Benign day today, gales tomorrow. We had a couple of frosts during the week so there's a lot of mush about but we're now back to the more usual succession of weather systems coming in off the Atlantic. It's not so much that nothing is happening outdoors, just that it's the same few things going…
Six on Saturday – 30/11/2019
I just listened to Sandy Denny's 'Late November'; first time in years. Getting nostalgic. How can she have been gone over 40 years? It's cold and wet and drear and dreich and I've got a cold. Must be winter. I haven't been out much lately, it never seems to stop raining and there's not a…
The garden in winter.
Keeping a garden interesting gets more difficult as autumn slips into winter. The climate here is not warm enough to have nearly as wide a choice of material for winter display as for summer, nor is it cold enough to force me to shut up shop altogether. I have a choice, I can give up…
Six on Saturday – 23/11/2019
Just after I'd posted last Saturday's six, I loaded up the car with crocheted cacti and assorted other crafteries and took Sue down to Lanreath Church where she was partaking in a craft fair. With about four hours at my disposal before I had to collect her, I went across to Lockengate to visit one…
Focus on Ferns – 4
I started a series about the ferns I grow, posting blogs in April, May and June this year. It had been my intention to work my way through all the ferns I have but as with so many good intentions, it didn’t happen. Almost everything I included in those blogs was a plant growing in…
Allotment update – 19/11/2019
It wont have escaped the notice of any UK gardeners that it’s been very wet lately. I try to stay off my rather fragile silty soil in such conditions as it’s structure is rapidly degraded by my big feet. Today though was the third dry day we’ve had in a row, practically a drought, so…
Six on Saturday -16/11/2019
Commercial horticulture relies heavily on covered space. Uncertainty is the enemy and the weather is one big part of that which can to a degree be controlled by growing crops under glass or polythene. The nursery where I worked for 30 years had several polytunnels and three glasshouses. The biggest polytunnel was 63 feet wide…