Winter has arrived in London​

It's last week of November, bone chillingly cold, windy and just above freezing - typically start of winter in London. I even heard on the news today that there was almost 10 minutes of a few snow flurries in the air. Yep, it comes on the news when there is a few snow flurries in the air in London....doesn't happen that often you know! But nothing stops for a bit of cold weather in my garden, everywhere you turn there are flowers, you just have to look a bit closer and they might not be as showy as in June and July although some flowers are exceptionally showy and photogenic.

Patience, patience

They say patience is a virtue, but my goodness – my patience has been wearing thin lately when it comes to my bathroom adaptation. I have worked hard to drive the case forward since moving in here in May 2015 and I have no idea how long it would have taken if I had just left everything to the council, but this week the work started, FINALLY!!!

Roses, roses and more roses

Can you have too many roses? Silly question really, of course you can’t!

I have managed to squeeze in 31 roses in my tiny garden, among a whole lot of other plants – and I think I can manage to fit in a few more roses if I look carefully. There are tall climbing roses and tiny miniature roses and everything between. I will show you a few today, but all 31 are flowering beautifully right now.

A pixie, a wizard and a green man

I seem to start every blog this year by apologising for being so absent – this month I have been so busy I didn’t even think I would be able to put together a blog post but I keep taking gardening photos all the time and I managed to film last Friday so here I am again, writing a last minute post.

The Serendipity Garden

The time has flown away for me again – I am sitting here with 3 hours to go before the end of March, trying to put together a post about what’s happening in my garden right now. I have been so busy my feet is hardly touching the ground so this post is going to be brief and I will let the photos speak for themselves. There is an end to all this – well, I keep reminding myself that, although the amount of red tape the council has managed to create regarding my bathroom renovation is astonishing. I still haven’t got a start date for the work, but I am slowly getting there – I hope!

Goodbye summer – EOMV September 2016

Here in London we have had a lovely September and a great end to an amazing summer. The late, cold spring and early summer is now a bleak memory and hardly worth thinking of - everything after 16th July has more than made up for the cold period before. Tomorrow we are promised a whole day of rain and showers. Yippy! That will do my garden good. There is no rain on the forecast for the next 10 days after tomorrow so I hope it rains buckets.

Endless London summer – EOMV 2016

It’s the last day of August, the last day of summer and autumn is officially starting tomorrow – but here in London the summer is far from over. We have had the best summer for years, once it finally got going, and the reminiscences of the unusually cold spring and early part of the summer is now a bleak memory. The good weather started on 16th July and today, nearly 7 weeks later I can look back on several short heatwaves with well over 30 degrees and the rest has been in the mid to high 20s. Last week we had 34 degrees a couple of days and for me that’s a bit too high, I am happier in the garden with around 25 degrees C. Despite having had some rain forecasted a couple of times we have only had proper rain once and it was a welcome 24 hours of rain – but that was back in July. Everything is really dry and the ghost of mildew is hovering over my garden, threatening to invade. So far I have managed to stay clear but all the watering is taking its toll. I wouldn’t mind 3-4 days of non-stop rain....

No August slump in my garden - GBBD

I started last post by saying summers are a bit hit and miss here in Britain – but here in the South East we can’t complain about the weather the last 4 weeks, it has been just warm enough to be called summer, not too hot and with plenty of sunshine. Only thing missing would be rain for a few hours every night so I wouldn’t have to do all the watering – but I am being picky now! It has actually rained only once the last 4 weeks, it was a good rainfall of almost 24 hours, but being nearly 4 weeks ago it is now a bleak memory for my garden. The clay soil is bone dry and like concrete and I have given up getting anything more planted a long time ago, it will have to wait until the winter when we get proper, prolonged rain again.

Summer weather in London

Summers in Britain  is a bit hit and miss, some are nice and warm with just about the right amount of rain – and some are cool and never seem to get started. We had an unusually cold spring and early summer this year, but 2 weeks ago we got a mini heatwave which I suppose could make up for the missing summer – but it doesn’t really work like that! We are not used to such high temperatures, and neither are the plants in our gardens – we all suffer a bit in 33-35 degrees C (91- 95F), and I have now quite a few plants with sunburned leaves and a couple of hydrangeas were burned to a crisp. The heatwave didn’t last long, we have been back to 22-25 degrees C this week and both garden and gardener is much happier with that kind of temperatures.

Colourful July flowers - GBBD

It is the middle of the month and Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day - and I have been pondering about what to call today’s post. I named the previous post ‘From a rainy London’ and I am afraid that title is still just as appropriate despite that we have been repeatedly promised better weather. OK, so we have had one day here and there without rain, today was such a day and it was brilliant the few moments when the sun was shining. We might be in for a week of better weather starting from tomorrow, but we have been promised hot summer weather so many times now so I am taking one day at the time. Yesterday I had my iPad with me out in the garden where I can see BBC weather for my postcode hour by hour and for every hour it said sunny intervals – while the rain kept coming and going and I had to seek shelter in the shed together with my camera. So much for local weather forecast!

I have so much in flower right now that I can't possibly show you everything, and even just one photo of each plant would have been way too many photos so today I have used the mosaic feature extensively. Fill up a mug of your favourite brew and come for a walk with me in my July Garden.

EOMV June 2016 from a rainy London

It is End of Month View again and I usually open to say something about the weather the last month, but what can I say this time to describe the miserable summer weather we have had, except call it…....MISERABLE! An afternoon or morning here and there without rain doesn’t in any way make up for the next 3, 4 or 5 days of rain. And that’s how it has been for ages now. I did water my garden a bit in May, but I haven’t touched the hose for a very long time, it hasn’t been necessary, not even for the pots and containers and they usually dry out even when it rains. But the kind of rain we have had lately has been buckets at the time so even the containers have been happy. In fact, the garden is mostly very happy with the weather – lots of rain and rather chilly, with max day temp of 16-22 degrees (60-71 F) – perfect for most of my plants. I am the only one not happy with a summer like that. Oh, and my dahlias, they are not happy either. Here in my new garden the soil is very different to my previous one, much more clay, so the soil, combined with heavily saturated ground made the dahlias rot, all of them – all the ones I planted. Those few I didn’t get around to plant are still fine growing in pots, but all 20-22 or so that I planted in the ground are lost, never even emerged. Oh well, maybe dahlias won’t be a feature here in my new garden then!

June roses - GBBD 2016

It is middle of June and it is 4 weeks since I came out of hospital – no idea where those 4 weeks have gone! Thank you to all well wishes on my previous post, I am getting better and have had help in my garden both from gardening friends and from the Great British Weather – it has rained and rained and rained and....good for my garden - and good for me so I haven’t had to water. The very cold and late spring made everything bloom much later than normal this year, I didn’t have a single rose in April which is very unusual for my garden, now I have roses, lots of roses – many of them presented here, but I thought perhaps showing you all 26 would be a bit too much....oh, yes, I have got a few more roses here in my new garden compared to my previous garden – more space, more roses. I think I might be able to squeeze in possible one or two more eventually! But here are today’s GBBD photos.

Ill in bed again - a very different EOMV post

I don’t normally write much about my many different conditions, illnesses and disabilities – I have from time to time written a bit, mainly to explain why I can’t work in my garden like other people do – or at the same pace as most people do. But I have deliberately kept my health problems away from my blog. You see, my gardening blog is my way of escaping my real life. Here no one knows me, no one sees me, no one sees my pain and I can pretend I am almost normal. I can be a completely different person than I actually am. I can be the person I would HAVE LIKED TO BE – if life had been different.

Topsy-turvy weather in London – GBBD May-16

May is a month with all sorts of weather here in Britain – from really nice and warm during the day to night frost if you are in a more rural spot. It is hard to keep up with which plants are allowed to stay out and which are too tender so in my previous garden where I had no greenhouse, shed or even a garage I just had two choices: outside - or not at all. Here in my new garden I also have a third option; a shed, but I am pretty fed up dragging plants in and out of the shed so now I have stopped. Last week a tray of begonia seedlings died during a cold night. Oh well, not a big loss, didn’t cost me anything as the cormlets were free, but it was a bit annoying. But everything else has toughened up and looks fine and I assume this is it for cold nights – surely, this MUST be it?! The weirdest, coldest spring I can ever remember here in London.

End of Month View – April 2016

It is a whole year since I moved house and garden – amazing how time is flying! I had 2 moving days, one day with my house content where the huge lorry drove one trip with all my things from the house - and one day where the same lorry drove TWICE with all the plants from my garden. In my book that’s just the right priority!

A slow approach - March -16, EOMV

We have just had another storm here, it’s become much easier to keep track of the storms since they started giving Atlantic storms names too, and with storm Katie just passed the total are now 11 this season. That’s more storms than usual - and Katie hit us hard here in the south-east, we are not used to proper storms. I am amazed though how sheltered my new garden is compared to just the front side of the house, and thanks to this I had no serious damage after storm Katie. But there were plenty of minor damage, and most of the daffodils that were in flower are now broken and I have taken those that could be rescued inside in vases so I at least get to enjoy them for a few days before they go off. There were camellia flowers ripped off in the high winds too and there were lots of overturned pots, but no serious damage. Next storm on the list is Lawrence and there are another 9 names after that again, ending with Wendy. Plenty of scope for more storms before the season is finished – I sincerely hope we won’t have to use the whole list this year!

EOMV February 2016

In some places around the world, spring lasts about a week, it is an explosion in nature, the snow melts in record time and suddenly everything is bursting out in green and colours everywhere. In London it is a rather drawn-out affair that lasts about....well, I would say it lasts about 6 months or so, since most years we don’t really get a winter to talk about. Autumn usually ends beginning of December and although it says winter on the calendar, it goes straight into spring mode with spring plants and bulbs emerging from there on. And the official spring starts from 1st March so now I can look back at what kind of ‘winter’ we had: no snow on the ground, and 10 minutes of a few flurries in the air one very late night. That was the snow. As for frost - one frost night in November and one in February where it dipped just barely below freezing in my garden. We might get another frost night next week, but it will probably be another one just barely below freezing, if at all. I realise that London is an exception, just a few miles from here it has been much colder and places like Oxford and Cambridge has had down to minus 7C many times this winter. The day temperature has been lower in February than in December and January, which was unusually mild. It all evens out in the end!

GBBD in London, February -16

Last time I wrote a post was 2 weeks ago, I wrote about the stormy season here in Britain and that we are not really that affected here in the south east. Looks like I spoke too soon....every now and then we get a storm that hits us right in the face, and Imogene was a storm like that. Last Saturday I had water streaming in through the ceiling light in my living room from water coming in through the roof and loft. Water and electricity doesn’t really go well together....and there were too high winds for the council to get a man on the roof to fix the leak so it was Wednesday morning before my roof was fixed. Oh well, at least my garden is fine, never mind my living room floor!! The only problem I had in my garden was that my solar light tree tried to take off like a rocket a couple of times because the soil is so wet and loose so the short anchor stakes provided was not enough to keep it in place. In the end I had to find some longer stakes to anchor the light with and now it will take a triple hurricane for the solar light to launch should it want to emigrate somewhere else.

Hints of spring, EOMV January -16

It’s still stormy season on the British Isles and storm Gertrude has just passed whilst storm Henry is waiting in the wings and will land on us on Monday. Here in the relatively quiet corner of the South-East we are not so affected by bad weather in general and storms in particular and although it is windy every time we have a new storm, nothing has been damaged in my garden and I have had no flooding issues to worry about. But parts of my garden seem to have rather bad drainage and are now so soggy after all the rain that I try not to walk in those beds for now. Other parts of my garden, especially under the two tall ceanothus’ trees are still bone dry and will need to be watered as soon as I get some plants in the ground. When that will be is an open question....work has been slow the last month. It has been cold and wet and the number of days possible to work outside rather few and far between. Hopefully February will bring more good days – I don’t mind it being cold, that’s just a question of putting on the right type of clothes – it’s the rain I can’t cope with, getting wet makes me too cold. When it rains I am stuck inside watching my garden through my windows, just aching to get outside again.

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!