ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
Sometimes (rarely, it has to be admitted) my life horticultural (retired) goes through a frenetic patch. Like this week; Wednesday evening, talk to garden club (Camellias); Thursday and Friday, filming for Gardeners World (Camellias); Friday evening, talk to garden club (Begonias); Somewhen, write a Six on Saturday post; Saturday, escape to allotment for weeding and…
It seems stupid to be saying so, but the modest amount of rain we had today was very welcome. It's not that the ground is dry, just that if it does turn dry very early I worry that when growth takes off in the spring and the plants expect there to be plenty of moisture…
We've had nearly a week of cold nights, with frost forecast but not materialising to a significant degree. Tonight and tomorrow fit the same pattern, then it warms up a little. Sadly, it currently looks like the last cold night might be the coldest and there's a world of difference between +1 and -1. Just…
Our garden is plagued by slugs. I could just ignore them and eventually nature would control their numbers. The problem is that the means by which that plays out is that the slugs gorge themselves on all the plants that they love, like the emerging shoots of Dahlias and Salvias, to the point where those…
If Sue had still been in Australia she would around about now be experiencing the calm in the eye of a cyclone, in that the forecast track of Alfred is right over the top of where she was staying. It puts our weather, about which we complain so much, into perspective. The transition from winter…
Oh my! I just witnessed a seismic geopolitical moment and I have to calm down and write a blog about things happening in my garden. By any real world standard, absolutely nothing is happening in my garden. OK, I'm going to compartmentalise my brain and focus on the task in hand, which is to post…
I should have taken a set of pictures on Wednesday; it was quite nice then but has been blowing a hoolie and raining most of the time since. What little is happening out there is wet and windswept. My first bright idea for a fallback was to pick six pictures from the same date in…
After weeks of dry cold weather we now have slightly warmer damp weather. There's been a sense of things being held back but whether it has warmed up enough to get them moving again remains to be seen. Yet again it was a struggle to find six things to mention and I'm sorry if some…
Surprise, surprise, it's still winter. Still cold, still nothing much happening, still a Saturday turning up every week and demanding attention. As ever, it's my Camellias that are providing the most colour at this season of the year, though I had hopes for Crocus to open in the sunshine. It wasn't to be, just too…
How can January have felt like such a drawn out slog while it was happening but seem to have gone in a flash in retrospect? Can it really be February already. Once again I find myself having to make excuses for my supposedly all year round garden, which hasn't changed an iota since a week…
garden ruminations 