bigmagpie

Surprise!

During term time we have to leave the house for work at 7.30am and we rarely get home before 6pm (this week I set a record and got back just on 10pm one night). So during winter we never see our house and garden in daylight, except at weekends. So it was such a surprise to open the bedroom blinds on Saturday morning and see this little beauty blazing out at the bottom of the garden.

I didn't plant this camellia (if I had, I wouldn't have put it where it will eventually block the path to the compost heaps.) So I guess I'd better think about moving it while it's still small. The question is - where? I think I may squeeze in nicely behind the sedge grass and next to the greenhouse, just so long as the sedge doesn't dwarf it too much while it's still young and a little short.

January Jobs

It probably feels the same every year, but it was a surprise yesterday when tidying up the garden to see so many things already springing up. The spring bulbs you kind of expect, and there were daffs and narcissi coming up. My grandpa's primulas (which my mum gave me) are flowering and looking good. And the sedums in the picture there are all curled up and ready to go. A little too soon by my reckoning so I dumped some more compost on top of them as mulch. But I am worried to see my globe alliums popping up already, both in pots and in the beds. I might move the pot into the greenhouse in cold spells to protect them.

My Flickr set for December is here.

So jobs done in the last couple of days have been:
*rake up leaves for leaf mould, stored in a bin liner by the compost bin
*turn the compost - ugh
*keep mulching things that insist on poking through, like the sedums.

Blogging again

New Year, old resolution, to keep using a blog to record what's going on in my garden so I don't forget. I read all over the place little pointers like remember to prune your dogwood hard back sometime or other but I forget when and then forget to do it! The aim is to keep recording what I've done and when I've done it here! And I'd like to use some kind of calendar function to remind me what's coming up. But I'm not sure if this works like that.