After Christmas

I had the before Christmas rush around. Made a wreath from hazel twigs cut from the garden, spare bits of foliage cut off the Christmas tree and ivy from a neighbour who was tidying his hedge up. Tied together with Nutscene string so that I can just compost it when I’m finished with it.

We went on a 2 night visit to Wales to see my daughter’s friend, it’s a long way from Suffolk! Managed to have a visit to the sea at Southerndown Beach and visit the walled garden at Dunraven Castle.

Also made my first ever trip to IKEA, in Cardiff, so appalled by the hundreds of plastic plants that I didn’t take a photo!

I received a few gardening related gifts for Christmas. Can’t wait to read ‘Thoughtful Gardening’ by Robin Lane Fox, gardening gloves are always useful and I bought the flask myself so that I can take soup to work on chilly days.

Although I have already had a week off, eek, today, Monday, was the first day that I didn’t have to get up for something. Usually at this point I would spend some time in my own garden and although I looked around, and found some wasabi mustard that I had forgotten about in the polytunnel, it has been relentlessly wet and grey and not really gardening weather even for me.

Wasabi mustard from Sarah Raven seeds.

Another couple of days on and guess what, it is still grey and raining/drizzling. I still haven’t done any gardening but I have been browsing the seed catalogues and sorting out my random home saved seeds.

So while it remains uninviting, we can enjoy the thinking and planning ahead. I am looking forward to the first snowdrops appearing and already excited by the buds forming on the hellebores. And trying to catch up on blog posts of course.

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.

 

December

Iceberg roses flowering, December 4th.

December has been a slow month what with one thing and another. In my bigger gardens there is always something that needs doing, and I still have roses to prune and cutting back to finish, but some of my smaller gardens are all done for the winter giving me a few gaps in the week.   These iceberg roses are almost looking better than in the summer when they suffer with black spot and greenfly and I can’t keep up with the weeds. I suppose that they can also be appreciated more at this time of year when there is less other showy stuff going on.

One of my winter jobs is to re-design this bed a bit. My absolutely favourite job so I’m saving it for now, hope they stop flowering otherwise I will feel really guilty cutting off the blooms.

Life has it’s ups and downs, as we all know, and I have been making sure that I take time to enjoy the small things of beauty as I garden. It may not be original but it is important for me and that is the main thing. I am keeping a record on my instagram account cjbee827 if anyone is interested.

 

Here’s a funny one but this does make me happy! Lots of goodness for the soil. And lots of winter work to keep me busy and warm. Some of it is moved now but I was held up when it was frosty as you can’t mulch frozen ground.

View this post on Instagram

My favourite bird, the wren.

A post shared by Charlotte (@cjbee827) on Dec 6, 2017 at 2:54pm PST

And shifting muck brings the birds to join in the fun. Always a friendly robin or two but this time a real treat a wren that I manage to photograph.

View this post on Instagram

Hebe flowering today! #hebeindecember #garden #gardening #decemberflowers #hebe

A post shared by Charlotte (@cjbee827) on Dec 6, 2017 at 12:19pm PST

A change of garden for a one off tidy up and a huge hebe covered in flowers

 

Snow in the woodland

Mid December, snow!  The ground was really too frozen and covered with snow to do anything productive and the country lanes too icy to risk so I had to have a day off. First time I’ve been snowed off in about  4 years but not great timing.

This was one of my small things of beauty, an amazing moss covered branch on a really old mulberry tree.

 

View this post on Instagram

Echinacea just keep on giving. #echinacea #seedhead

A post shared by Charlotte (@cjbee827) on Dec 19, 2017 at 11:18am PST

Echinacea and fennel seedheads still giving structure in the main beds, there’s rudbeckia and a few echinops thistle heads too. They will stay as long as they are still adding something, in my opinion!

Ivy berries, what a great design! Ivy is such a good plant for wildlife if you have space in the garden. With late season flowers for bees and other insects and berries for birds. It is an integral part of most of the hedges round here providing good evergreen cover for nesting and protection from predators. There is a lot of folklore attached to ivy but that’s maybe a blog in itself.

Pelagonium flowering – December 19th

December 19th was my last day of gardening before a break for Christmas, and I found this self seeded pelagonium still flowering at the base of a south facing wall.

I have quite a few days off now, which has given me time to write a blog post but I’m desperate to get out and tidy my own garden. Now the shortest day is past I shall be continuing looking for more small treasures in the garden while hoping for signs of spring. Meanwhile here’s a hellebore, Helleborus# niger,  the Christmas rose.

 

View this post on Instagram

Looking a bit tatty but it's a flower at Christmas so hey who cares? #smallthings day 7 (may have missed one!)

A post shared by Charlotte (@cjbee827) on Dec 26, 2017 at 11:52am PST

 

#autocorrect changed it to Boris 😁