End of Month View - December

It’s the last day of December and the last day of 2014 – time for a bit of reminiscence about the past year and also previous years. Today I have been blogging for exactly 4 years and written 292 posts. What started as something I was a bit curious about has turned in to a nice hobby I am certain I will keep doing in the future. I am not the most frequent blogger, however whenever I do write a post I usually write really, REALLY long posts with lots of photos. I kind of put blogging to one side and do lots of other things between each post, but then I realise so much has happened in my garden since last post – and I want to show you as much as possible, and I end up with very long posts each time. Sorry if you are the type of blog reader that prefer one-liners and just one photo, not much of that around here!

Merry Christmas from London

It’s ‘little Christmas Eve’ today, the day before the big day for many people around the world, or two days before the big day for other people, depending on which day you celebrate Christmas – if you celebrate at all. I used to celebrate Christmas on the 24th while still living in Norway, but after moving to Britain I have had to postpone the celebration a day, as the 24th is just a normal working day here. My Christmas celebration is mainly about spending the day with family members, exchanging gifts and having extra nice food I normally don’t have. But I also like to surround myself with light inside and outside in these dark, short days of December, while waiting for the days to get longer.

December flowers

It’s time for another Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post and I’d like to show you what’s flowering in my tiny London garden. Being December you might think that can’t be much but in my garden there is something in flower every single week of the year. December so far has been cold and we have had one night below freezing. That’s one night more than the whole of last winter – and winter last till end of February so I hope this is not a sign of a colder winter than usual. Despite temperatures between 2-8 degrees C the last 2 weeks the garden is still looking green and the spring bulbs are continuing to pop up everywhere.

End of Month View – November

It’s the last day of November, I made my movie yesterday, and just like last month we had an absolutely glorious end to the month. It was more like a nice spring day, with 14 degrees C and nice sunshine. It has rained a lot this month, but November is the rainy month of the year in my area so that’s just normal. I have had no frost in my garden so far, actually nowhere near frost, not even at night, and even though we are expecting some colder nights next week it will not get low enough to hit frost. 

November in London

It’s garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day again; middle of November and five ½ weeks to Christmas – distinctively chilly with cool days and a lot of rain, but it’s also only 2 weeks since we had day temperature of 24 degrees C. Yes, London can be very mixed in the autumn, but I doubt we will have another day of above 20 degrees C until late spring next year. But even though the weather stays in the low teens now, my garden keeps going and noting really stops, it just changes to a slightly slower gear for a few months. There has been reports of ‘season confused’ plants around the country, I have some too, I guess the nice summer, cool August and then warm September and October made some plants slightly out of balance. However, as I am writing this, the weather is very much like it usually is in November, the rain is hammering down and it is very windy with top temp of only 12-13 degrees. So what could possibly be flowering right now then? Quite a lot actually! As usual I have been having difficulties choosing what to show you, I can’t really show every single plant in flower, you would be sitting here until tomorrow reading – I will spare you that, but I have made a careful selection of the best bits – lots of photos even so.

End of Month View – October

Today was the last day of October, and what a day it was! Glorious sunshine and 23 degrees C – that was the temperature officially for London, in my garden it tipped slightly higher in the afternoon. Not a bad way to end October. The next few days the temperature is going to drop around 10 degrees. We will certainly notice that! I am sure today’s summerlike weather must have broken yet another weather record, but who’s counting, we seem to have broken one weather record after the other the last few years, weather records somehow seem to have gone out of fashion. Who cares, it was amazing today!

The wacky aphids are back!

Two years ago I wrote about the yellow-orange aphids invading my lovely Dregea sinensis, maybe you remember them? If not, or if you are new to my blog since then, let me fill you in: the aphids are called Aphis nerii and if you are from Florida or southern Spain you have probably seen them and hated the sight of them many times. If you are from more northern parts of the world you have probably not seen them or not even heard of them.

October GBBD in London

It’s that time again, Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, and I can’t understand it’s a whole month since last GBBD post! October so far has been chilly and the rain we didn’t get all September we certainly have got the last 2 weeks. I went outside yesterday to take some photos for this post, in pouring rain with an umbrella, realising that I had not been out in the garden for more than a week because it’s been raining every time I wanted to go outside.  The forecast is promising us some warmer weather the next 4-5 days, and possibly no rain during the day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday – but you never know, that might change again by the time we get to the end of the week.