Range Cooking in the Herb Garden!

 Whilst snowfalls, rain and floods have delayed many garden jobs, Chris Genever was able to install our latest feature in the Herb Garden!!  Yes!  A little cast iron cooking range!!  I absolutely love it and would have had it in the house if I could have found room for it! 

I found some odd bricks (always so useful to have a few spare bricks kicking around!) which enabled Chris to build it in properly.  He even made some new hinges for the oven door using some sections of copper tube.  For now, I've put a pot of primulas in the the grate - yellows, reds and oranges to resemble flames - of course!  I'll have to revisit my planting theme for summer but, for now, we need some sunshine!  

This new feature has stolen Easter Island Man's spot so he (and his hairstyle) need rehoming elsewhere in the garden............

                                                          .............................??

Meteorological Vicissitudes!

 

Since my last post, we've had rain, rain and more rain which has meant flooding.  This was followed by 4 inches of snow which lasted 3 days then thawed.  Now it's raining again which will mean even more flooding!  The ground is now beyond saturated and literally sings if you dare to walk on it.  Being such a baby, I really did love the snow despite all its impracticalities!  The garden looked so desperately pretty.  

I needn't have worried about emerging Hellebores and Snowdrops as they coped perfectly well!  Aconites too are popping up and, scenting the entire garden, is the Sarcococca and Chimonanthus. At the head of the Fernery path are Chris's Cyclamen coum & a few Narcissus have been spotted poking through although, it would be prudent if they didn't pop out too early.  

Chris has been busy power washing the algae off the York flag stones and ensuring they're safe to walk on.  Without this annual winter ritual, they become exactly like an ice rink!  I retreated to the greenhouse and divided and potted all my Pinguiculas moved all the pots containing over wintering plants and had a good tidy up and sweep out dead leafing as I went.  

With their slimy and sticky leaves and sodden compost, dividing Pinguiculas is really not the nicest job in the world!  However they bloom prolifically and live on insect pests.  I started with a single plant 2 years ago and now have 6!

Pinguiculas

January Hoar Frosts

 

Another Saturday and not so much gardening!  Chris had a tree emergency call out - a fallen tree had crashed down and severely damaged a bridge.  We've also been enjoying proper winter weather with a week of hard frosts, some really pretty hoar frosts. I don't feel that we're too behind with season work - so am not too worried.....at the moment!

Yesterday afternoon our resident Under Gardener was very busy assembling our new Hartley Botanic shelving.  In reality it's more like an etagere.  Unfortunately and, for reasons that I won't go into here, it arrived too late for overwintering greenhouse plants and will wait until spring before its pressed into use.

I did however tidy up quite a few overwintering Pelargoniums and even managed to de- leaf some Hellebores before succumbing to the cold and creeping back indoors!!  

Ginuary Lockdown!

 

Head Gardener has been absent from the garden whilst exploring the wilds of North Yorkshire over Christmas and arrived back to find herself in another lockdown and tighter restrictions.  When she arrived home the garden was covered in frozen snow!  Even more snow than up on the highest Yorkshire  moors!

However, today, I ventured out to see what I'd missed and lo and behold, the sun came out and I even found buds bursting! A narcissus was blooming and some wild Hellebores are in bloom.  In the greenhouse, the Jasmine is just coming into bloom - I love the way it just fills the entire greenhouse with its heavy fragrance.

This new Blogger interface is as awful as ever & doesn't allow photo placing or text wrapping so please excuse the layout. 

Farewell 2020

Let's hope 2021 is a brilliant year for all gardeners & garden visitors!!

 

Getting Ahead in December

Am trying to keep up to date with posts but am definitely NOT enjoying this new interface which is much more restrictive when it comes to layout and wrapping text around photos.  Hence this post contains too many empty spaces!

However, a much better Saturday this week.  We were relieved to have dry weather and some sunshine which allowed seasonal garden work  to continue apace.  Our 2 year old homemade leaf mould was used to mulch the old Aspen Grove which really should be renamed to the Birch Grove since we removed the ever suckering Aspens and replaced them with Acers and multi-stemmed silver birch.  Chris also mulched the lower border with homemade compost and we lifted and stored the Dahlias.  This year we even labeled them all - that is, all but one which was nameless and had lost its label!

The garden really is looking quite tidy as most of the leaves have fallen and we're really well up to date with jobs.  The ferns display welcome greenery & we have a few Hellebores in bloom which add a little seasonal cheer - especially on a dark wet day like today!

GETTING FESTIVE!!

 

By Day and By Night!

Bad weather has meant garden work has been delayed so a dry Saturday was welcome despite the sodden ground! As wet and saturated as things were, the lawn edges had a Chris treatment before we turned our attention the Christmas tree and its lighting.  Now I should explain that Chris gave us this little tree a couple of years ago.  Its managed to get going despite competing with thirsty conifer roots but it hasn't put on much top growth yet.  In an effort to bulk it out and make it bigger and thicker, we decorated it with holly, ivy and rose hips.  Round the base, we placed silver birch logs and boughs of conifer.  We then bound it in multi coloured lights.  I'm seriously hoping we don't have any high winds as it will completely wrecked!   

Maybe it looks rather too natural as we wondered if it looked more like a compost heap in daylight!!  It actually looks much more impressive at night.