ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
Brrr! It's cold. We had a real frost last night and are due another tonight. I'm very well aware how relative temperature is though, especially around freezing point. There's a world of difference between +2 and -2, way more than between +18 and +22, whatever the arithmetic says.In practical terms it means that the above…
If you're expecting the last six from me for 2024 to be the cherry on the top, forget it. I went round the garden this morning, looking for something, anything, to talk about and the pickings are thin. In a year when we haven't even had a frost hard enough to do more than blacken…
I've been fixing the fence that blew down in the wind. I'm getting there but it's still not finished. One more day should see it done. There isn't a lot happening at this time of year, the transition from one year to the next seems to play out at a snails pace. Just about everything…
I can't quite believe that my Vitopod propagator arrived as recently as 2020, it seems to have been around much longer. That might be a testimony to how many turnovers of cuttings have come through it since then, it's certainly a lot. I used to have a mist system, suspended over a sand bed with…
A week ago we were hunkered down waiting for storm Darragh to blow itself out. We had a bit of damage, which has provided me with a couple of items for my six that I'd have been happier without. Now we're in a quiet spell of weather, very dull, pretty cold but at least dry,…
We look set for a lot of weather this weekend and with a Met Office amber warning hanging over us I am getting a little nervous. I write these things on Friday evening and by the time it goes out Saturday morning I will probably know whether that nervousness was well founded or not. We're…
I've had a horticulturally interesting week which included an out of season visit to Trewithen Garden to look at their autumn flowering camellias and a day getting a very large piece of fallen tree off a garage roof. So much for retirement. The latter is threatening to draw me into the complexities of Tree Preservation…
A week can be a long time in gardening. A week ago everything seemed in remarkably good shape considering how late in the year it was; now the weather has at least caught up with itself, if not running slightly ahead. We've had frost and snow and are forecast gales and lots of rain. Suddenly…
Every time I look at the weather forecast for the coming week the lowest temperatures seem to have gone down a degree. A couple of days ago it looked like we might escape a frost but that is no longer the case. I need to set up heaters and check thermostats and get more things…
The weather has been in limbo for a while now, a benign limbo, which is extending autumn and holding winter at bay. I haven't cut much down, there aren't a lot of leaves to rake up, plants are neither growing nor dying, active gardening is on hold. Most flowering things are winding down but so…
garden ruminations 