A small mid-winter update on the garden, primarily to remind myself that we are over the midway of the season, spring is on the way, and soon there will be bees and crocus in abundance. Yesterday was a tres bad day and I managed to ruin a lot of things in one go, so today I am trying to be kind and gentle to myself. Things I do today will benefit me in the future, and that includes planting bulbs.
This year, santa bought me a bird bath so I put it out in the garden and filled it with water.
And then I thought, while I’m out here in my jammies, I may as well have a look and see what’s going on. So below is a photographic diary entry of the Bonemill Cottage Garden on Dec 25th. It wasn’t a great day for me and the garden is a mess and needs sorting and my head is a mess and needs sorting. But in all seriousness, I do need to tidy up the garden before February Flooding begins.
The garden…
And the view from the other end. I am planning to turn this end of the garden into a P-patch: pumpkins, potatoes, and parsnips.
The hellebores and cyclamens are coming up. I’m very pleased to see the cyclamen as I thought they’d died long ago. The corms on these are HUGE, almost 6inches across.
My thick row of daffs is growing at the back of the herb bed. I really need to get around to finishing this. Need to go daff shopping. I planted these way too close together but I wanted a dense row of flowers so the bees can walk between the blooms.
The herb bed is looking sad after the heavy frosts we had here, but it’ll pick up again in spring. It is full of calendula seedlings, and grass that I need to pull out. I also need to clear away the sweet pea tepee towers.
Apples on skewers, for the wildlife. These are the apples from my allotment tree that didn’t store as well as I hoped they would.
Since the frost lifted, Monsieur Mole has been having oh so much fun digging away. There’s at least ten little spoil heaps around the garden.
The foxglove seedlings that I transplanted from my allotment have survived the frosts, and hopefully they will also withstand the floods. I planted these at the bottom of the slope in the garden, so they could very well end up under 6ft of water.
The section of garden hedge that we laid last Christmas is growing well. Lots of new growth and it certainly sorted out the huge hole that was there. I want to lay more, but I have zero motivation and zero hazel stakes. Also I probably shouldn’t be trusted with sharp tools at the mo.
It will soon be time for the pulmonaria and the hairy footed flower bees to wake up. I need more pulmonaria.
My saffron crocus have come up again. They’ve never flowered. Google says the corms can grow to be several inches across so I wonder if they are too cramped in this little pot. I shall dig them out and replant them at the allotment in a south facing bed. We are north facing here, so I don’t think they get enough light.
The heather by the front door is in flower.
And the paperwhites are coming up in the thyme planter on the front fence. I had this planter over the back gate when we lived in Halesowen and it cheered me up no end to having a trailing thyme with paperwhites 8ft in the air.
I have a large amount of bulbs that I need to plant and I also have a very large desire to go back to Wilkos to see what they’ve still got at 70% off.
Santa got me two new metal planters so I need to get some compost and grit for them, and then I can spend some time planting them up with mixed blubs. I want to get more ranunculus – I bought a load in poundland and they grew, but when I took them from the seedling pots and put them in the ground, they gave up and died. So I want more. I always want more.
Anyway. Only a few more weeks and the snowdrops will be coming up in the garden and the woods, there will be bees, and the sun may climb high enough to actually get over the trees to reach into the garden.
