January – back to work.

It was hard getting up in the dark to go back to work on Monday morning, after having two weeks off, but these snowdrops were a welcome surprise.

Also the hellebores were starting to flower. Is it me or is it all a bit early because we have had such a mild winter so far.

In another garden winter aconites and sweet smelling Lonicera fragrantissima living up to it’s name. And rose pruning for me.

Prunus autumalis is a lovely winter flowering cherry with it’s delicate pink blossoms in the middle of winter. Yellow, native hazel catkins are pretty bright too especially when they move in the wind and the powdery pollen wafts out in clouds.

The first primroses are out!

Petasites, coltsfoot, the smell is amazing and the flower quite pretty but it spreads uncontrollably and it has  very tough roots. You can see how much there is in the background, this is one small area.

In this garden, giant molehills!

Second week, still dark in the mornings although much lighter in the afternoons now. Muck spreading to keep me busy and more snowdrops out.

 

New Year Catch Up January 1st 2020

Hello, Happy New Year! It looks like I need a bit of a catch up as I haven’t posted for a while. Writing on my phone proved a bit tricky, I thought that I could write it throughout the month but the photos kept deleting, and it is a very small screen. I’m going to do a quick summary of November and December because I did still take photos.

November

 

November carried on in the same spirit as October being mostly wet and grey. There was a bit of autumn colour creeping in.

I picked the final dahlia flowers and moved the tubers in to the greenhouse to dry off.

I tried to make leaf raking more interesting.

Seedlings and lettuce plants in the poly tunnel, doing well but needing some attention.

On the 19th November we had a frost and some actual sunshine.

The broad beans came up.

It rained again and the river got quite full.

At the end of the month, I saw violets, mahonia and periwinkle flowering in a customers garden.

 

December

Chicory in the vegetable garden.

I took the family to see the Helmingham Hall illuminated garden trail just up the road. It was fantastic!

Did a massive pond clearing job with a customer and man with a chainsaw.

It got really wet in the gardens but I still managed to harvest parsnip and cabbage.

Bulbs coming up. These are Leucojum, spring snowflake.

I can to cancel the last day’s work before my Christmas break because the road was flooded.

Visited the allotment to pick parsley for the stuffing.

 

I had high hopes of getting on in my own garden over the holidays but I have only done a very small amount of potting on in the polytunnel and brought some of the pelagoniums into the house. I haven’t even planted the sack of tulip bu;lbs yet. It is still vey wet underfoot although we have had a few dry days. I have a lot of seeds that I can’t wait to plant and I have flowers to grow for a wedding in the summer which I am most excited about.