My garden in mid December

Mid December in London – what words springs to your mind....perhaps drab, brown, rainy and cold? Not in my garden! I was out all Saturday photographing for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and with 13 degrees C (55F) and a bleak sunshine it was lovely albeit a bit windy. I struggled to keep the flowers still enough to take the pictures at times but hey, that’s one of the challenges of gardening photography. Just when you have the right focus and perfect angle then whoosh!....comes another gust.

Decorating for Christmas - part 1

My collection of orchids is currently counting 8 different pots of various sizes, 3 of them are in my living room, the rest are crammed next to my small kitchen window. 6 of the orchids are Phalaenopsis orchids and although I have read many places that these orchids don’t have a particular flowering time and can flower whenever, in my house they all follow a set routine and start to send up flower spikes one by one during the autumn and early winter. At one point in early spring I usually have all of them in flower and it is a spectacular sight!

December roses in London

Winter started officially last Sunday here in Britain and last for 3 months until end of February. My garden doesn’t really look that different to last month – a few plants have died down and some plants have started to lose their leaves, other again are not as prolific in their flower production so OK, it feels like autumn but winter? Not really - not yet.

Happy Birthday Cat

November is the month my cat has birthday, I am not exactly sure what date, but it is probably in the second half so I thought I would mark it here with another post about him – and some photos. Today’s post is part following up on repeat posts from 2011 and part new, as some of the info here had to be updated.

Wordless Wednesday

Early morning dew.

Half full or half empty – repeat

It’s late November and even though I am outside in my garden every day and I still have lots of plants in flower, it is definitely a quiet time of the year in terms of gardening. I have been blogging for almost 3 years and in my first year of blogging I didn’t have that many visitors. I have therefore decided to recycle a few of my posts from the first year and hope you enjoy them again even if you might have read them before. Here is the first repeat post.

November splendour

November in the northern hemisphere is usually thought of as a time where we endure cold, rain, the occasional storm, perhaps frost or even snow – and for most people it is a definite end to the gardening year, if the trowels and secateurs haven’t been put away already. In my London garden I’ve certainly had my fair share of rain and the occasional storm, but my garden year never ends, I just change to a different gear. I put on layers of clothes and my insulated wellies and spend shorter time in the garden, and I work for the most, no sitting down enjoying the weather and the view – too cold!

After the storm

The storm a week ago swept through my London garden with ferocious winds and it rained buckets for about 18 hours. I had prepared my garden for the storm, but you can’t really plan for any possible event, no one knew where the storm would hit hardest. It turned out I was lucky. I had put all my pots on the ground and had lied down the magnolia growing in a container, and hoped for the best. It went better than I had hoped.