Warmth!

I’m never completely happy with weather. We have been enjoying a fabulous few days of unseasonably warm temperatures, and there’s me worrying about the consequences.

What if the tree Magnolias start in earnest to shed their furry perules which protect the flower buds, and then we have a hard frost! What will be, will be!

Still we’ve been busy, moving a few plants around to more favourable sites, and generally tidying up after what we can only hope is the worst of the winter. Also we have taken a few more pictures which are now in the various galleries.

Even Colder

I’m beginning to panic now about what will have been killed or severely damaged by the freezing temperatures. We healed in the majority of unplanted ornamental woody plants,

so hopefully their roots should be OK. There are however a number of perennials, fruit bushes and trees which are above ground and therefore more vulnerable. Only time will tell.

My newly purchased Epimediums are frozen solid in their pots in the greenhouse. It will be very disappointing if they never even grow for one year.

 

And Still Freezles!

These wil be the last photos now ’till spring arrives. I’ve been looking through my older digital photos taken on a vintage 2000, Sony Cybershot camera and have uploaded quite a few.

Unfortunately they are a slightly different aspect ratio to my newer camera. If you click between pictures too fast you may miss, so be warned. I missed the icon a couple of times. The colours of pinks and reds are sometimes a bit suspect too, but on balance I thought they were worth posting.

I’m almost out of labels, so have ordered more. I can’t put any out ’till the snow goes and the ground unfreezes. Also I need to be able to see what needs labelling, to Dymo more. Roll on the end of this cold spell!

Still Trapped Indoors

Plenty of snow still left on the ground, so we can’t do a whole lot outside.

I decided to do some fancy labelling (well fairly fancy) Whilst they’re not as good as the engraved type, we have found good old Dymo to stay stuck to plastic labels until the labels have disintegrated due to UV exposure. We have been Dymo-ing for at least 30 years and don’t recall one failing.

For the first time, we are trying approx 3″ x 2″ square polypropylene labels with a moulded on roughly 6″ leg. They are a bit narrow for plant names with two words in them, in the larger type face I’m using, but we think as well as being more expensive the next size up label might be too intrusive.

Brrrrr!

Snow stops play in the garden this weekend. At least it has given plenty of free time to work on the website. Meanwhile Linda is making marmalade.

After three years of snow breaking the fronds of our Dicksonia antarctica, tree fern, the new fronds of late were getting fewer and smaller. It seems to me that they need to be on the plant for more than one year to maintain its vigour. Therefore knowing snow was due we have tied up the existing fronds to four stout Chusquea canes and they appear so far to have remained unbroken.

Welcome to our New Look Website

We thought it might be a nice idea to modernise our garden website and make it more interactive. Hopefully it will evolve and be more interesting for you, the visitor, over time.

Linda and I are hoping we will be able to upload posts and pictures in future, with less assistance from our IT savvy son Paul. As we are novices at this, this will take a degree of patience on his part to train us up!