot worse before they start looking better.

This rocky bed is slowly being transformed into a herb garden, and this year it’s been comprehensively cleared. I’ve dug out two out of the three grandma roses planted incongruously and entirely pointlessly in the middle of the equally pointless lawn at the top of the slope: this lawn also has its days numbered, as in April I’m planning on replacing it with chamomile.

The big hairy fuchsia bush in the top picture is long gone, as are about four large stumps (crowbar and fencer’s graft and a lot of sweat) a skip load of Anemone x japonica ‘Honorine Jobert’ (sounds like vandalism but, believe me, this was invasive beyond the call of duty – and besides, I’ve kept one small clump at the far end for digging up and moving somewhere it can be better behaved).

So all in all the whole thing looks a great deal tidier, if rather empty at the moment. But I am stewing up the plant order to end all plant orders this spring as I will be packing this space with every kind of herb you can think of: hundreds of them, in the most wonderful planting fest. It’s going to make my year.

The Pot-Pourri Garden:

in 2011:

and now:

This is another area that has required an awful lot of clearing before I can do anything with it. I’ve still only got around halfway around the circle – around as far as that big bush in the background (it’s a Philadelphus and I am in a dilemma about it: it looks rather lovely in the summer as it’s an ‘Aureus’ with pretty golden foliage, but appearances are deceptive as it’s previously outgrown its welcome at some stage and been hacked down to a stump which has then regrown. It looks very, very ugly at this time of year and I can’t help wanting it out: but it’s so nice in the summer…. ack. Cannot decide.)

This bit was actually one of the nicest areas of the garden last summer as I filled it with annuals – cosmos, nicotiana and marigolds mostly – so it was exuberant with colour. Now it’s filling up with bulbs: I have planted half of my 200 tulips in here, although rather worryingly there’s no sign of them yet and I’m fretting about mouse attack. We’ll find out in a month or two, I suppose….

The Tropical Garden:

in 2011:

and now:

Still feeling a bit of a fraud (and slightly silly) calling this a tropical garden as it looks anything but tropical in January frosts. But though you can’t quite make it out unless you know what you’re looking at, there’s a small loquat tree establishing itself in front of the bank, and a Pawlonia getting its feet down a little further along.

There are also major earthworks going on here: I’ve dug out the border in front of the path, partly so I could plant the other half of my 200 tulip bulbs and partly so I had somewhere to put all the wonderful things I want to grow here this year. I have gingers and yacon and lots and lots of taro root (that’s Colocasia esculenta to you, mate) as well as non-edibles like Geranium maderense and cycads. I’m also going to experiment here with growing large-leaved things that aren’t really tropical but look it: so we’re talking squashes and courgettes and pumpkins and rhubarb. And maybe some Cavolo Nero kale.

Another area where the plans are racing ahead of the actual work, then….

The Hill:

in 2011:

and now:

The one bit of the garden that’s looking, if anything, scruffier than it did last year (though can you see how well the snowdrops have spread? Nothing to do with me, honest guv).

Not so much as a slight shuffle towards the nuttery I hope this will become one day. It’s the far end of the garden, so I reckon will probably be the last to get the treatment. In my defence, though, I have been doing a lot of work on the hedge, or rather the hazels perched precariously on top of the vertiginous bank here (as was I, pruning saw in hand, while hacking away at them):

Just to give you an idea of how high this is, my head reaches up to that first patch of leaves on the right.

The grass has carried on growing on the hill right through autumn into early winter thanks to all that warm weather, and it’s been so wet we haven’t got the mower anywhere near it. So in a sudden flash of inspiration brought on by my dilemma over what to do about my sheep who have run out of grass in the field where they’re currently living, I put the two together and have decided that this is going to become a sheep paddock for the next month or two.

Sheep = mobile lawnmowers = job done. Plus I get well-fed sheep and a lot of natural fertiliser too. I may have to fence off those snowdrops though…

End of month view: June

01 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

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Tags

blight, end of month view, hedges, mixed hedges, peas, sweet potatoes, trials, vegetables

It’s been a month of making progress, if slow: the mad rush of spring has calmed and I’m just planting out the last of my young plants (looking a bit the worse for wear, I have to say: this drought-ridden spring hasn’t been kind to plants in pots).

But for now I can enjoy the garden burgeoning into colour, everything growing at the rate of knots, and my earlier work coming – sometimes – good.

It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that the veg garden is seeing most of the action: so that’s where I’m concentrating for my end-of-month stocktake this time.

There have been a few surprises as I’m trialling one or two veg varieties this year: first up is an amazing pea, due to make its debut in the Thompson & Morgan catalogue next year I believe. If you’re not yet convinced that veg can be as beautiful as ornamentals, take a look at this:

The all-important taste test, of course, has yet to come: at the moment the pods are rather a muddy purple tinged green, not unattractive but not exactly wow-value either. We’ll see: just love those flowers though.

Another splash of colour is the double row of marigolds I sowed on both sides of my onion bed:

I’m so doing this again: it makes me smile every time I see it. It’s supposed to deter onion fly too: they get confused by the strong scent of the calendula. Well – there aren’t any onion flies as far as I can see: so it seems to be working so far.

The spuds haven’t been so lucky.

I’ve never had early blight on the new potatoes before. It’s making my heart sink for my so-far hale and hearty maincrops. I should know, of course, that in damp and rainy Somerset the chances of escaping fungal disease of any kind are pretty close to zero: but such an early arrival has come as something of a surprise. The spuds themselves don’t seem affected: these are ‘Foremost’, nice enough, but rather bland for my taste.

And finally: a visit to the engine room.

Packed with growbags this year: there are over 20 in there, at last count. It’s not how I usually do it – I’m a big fan of growing in soil in the greenhouse borders as a rule, as plants look after themselves so much better. But this is the greenhouse I inherited (rather than the one I brought back from the allotment: that’s still being planted up with cucumbers, melons and sweet peppers). So it’s on a hard standing, and I didn’t have much choice.

Fortunately I was after some experiments to do for t’other blog, so I’ve got all sorts of things going on in here: product reviews, trying out different supports, you name it. Oh, and those baskets in the back are my sweet potatoes: all of them T65 this year after they won my undying support by producing my best crop last season.

Elsewhere, the whole garden is getting decidedly woolly around the edges, and I am, frankly, dreading July: it’s hedge-cutting month, and strim-the-undergrowth month, so I’m looking down the wrong end of a lot of hours strapped to either strimmer or hedge-trimmer. I have half a mile of hedge here: this is no small undertaking. Here’s what we’re looking at: the back slope gives some idea of the jungle-like undergrowth:

…and here’s a typical hedge.

Luckily they’re not all quite that tall, but since they’re all hazel-dominated mixed hedges they’re pretty much this overgrown. Wish me luck.

Thanks as always to Helen at The Patient Gardener for hosting the EOMV!

End of month view: May

01 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

Conference pears, deutzia, dogs, end of month view, gardening with dogs, rodgersia, Telephone pea

Well, all right, strictly speaking it’s the beginning of month view – but I find it hard to resist Helen’s meme over at the Patient Gardener, and last month it was hijacked by various things so I’m overdue for taking ten minutes out to step back and just look.

I’ve been doing a lot of work in what we call our shady seating area – the wide circular bed edged with stone which I’m told was once a pond (and still tries to be one from time to time). This area was overrun with self-sown cranesbill and astrantia; much as I love both, I’m not a big fan of monocultures so most of it had to go.

This created lost of exciting planting opportunities so I had lots of fun colonising them with little cosmos and rudbeckia seedlings: unfortunately the puppies (for yes, there are two now: I’m hoping they may stop multiplying soon) colonised it too.

They’re at the stage where they spend most of their time cannoning around the garden like a pair of snooker balls and eating daylilies (entire plants, right down to the roots). I’m playing with different ways of keeping them off: this criss-cross fence of sturdy hazel stakes hammered firmly into the ground is looking promising. I’ll tie the cross bits together securely and grow things over and through it: eventually with a bit of luck only the dogs will know it’s there.

The rodgersia is in full flow at the moment, complete with impossibly huge bronze leaves and cream explosions of flower erupting all over the place. One day I’ll have to take a deep breath and get in there to divide this clump, as it’s entirely dead in the middle, but for now – my, it’s gorgeous.

Not far from this spot is the current venue for the ongoing bumblebee party: last month it was the cotoneaster, before that it was the Lonicera pileata outside the back door, but now it’s a massive Deutzia (my guess is x hybrida ‘Mont Rose’) in full flower. You can hear the buzzing for miles.

Behind it is the most rockery-like bit of the rockery, and I’m having to reluctantly admit I’m getting quite fond of it. I have no idea what the blue thing is by the way: it’s very disconcerting when you’ve never taken the slightest notice of those little rockery-type things to suddenly have to figure out what they are.

Further along the more open bit of the rockery is steadily turning into a herb garden as I plant up the gaps with my seedlings. The valerian has rather taken over at this end (along with the snow-in-summer which has also colonised the hedgerow). It’s looking so lovely I can’t quite bring myself to haul it out, but I’m going to have to soon as it’s taken possession of all my best herb-growing bits.

The nasturtiums I sowed in March are coming on nicely: this one is ‘Cobra’.

And I’m rather hopeful for this fennel-and-nasturtium combo: seedlings at the moment and struggling to get going what with the lack of rain, but they’ll get there.

Now for the business end. As usual I’ve been spending most of my time in the veg garden: I’m now almost at the end of my 160-ft stretch and have about 16 4ft x 10ft beds to show for it. It’s rough and ready – the dividers are old scaffold boards – but it’s been a really good quick way to get the veg garden under way.

The main failure this month has been my salad bed experiment: it’s an adaptation of the square-foot gardening technique I discovered while at the Magdalen Project this spring. You divide up the bed into rectangles and sow a different salad ingredient in each rectangle: trouble is if it doesn’t rain for three weeks solid and you swan off to Chelsea in the middle, you’re sunk.

If I may just show off for a minute: just look at my peas. These are ‘Telephone’, a heritage variety, and they grow 6ft tall (the fence at the side is 4ft high, to give you an idea). I’ve never grown peas quite this lusty before: no idea what they taste like (they’ve only just come into flower) but they’re fantastic for swank value.

(the brown bits are dead leaves on the hazel twiggy peasticks by the way: next year must remember to cut them in winter).

I’m rather fond of the way my marigold-and-onion combo has worked out too: it makes a lovely little splash of colour.

And just as a post-script: did anyone else not know that pears grow upside down to begin with? Or rather, right way up, and then droop as they get heavier?

This is my Conference pear tree, the first I’ve ever ‘owned’, and I’m terribly proud of it: when we got here last September its total harvest for the year had consisted of one pear (and that had been eaten by something small and wriggly – and I don’t mean one of the kids). One hard winter and a good prune later, and it’s laden. I’m chuffed to bits.

End of month view: March

31 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, herbs

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anemone blanda, chalk soil, cold frame, comfrey, daffodils, end of month view, fig tree, lupins, Pawlonia, peonies, pulsatilla, rock gardens, vegetables, wind flowers

What a difference a couple of months makes.

Last time I did the rounds with the camera was the end of January: barely a leaf had burst its bud at that time, I hadn’t even started the post-winter clearup, and everything was looking decidedly bleak and not a little scruffy around the edges.

I woke up, along with the garden, some time in mid-February. And in the six weeks or so since then, everything has changed.

First up (of course) is the veg garden: always my first priority at seed-sowing time. I’ve been ferrying eyewatering quantities of scaffold boards back on the roof of my poor groaning family estate to divide up the long, thin space into 4ft x 10ft beds. At first they were all re-covered with the black plastic which has been keeping my soil protected over winter: but now, gradually, it’s all coming off.

January:

…and now:

The far end is well up and away: with the addition of a bit of bought-in soil improver (not yet quite confident about how good my soil might be), new potatoes, onions and shallots have joined the overwintering broad beans and autumn-sown onions.

Under those cloches are two varieties of pea; Feltham First (early and robust) and heritage variety Telephone, which reaches up to 5ft tall, so I’m told. Further down there are rows of leeks and carrots under fleece for protection against carrot fly.

Greenhouse no. 1 – unheated – is filling up: the other day I had to rig up the coldframe (in bits since the post-move chaos) in a hurry to get the first of the sweetpeas, chard and overwintered marigolds ready to go out.

But just look at Greenhouse no. 2 – the one that’s frost-free. I have run out of room. There is no other way to put it. The windowsills in the house are groaning with seedlings too. What am I going to do!

Right, never mind the veg: what about the rest of it?

Here’s the rock garden, or rather the herb garden to be. Nicely trimmed these days: and I’ve started placing a few pots of bits and bobs around the place ready to be planted.

January:

…and now:

In the blue pot is an olive tree, about six inches tall when I got it (it was a freebie which looked a lot better in the magazine than what actually arrived on my doorstep).

I nurtured it and nursed it, and now it’s about 5ft high and a lovely healthy young tree. Then it got left outside in the snow and ice, and I resigned myself to losing it: but no. It didn’t even lose its leaves.

So since it’s survived that, I figure it’ll breeze being planted outside. It’s moved around this patch a few times now, trying to find the right spot for what I hope will one day be a fetchingly gnarled evocation of Italy on my doorstep, and a rather fine backdrop to all my Mediterranean herbs.

There’s also plenty going on here quite independently of my own feeble efforts to spruce things up. Little pretties keep popping up all over the place. I keep stopping in my tracks on the way out of the house: the other day it was because I spotted a clump of pulsatilla. Pulsatilla! In my garden!

Aren’t they lovely? Those palest grey fluffy feathers set off the dusty mauve of the flowers so perfectly.

And look at this: in the hollow between two sides of the old stone wall, partially collapsed, a little colony of windflowers has sprung up.

I’ve spent many thorny hours clearing the bank above where my tropical edibles patch will eventually be. It’s not only painful, but also slightly unnerving as this bank is about 12ft high and much of my bramble removal was done while hanging precariously off a handy branch. Must invest in a ladder.

January:

…and now:

It’s all looking a lot better now, so I guess the splinter-pocked fingers were worth it.

There’s more pot placement here: you can make out the fig in the far corner, and just out of sight there’s a Pawlonia tomentosa I was given – half-dead on arrival but now, rather excitingly, reviving.

And other things are popping up here, too: lupins and a carpet of some kind of small white comfrey. It’s beautiful, the bees love it, but it is obviously a little invasive: I shall have to think carefully about where I move it to.

So on to the only other bit I’ve done anything to; the circular bed around our shady seating area.

January:

…and now:

I’ve recently been told by someone who’s lived in the village a lot longer than me that this was once a pond. This is answering a lot of questions: why, for example, a hefty Rodgersia (usually a bog plant) can survive so well in a free-draining, chalky soil.

I have an uncomfortable feeling this circular bed may be hiding a pond liner of epic proportions. We’re talking probably concrete; maybe not even split. We are talking bog garden.

This may rather alter my plans to turn this area into a scented garden full of daphnes and Christmas box and wintersweet.

For now however I have just cleared the winter debris and I’m about to launch into a huge weed-through, followed by my standard fall-back in situations where I have little time and large areas to fill: I’m planning to sow this lot with seed from Pictorial Meadows, already sitting in an inviting little packet on my desk as I type.

It isn’t all weeds and bog plants though: tucked up on the bank, a little higher than the rest, there is a paeony already swelling into bud.

A paeony! In my garden! (another chalk-loving plant I have never been able to grow before. My cup brimmeth over: snowdrops, primroses, pulsatillas and now peonies. Can it get any better than this?)

And last but absolutely not least: I haven’t touched this bit but I have been in love with it for a whole month now. I have, on the hill that rises at the back of my garden, a host of golden daffodils.

There are hundreds of them, across the width of the garden, and we have been giving them away to friends in big fat bunches as well as stuffing every vase in the house. Whoever planted them, many decades ago: I hope you are somewhere just as beautiful right now.

Thank you to Helen, aka Patient Gardener, for hosting the End of Month View: the perfect opportunity to take a step back and take the big view for a change.

End of month view: January 2011

31 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

end of month view, january, snowdrops

Ever since I saw this meme, hosted by Helen at The Patient Gardener (thanks Helen!) I knew I was going to have to join in. What better way of keeping tabs on how your garden is changing through the year: rewarding yourself for the little improvements you’ve made, showing you where your priorities should be and reminding yourself how much it matters that you didn’t get around to raking the leaves/pruning that shrub/clearing that border when you were supposed to. I’ve got the added incentive of a new garden: so (a pure indulgence I’m afraid) I’ve also added a smaller ‘before’ photo first, taken shortly after we arrived here last autumn, to compare and contrast: sometimes, big change, more often, a reminder that there’s so much left to do. And, I have to say, also a reminder of how lovely and warm it was last autumn: my goodness but the comparison makes the garden now look even chillier than it feels. My veg garden is where the main work has been going on. The picture taken in autumn was taken a little further back (the second tree up is the one you can see in the foreground of this month’s photo): but several months of cutting back hedges and intensive rabbit-fencing now means I now have half a chance of growing vegetables in this strip. I’ve only reached about halfway down the available space but what I have up and running is about 80ft by 12ft. As you can see I’ve also started growing things: that cloche is over my overwintering broad beans (there are autumn-sown onions in there too). And just check out that pile of green waste (this is the lower slopes of a mountain rising up behind). We already spent all day yesterday burning the first lot: now I just have to barrow this pile up to the hill and we can start all over again. On the other side of the gate into this area is what’s going to be my fruit cage (-that-doesn’t-look-like-a-fruit-cage). Design plans still ongoing…. I’ve cleared the veg beds which were here when we came, and very nice the beetroot were too, and this area is now also home to a second greenhouse – relocated (with help from Paul Debois – who found time in between lugging sheets of rusty metal around to take a photo – and a very large rented van) from my old allotment in Surrey. The pit is there a) to capture unwary husbands helping to erect said greenhouse and b) originally as a shed base, but then I changed my mind and decided it would block the view too much. Oh yes, and I’ve been stripping acres of ivy plus not a few roof tiles off the single garage, which is now de facto my shed, having been wrenched with many protestations off my husband who rather fancied it as a wood store. My technique was a cunning mix of bribery and compromise: he needed somewhere to put his motorbike, I needed somewhere to put my potting bench. QED. Spot the difference? What will be my cutting garden: haven’t touched it. Apart from the lawnmowing, but even that was by proxy. The rock garden, or herb garden as it shall be known (as I am allergic to rock gardens) is looking considerably more wintery these days: I’ve done a little clearing here but this is the start of my Really Messy Garden as I am poised to do my Grand February Springclean any moment now. So what you have here is basically the remains of last year’s plants: sad, yes, but the little beasties have appreciated the extra hibernating opportunities and I’m hoping I’ve helped protect the emerging shoots of some of the more tender plants in there (fuchsias, mainly: that great big bush to the right is a fuchsia, and a mighty fine one at that. It’s in the wrong place, though: how do you go about moving a huge great thing like that?!). Popping up all over the place in the rock garden are my lovely snowdrops: now there’s a phrase I’ve never been able to use before. Condemned to a snowdrop-less existence because of the acid sand I used to garden on (kept meaning to buy Galanthus elwesii which can apparently cope with drier conditions but never quite got around to it) I now have the damp chalk and shade they relish. The garden is full of snowdrops, and my heart is just singing. Hmm… another spot the difference. This is where most of the clearing needs to be done: great swathes of dead rogersia leaves and the new shoots of daylilies and geraniums struggling to make it up through the brown slimy mush currently collapsed on their heads. Plus zillions of dead stems, asters and valerian mostly, needing to be snipped out at the base. The spring clear-up is my first major job of the season, and also one of my favourites; it’s like sweeping a brush over the garden and clearing the way for the new growth to come. I love it. The mahonia which grows here is a very fine specimen and has given me something to look at all winter, for which I’m grateful. I’m wondering whether to raise the crown on this one, however, and see if I can grow something underneath: I have fond memories of a mahonia tree in a client’s garden I used to look after and would dearly love something like it myself. Wonder if this one can be persuaded…? Oh now this is a little depressing. I haven’t touched this bit either – even, as you can see, to the point of not removing the sunflower stems which are now lurching even more drunkenly in various different directions. But then the bluetits did love hanging upside down off them enjoying the seeds, right through till the end of December. About the only change here has been Guineapig Palace, just visible beyond the viburnum (‘Dawn’ – another one whose flowers have been keeping me going through the coldest months). Previously a shepherd’s hut my carpenter husband made for a garden show, now housing Nibbles, Marmalade and Smokey Bacon who are in seventh heaven with the run of a shed-sized hutch and very snug and cosy. The hill is also looking a little bleak (I took this month’s standing with the trampoline behind me: it is still a little bone of contention in our house that we are looking at a large lump of blue plastic in such a lovely environment). The kids built a den up at the top, nicking the trampoline cover and a large ladder to do so, but otherwise not much has been happening here apart from… Aren’t they lovely?