Sink or swim!

About 2 years ago I wrote a post about ‘the troublesome corner’ in my garden. I told the story about how I had tried for years to make things grow in that bottom right corner and that a combination of dry shade, cats and foxes jumping over the fence and foxes digging a tunnel under the fence through to next door garden made that corner a real challenge. You can read that post here to get the rest of the details.

A pictures says ....

At this time of year I usually take lots of pictures in my garden, documenting every emerging plant and every plant in flower. The last 2 months I have taken so few pictures I couldn’t really believe it when I started adding them up. I have wanted to go outside this week to take some pictures for my blog but to be honest it has been so cold I haven’t really been up for any photo safari, not even just outside in my garden.

It’s spring! uhm...January!

I know this is the time for looking back at the ups and downs in the garden for 2012. I had many ups and downs in 2012, in the garden and otherwise. I am going to run very quickly through 2012 and just say that overall it was a pretty s**t year. The weather was s**t here in Britain most of the time, the wettest on record, and I spent most of it in hospital or recovering at home from various medical issues. That was 2012, and 2013 can only be better in every way! But let's move swiftly on to 2013 :-)

Plans for my corner

Once upon a time I had a nice Holly tree in my garden, it wasn’t that big when I moved in here 11 years ago, but Holly trees are relatively fast growers and mine was no exception. By this summer it had a healthy height of around 8 metres.

Early bright morning

I am ending November on my blog with a photo I took this morning, just before the sun was getting up – and just before I was getting back to bed again. I have had a 48 hour migraine coming and going and my body clock is thoroughly confused again, I try to sleep as much as I can when I have migraines like that, it’s the only thing to do.

You can’t be serious?!

Every Sunday I have the same ritual, checking the 10 day weather forecast to see what to expect. As a keen gardener the weather is important to me, it has a huge impact on many aspects of gardening, in terms on what to expect to flower, when to water, when to sow, when to do almost anything – including when I can go outside and do what I like best; spend time in my garden. Mind you, I do put on 4 layers of clothes in February and venture out, despite bitterly cold winds, and I have also been found in the garden in bucketing rain – but that’s not very often.

Will it ever stop raining??

I am still on the mend from my pancreatitis last month, taking it easy, sleeping a lot, not doing much and my garden is pretty much taking care of itself these days. Fortunately I guess, the rain has come back; we have had so much rain that the hosepipe ban we were threatened to have to struggle with until Christmas now is likely to be lifted within the next month or so. Good for the water reservoirs, good for our gardens, not so good for sun thirsty people of Britain.

What’s eating my garden?!

We have sunshine! After something like 35 days of rain, either during daytime or night time – or both, we have finally got a few days with sun :-) I spent yesterday outside in the garden, and although it was a chilly wind, the sun made up for any lack of feeling of warmth.

It’s still raining!

With the risk of repeating myself – it is still raining and it is a weeks since my last post where I was moaning a bit about the rain, although grateful enough that I didn’t have to water my parched garden, but enough is enough! Since Thursday the 5th April it has rained EVERY day. Not bucketing down all the time, and not all through the day, but we have had rain every day at some point either during the day, evening or night. And it is still raining.

Be careful what you wish for....

Here in London we have had the driest two winters on record, and after the snow we had in the first week of February it hardly rained a drop. Finally the government decided that we were to have water restrictions and a hosepipe ban introduced on the 5th April as our water storages are at the lowest on record. I am on a water meter and pay per litre for water I use, so I really hoped we would get some rain soon for my parched garden as the free stuff from above doesn’t come at any cost or any work at all.

21.11. Autumn web-site photos

Seems like we have reached the end of the nice autumn weather; today it was a very typical November London weather with 11 degrees, a chilly wind and dense fog. We have had this weather for the last couple of days, with disruption to both roads and all major airports so I suppose everything is back to normal then! I am happy as long as we don’t get any snow, and there is no snow in sight yet, in fact, the temperatures are staying well above 10 degrees the whole coming week and not much below during the night, so I guess so far we aren’t going to get any of the extreme winter weather we had the last 2 winters.

10.11. Almost Christmas??

The amazing autumn weather is continuing here in London; I was at my local hospital yesterday to take a blood test and some people were walking around in shorts and T-shirts! Now that would have been taking it a bit far as for myself concerned, but I am still wearing the same jacket I have been wearing all summer when going out and my winter coat hasn’t been out of my wardrobe since late February….and it’s only just over 6 weeks till Christmas!

22.03. At Royal London

Hi, I hope you have had a good, interesting and productive day! I have had another time consuming day at the hospital, and yes, I am going to start this post with a bit of moaning today :-) I spend quite a lot of days per year at different hospitals around London, and quite often I think about how many hours I just waste waiting around doing nothing, when I could have been home wrapped up in bed or doing something useful. Take today for example, when I had an appointment for an endoscopy exam of my bladder – something I had been told was going to be very quick. This was my schedule:

21.01. Busy week

Hi, I haven’t had time to write for a few days, it’s been a very busy week with two hospital appointments this week and one appointment last Friday. It’s made me realise how much time I spend on all these hospital visits; not the actual time in with the doctor, because that might be just 20-30 minutes, but everything else can take up most of the day. Some of the hospitals I go to I can drive my own car, door to door, which is a great time saver, but the hospitals I go to in Central London I no longer am able to go to by public transport, so I need to go by hospital transport. It’s not possible to drive by own car to Central London, as parking is impossible, and anyway, for some reason, disabled parking permits are not recognised in Central London, the only city in Europe where the Blue Badge is disregarded! And even though

07.01. Foxes

The foxes have been very active outside my house during the night  this week. Being a typical owl myself, I can’t help hearing them when I sit late at night at my computer. Their bloodcurdling howls are the stuff of nightmares and if you have 3 or 4 foxes roaming your neighbouring streets at the same time, it can sound really eerie at times. If you have never heard the sound of the foxes, here’s a sound bite for you, just press the play button. (If you