April and the extended day makes the prospect of gardening more appealing. It has been a long and soggy journey and the ground is still wet, but somehow the extra light and the arrival of leaf lifts us and there is a desire to get on. The sudden lime green flash in hedgerows, almost overnightRead More
Wet, wet and a bit more for luck. My goodness we have had some rain. The ground is saturated, tough enough for gardeners, it must be a nightmare for farmers. It is very frustrating; you’ve really had to seize your moments to get out. Thankfully I did. I shifted a couple of shrubs, did someRead More
Soggy, soggy, soggy, what a frustrating few weeks to start our new year. The ground has been so difficult to get on, even the lawn has squelched like a laden sponge and whilst there hasn’t been a huge amount to plant, the ground has been almost unworkable. I did however manage to get my bareRead More
Hooray, the elections done, and we are all excited at the prospect of a new and bright beginning, well those of us who garden are anyway. I love packing up the old year and preparing for new adventures. The tidying up is taking forever though, the weather having been a tad challenging. The wet hasRead More
The finishing post is once more in sight, another year flown away, a different mash of the same ingredients. Not a bad year overall, there were certainly plenty of leaves and those that are falling are making for a bumper compost heap and the winter greens look promising. The wet has been a bit tiresomeRead More
What a joy September proved to be, with some delightful days and a real awareness of autumn knocking. I do love the low, chill watery sunrises and the smell of the changing season that sneaks across the land after dawn. The weather though hasn’t knocked out the summer crops and many things have just keptRead More
Mmmmmmm…so we waited for the rain and then it came, the perfect fillip for new plantings. The beans romped and everything puffed up and grew masses of leaves. The turn around was amazing, at the start of June, the message was that rainfall was at an all time low and then within days the newsRead More
Another interesting month passes through, with days of extremes, biting wind, torrential rain, blistering sunshine and hail that lay like snow. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence and the gardeners twitched, hesitated and then did what they do and battled on, it being after all the start of another season. Certainly, you have had to haveRead More
Tick, tick, tick, the seconds turn to minutes and another month is gone. Totally mad, Christmas seems so far behind us and the seeds that were my Christmas present sit on my desk and tease me. January was an acceptable mix of confusion, with the weather not wanting to work to a plan, so weRead More
Hooray, I can see the light. With January behind us, the spirit starts to rise, the extended days just 8 weeks away. The winter has been, well, wintry with a treacherous mix of conditions, changing by the hour. Every second person nursed a cough or a sore throat and whilst there were outdoor jobs thatRead More