After the storms came the rain, hail, sleet and snow; today we have wintry showers, sunny intervals and an icy northerly wind of about 40 mph. However, there is sunshine and I am planning to cocoon myself in as many layers as I can and stagger down to the vegetable garden to retrieve some our […]
bulbs
A Slow Start
I fear that whatever I write about the garden and the weather I will end up either a Jeremiah, Job’s comforter or even worse a Polly Anna. So we will summarise the current state of the vegetable and cottage gardens as wet, sodden, saturated and waterlogged, which is quite remarkable as I garden on almost […]
The Ambivalent Fundamentalist
Somewhere along the line the botanical purist meets the gardening hedonist and the ambivalent fundamentalist emerges. In the garden there is not too much of a conflict of interest as I am quite content to grow pure species, subspecies, hybrids, geographical and horticultural varieties, plants of doubtful parentage or even clones. The growing conditions in […]
The Optimists Garden
When the start of the year is wet and windy and the croft garden is repeatedly battered by 70-90 mph gales, I should really declare the cottage garden out-of-bounds. A walk round the garden on a cold blustery afternoon in early February is enough to depress even the most optimistic gardener. There are times when […]
The January Garden – Looking Both Ways
Janus Pater, firstborn of Roman deities, presides over all transitions and beginnings, the door keeper, guardian of the new year, and custodian of the calendar, from whom January takes its name. In deference to Janus I am ambivalent about January – the lengthening days tell me to look forward as spring is coming, but the […]