Good Things This Week ...

By Cathythompson
Cyclamen coum braving the cold wind I was putting the daily temperature readings into my  gardening journal this morning and read my comment from last year: 'might be fun to have a blog?' A bit of a wake-up call - for weeks I've ignored the fact that now I have that blog! In fact I'm nearly up to my first anniversary of starting out as a blogger at the beginning of March 2013. Not sure if that's cause for celebration or not? It does take over your spare time a bit.
   In fairness to lazy me, there's really been nothing special to record in pictures. Not so anyone passing by would sit up and take notice. I guess that's the bind with a new garden - there still aren't enough plants and there's an awful lot of dirty work going on. But, in spite of the fact that I'm not tapping the old keyboard continually these days, things have been happening.
   In the course of the last month I've completed my bareroot plantings for this winter: all of the coloured-stemmed willows, a little row of four Amelanchier lamarkii (where my husband didn't want them) and a Cornus mas (all purchased last year, with no time to plant them). The cornus brings back fine memories of mature specimens at Kew, although I doubt I'll live long enough to walk beneath its branches and sniff that sharp, sweet scent that always takes me back to winters as a student gardener, feverishly botanising in my lunch hour so I wouldn't make a fool of myself in the test that we endured every fortnight.
My little bareroot Spiraea x vanhouttei had virtually no roots at all when I dug it up from its temporary home. Perhaps the water voles have eaten them? I realize now that the landscaping fabric I've been using is a favorite place for the voles, who adore walls and slopes (in France these days they often set up home quite far from the water). I use it as a temporary cover in areas I want to begin to cultivate, and then lift it off to get going. When I took it away from the second area on the veggie plot there were many little telltale holes, evidence of a happy vole population (and a threat to the gardener's peace of mind).
   And so, I find myself in the same mindset as this time last year - walking round suspiciously eyeing up all the little holes I see in my borders. I think most are innocent enough. Although I've found more tulips lying on the surface than I did last year. Only time - about a month? - will tell.
Above you can see that the hazels have been coppiced and the winter knot garden is ready for planting. Because the box blight was so bad last year, I'm going to lay a square of landscaping fabric and insert cuttings from my own healthy plants through it, to protect them (hopefully) from rain that will splash the spores remaining in the ground after I ripped out the infected plants in the autumn. The idea of investing in more diseased material is not appealing. My healthiest plants are up on the edges of the terraces where there is plenty of air circulating and, as I've previously mentioned, I didn't clip any of the box in the garden last year because that serves to encourage the disease. But then there's the tricky issue of those mulch-loving voles to be got over. Snowdrop 'Sam Arnott' The snowdrops are up. The patches of common G. nivalis, 'Sam Arnott' and 'Wareham' (a G. plicatus selection as you can tell from the beautiful foliage in the picture below) that I planted in 2012, my first year, are thriving.   Unfortunately G. elwesii has turned up its toes - can't find a trace. I noticed this week that there's a double snowdrop up in the Mirror Garden - perhaps a sad reminder of our garden in Ireland, from which we've so few plants left. Nick went on a little bulb raid there, just before we sold the house and was more successful than I realised, I guess. I couldn't bear to go back myself.
I've bought so many snowdrops in my time (as well as being given them by some expert galanthophiles when I still lived in England) - but you really need to settle to enjoy them. I always swore I'd add three new types every year (they are expensive, aren't they?), but  2014 might be the exception.
Galanthus 'Wareham' Poor 'Sam Arnott' without the company of the hazel catkins - next year again, hopefully I've a lot in common with my Canadian grandfather who fought at Paaschendaele. Heavy mud that clings to my boots, continuous rain, little beauty to distract the mind or the heart. But fortunately this is only my garden, although I often become submerged in the muddiness of it all.
   Finally, there's nowhere left to hide. I've completed the heavier work that I could afford this winter (except for clearing away the rubbish - I can still do that!). The most pressing task is now the terracing of the vegetable garden. There are already young seedlings sprouting that are going to want to get out there and carve some sort of life for themselves in my mud during March.  
There are more than the usual number of hopeful signs in the garden in this mild February. Today, as well as enjoying the promise of flowers on a green Helleborus orientalis, I was shocked to see a swelling foliage bud on my white clematis (don't know the name, it was left in the garden). It's due to move up to the Rose Walk when the soil dries out and warms up a bit, but the idea that it is preparing itself for spring on 9 February is a bit frightening. 
  In the course of an afternoon I mostly battled the cold north-east wind (although the thermometer showed an incredible 5 degrees), pruned and tied in roses - and relished the tiny bit of sun that's waking all those plants up too early.