GBBD from a cold January London

Did anyone think we could have summer temperatures to last us all winter?? Well, one can only hope – but alas, all good things come to an end and the last week it has been cold in Britain, bitterly cold. Not just low temperatures but the bone chilling wind here in London makes the around 5 plus Celsius feel like well below zero. To be honest I would rather have proper cold winter weather like in Norway than this raw, cold wind in London. Or, at least your average winter weather in Norway. Mind you, the other day I spoke to a friend who lives in Northern Norway where I used to live from I was 7 until I was 16, that day it was minus 27C there (-16.6F) - ordinary winter weather for January for that area. I suppose everything’s relative! I remember what that kind of weather was like, the coldest I ever experienced was a winter when I was 11 or 12 or so when we had 5 days of minus 40-43 degrees C (43 C is 45.4F). We all went to school, people went to work, life went on pretty much as normal. It was winter. Here in Britain they have huge warning campaigns on TV and radio every time it is about to rain more than a few mm and if there is even the slightest hint of a snow flurry, the amber and red warning signs are flagged up everywhere. I think people get desensitised to all the warnings. They should be used when there is an unusual or dangerous weather event, not just because it will snow or rain. Anyway, that was my way of telling myself that perhaps it hasn’t been so cold after all. Who am I kidding, yesterday it was sooooo cold I didn’t even go outside, I filmed and took photos of the birds in the garden through my kitchen window despite beautiful sunny weather!

The cold weather is only going to last another few days and then it’s back to pretty mild weather again. The downside of higher temperatures is more rain, which we definitely don’t need more of.

The garden looks calm in the low, hazy January sunshine.

I can’t wait for that sunshine to take a bit more, just enough so I can feel it on my face. Another 4 weeks will make such a difference.

I have got another raised bed since my last post, I needed another one so I have somewhere to dump excess soil when I plant. It’s funny how much soil one is left with after digging a hole and filling it in again! When the second raised bed is filled it will get strawberry plants too, just like the first one. Just think about it, in less than 5 months I will be eating strawberries from these beds. Yum!

This is where I am working at the moment, trying to get some of the spring plants in the ground before they wake up too much – although some of them are already wide awake, or they never went to bed. I have anemone, arums, arisaemas and trilliums all on their way up in the pots, and the other day I noticed several of the Dicentra formosa shooting already. One thing I know for sure, with all the plants I have lost due to moving house and with the slightly bigger garden I have here in my new house – I don’t have enough plants to fill all the beds! What a luxury problem. I will need to get more plants! After having had to restrict myself in my previous garden for the last good few years because I ran out of space it feels rather exhilarating to be able to look for new plants, even perhaps (slightly) bigger plants than I have ever looked at before. OK, only other plantaholics will understand that one – but think handbags and shoes, it’s not that different really - I spend my money on my garden, other people choose differently. The budget for new plants is....shoestring as usual. Beg, borrow and steal springs to mind. Some plant swapping in late spring would come in handy I think.

In my last post I told you about my attempt to feed the squirrels with peanuts from a ground feeder so they would leave my plant pots with spring bulbs in peace. That was the general idea at least. Did it work? Ha! The squirrel - and two of his mates came here and stuffed their bellies and then they ran around the garden and deposited peanuts into most of the 600 or so plant pots I have in my garden, every day for about a week. Out with some compost, in with a nut and then squash a bit on top. I went around and put the compost back into the poor plants at a rate that always seemed to be slower than the squirrels managed to get it out. So finally I stopped the ground feeder and bought a hanging peanut feeder instead. The squirrels don’t like this feeder, they have been eating from it but I guess it is too much work hanging upside down eating just small bits. So now they have resorted to DIG UP AGAIN ALL THE NUTS THEY BURIED! I am back to rescuing plants and putting compost back into pots. I hope the squirrels remember where they have buried all the nuts, they are supposed to be good at remembering, I wouldn’t like to think they come back emptying the same pots over and over, looking for the same nuts. So hopefully this is temporary until they have found all the peanuts, then they will move on to something else I suppose. There’s always emerging crocuses, a squirrel favourite. I have about 2.000 crocuses on the way up......

The birds are enjoying the new peanut feeder just as much as the fat balls. Sorry I don’t have any close-ups for you, they are so cautious of me so it is difficult to take photos outside and I still don’t have a proper zoom lens for my camera. If you click on the photo and get an enlargement you will at least see that the bird on top and bottom right is a Great tit and bottom left is Blue tit.

In expectation of the Arctic weather this weekend with -1 or -2C and perhaps an hour of sleet (sorry, couldn’t resist!), I have put all my pelargoniums in my shed. There isn’t much light in here with just a small window, but it’s better than being turned to mush. All it takes is one really cold night, so far we had one frost night last November and that’s all we have had. And now a frosty week-end. That can very well be winter over for us here in London. I won’t mind, let the spring roll in, I am more than ready!

Many of the plants in my garden are ready for spring too, the first Iris reticularis are flowering.

Schizostylis coccinea 'Pink Princess' is still flowering but looks a bit sad in this cold weather.

And I have roses too, not bad for January – a bit tatty from the rain the other day though. I have started to prune my roses so many buds are going in the compost bin. That feels rather awful, but no matter what time I prune I have rosebuds so it’s better to do it now when there are less buds than later in the spring.

The hellebores are in full flower, and at the bottom right is a flower from my cream pot rose. Maybe you remember it from my previous garden? I took it with me and it is now planted in the rose bed here in my new garden.

I also took with me most of the Helleborus niger I had in my previous garden, some older ones in the ground and some younger ones in pots. Here they all are planted together, and with some cyclamens I have grown from seed. To the right are some inherited daffodils that are mainly coming up blind. They are everywhere in the garden and at some point I might need to dig up the bulbs to get rid of them, but I thought I would give them all ONE chance to sort themselves out. One spring and summer with no weeds obscuring the sunlight and a nice dash of fertiliser to each clump. Perhaps they will recover and produce flowers next year. Perhaps.

I dug up as many cyclamens I could find in my previous garden and those the vine weevils haven’t killed are now flowering beautifully. Here are the big ones, all the babies are placed a different place.

I really like these unusual and funny flowers in spectacular colours.

The heucheras are still going strong, 'Southern Comfort' is flowering again.

I have thrown away ALL my ordinary fuchsias, they went in the bin just before Christmas, due to Fuchsia Gall Mite. But I have kept the miniature fuchsias as they don’t seem to be affected by the disease. This is Fuchsia bacillaris 'Cottinghamii'  and it is flowering beautifully practically all year round.

Here is another plant that doesn’t seem to understand it’s winter on the calendar. Not only is it evergreen in my garden, but it has been flowering non-stop since May! I know them as Bacopa Abunda ‘Colossal White’, but they are also called Sutera cordata 'Abunda Giant White' and to make it even more difficult it seems this one can also be called Chaenostoma cordatum. A dear child has many names :-)

This child, sorry plant – has only one name, but it is a tongue twister of a name. Arisarum  proboscideum, or Mouse Plant if you want to do it easier. The mice are popping up everywhere, thankfully these mice are really nice and do no harm at all. The flower is the brown and white part and the tail of the ‘mouse’ is part of the flower. I love them!

This gerbera was one I picked up from Ikea just on my way to the till, I think it was £1 and from memory I think I bought it about 10 years ago. It has lived outside in the same container ever since and it flowers from late autumn, through winter until June or so when it takes a break and vanishes completely, leaves and all. I have no idea why this gerbera behaves like this, it should flower in the summer but this one is a bit different. This spring I thought I would give it a bigger pot, perhaps it would like that after 10 years?! And perhaps I can manage to take some cuttings so I can get a spare one should this one decide it has had enough. The bottom right cyclamen is an old one too, I think it is more than 10 years old and I didn’t want to leave it behind so up it went and it is currently living in a pot, hopefully soon back into soil.

Among all the seasonally confused plants there are some that are bang on schedule too. In amongst the emerging daylilies there are snowdrops in flower. I have already some snowdrops in pots that have flowered and gone over by now, but those in the ground were planted very late and are therefore late to emerge – well, late for my garden anyway! Sorry I don’t have a close-up for you but my body was too cold and in too much pain to be crawling around on the ground today when taking the photos so this is as close as I got when sitting on my stool. If you click on the photo and get it enlarged you will see the snowdrops better.

Final photo is of my apple tree, this is one of my next projects once the weather gets a bit warmer. I have never had an apple tree before so I have had to educate myself through reading online. I know this tree needs pruning and that it will be a good time to do it now. From what I have read online I have found the general rules:

The aim is to create an open, goblet shape with a framework of four to five main branches.

Ehhh, I wonder how many branches there are here?

First, remove all dead and broken branches and any low branches that obstruct passage.

The first part is easy, the second not so easy, I wish the tree didn’t have so many low branches I can walk right into. 

Remove branches that are badly placed or crossing, and any tall, centrally placed branches that block air and light from the centre of the tree and are hard to reach for picking.

Well, that one is pretty impossible, at least in first pruning. I think I will need to take a bit every year over many years.

Remove or shorten any branches that are growing too close together - with less than 60cm (2ft) between them if next to each other, or with less than 90cm (3ft) between them if growing one above the other.

Huh? ALL the branches are growing closer together than 2ft vertically and 3 ft horizontally!

Old, neglected trees are best treated by pruning over 3 or 4 years. Otherwise there will be excessive growth if you prune too hard. The more you cut, the more it will grow!

Oh my....can I get a good tree surgeon that fits into my shoestring budget?! I think I have to watch some YouTube movies and see if I can perhaps get a grip on this myself first.

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Anyway…..a gardener is never short of things to do! And if I don’t have things I can do in the garden because it is raining too much or it is just too cold, I can always sit and write on my blog. This month I have been blogging for 5 years and I have written 320 posts. I have 6769 comments, nearly half of them are my replies to you all, but even so, the fact that visitors have left comments over 3,000 times on my blog is rather humbling, thank you all. The first year I wrote my blog as a diary for myself and didn’t really think anyone would read it – and hardly anyone did. But since starting out, 193,338 people have visited my blog. Some posts have been modestly visited, some much better – for all sorts of reasons. When Googling for something online it is amazing what you can end up with and I suppose some of my visitors have ended up on my blog looking for other things. You never know what’s going to catch on in the blogosphere. In June 2012 I wrote a post I called ‘Will it ever stop raining??’ So far that post has been visited 1801 times – it is possible that some of those people did not know it was a gardening blog, but even so! I wrote a post in 2013 about the different aids I use as a disabled in the garden, 1178 people have visited that post so far - and including my replies, that post has 65 comments. You can find the post here.

When I first started blogging I thought it would be something I would do for perhaps a few months or maybe a year. I NEVER thought I would still be blogging after 5 years and have no intention of giving it up. I have however reduced the amount of posts per month considerably, not because I have run out of things to say, far from it! I could probably find something to write about every day of the week, every week of the year. I just haven’t got time to do it, and I haven’t got time to reply to all the comments and visit back to all the lovely people commenting, which is a rather important part of having a live and active blog so my solution to this has been to reduce the amount of posts to 2-3 a month. When I have photos from the garden I am just itching to show off, I post them on my Facebook page instead - and you can send me a friend request to follow my garden from Facebook too. Look for the Facebook icon on the left side of this page, under the Blog Archive.

I am linking today’s post to Carol at May Dreams Gardens, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts.

Until next time, take care.