Tag: Winter

Why I garden3 Comments

Moments of light: multiple gardening and wildlife advent calendars

Reclaiming Paradise

This year I set myself the challenge of two advent calendars: the hand drawn one, which is jollying along nicely, and finding something wild and wonderful in my surroundings every day. Here are some highlights: sprouts, red tinged lettuce, seedlings, peas, rhubarb, ladybird runner beans, snowdrops, strawberry and roses. On the wild and wonderful theme, we’ve had: trees in daylight and lit up at night at the Botanic Gardens, a heron by the river, wintersweet coming into bloom, a beautiful slug shown to me by my neighbour’s grandson and finally getting the Christmas cake baked. I have also been joining … Continue reading Moments of light: multiple gardening and wildlife advent calendars

Why I garden2 Comments

Mostly moss

Reclaiming Paradise

I’ve been doing some autumnal hacking stuff back in the garden and I can conclude that the main crop at the moment is moss. In the picture above you can see how it has almost completely covered our ancient stone cat, leaving it looking rather fluffy but not very stony. Meanwhile there is moss all round the pond and quite a lot in the pond as well. The pond has basically become a bog and I’m wondering if I might be able to grow my own peat bog there, doing my little bit for global warming. Maybe it will become … Continue reading Mostly moss

Why I garden5 Comments

Seeds: fantasy gardening

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s February and the weather is foul, despite some tiny moments of spring joy in the garden, it has to be seed ordering time. I try not to be wasteful in my seed ordering and I do have quite a lot left over from last year, including my carefully saved seeds: These are, I think, wallflowers, broccoli, garlic chives and, of course, peas. Despite all of these and the various packets in my ancient seed tin, I do need to order a few more. I try and do a careful census and make a note of what I need. This … Continue reading Seeds: fantasy gardening

Cooking and eating from the garden4 Comments

Dancing on Ice

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s still very icy here so not much happening in the garden but this little crocus is another tiny sign of spring. Meanwhile Bella has been exploring the frozen pond. She’s a great lover of water and the pond provides fascination for her all year round. Yesterday she spent a lot of time just sitting on the ice. What was she thinking about? Why did she do this? I don’t know. You tell me. The photos are a little blurry because they were taken through the window – if I’d gone outside after her she would have coming running in. … Continue reading Dancing on Ice

Why I garden6 Comments

Frosted fruit

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s been another gloomy week but there was some frost in the early part, to cheer us up. So here are six frosty things from the garden to cheer you up for today’s SixonSaturday I couldn’t resist these strawberry leaves, covered in furry icing sugar frost, but still with the promise of summer yet to come. 2. These frozen raindrops on the rose bush set me off on a ‘raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens..’ ear worm for the rest of the day 3. There were also frozen rain drops on this birch tree, with frosty teasels in the … Continue reading Frosted fruit

Why I garden3 Comments

Snow and ice

Reclaiming Paradise

Since my last snow post we’ve had more snow and ice in the garden, so there’s been no gardening happening here, just taking photos : The snow has mostly gone now but I loved watching the bird and animal tracks in the snow. The temperature fell to -7 last night which must be near a record for my garden and it was still -5 this morning when I went out to take photos. There were beautiful frost patterns on the shed window: I’ve also been feeding the birds again. I stopped feeding them a couple of years ago, when we … Continue reading Snow and ice

Why I garden12 Comments

Snow

Reclaiming Paradise

Here’s some snow around my garden pond to cheer you all up The frog and the cow are keeping guard though not showing the very high levels on the cowometer that we had during the Beast from the East in 2018. I had some vague plan to ‘do some gardening’ over the Christmas holidays but ice and snow have stopped me. On the other hand, the snow has covered up all the weeds and untidy stuff and it looks rather magical. Bella doesn’t agree I woke up far too early yesterday morning and went out into the moonlight to look … Continue reading Snow

Why I garden6 Comments

Dreich

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s been a bit of a dreich week. Here’s a Wild and Wonderful Advent Calendar update to cheer us all through these December days: Day 7: I got out for quite a long walk into town (when it wasn’t too dreich) and heard a woodpecker in these trees. Day 8: out for a walk along the river which had been impressively flooded. It looks more worrying than it was in practice. The path goes alongside this, not through it, but it was pretty muddy and we were pleased to be wearing walking boots. Day 9: I didn’t get outside in … Continue reading Dreich

Why I garden2 Comments

December: four seasons in one week

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s been a bit bleak here for the last few days but today the sun shone and I got out in the garden and along to the allotment for the first time in weeks. The wintersweet flowers are starting to open in the front garden (photo above). I did a bit of weeding and general tidying up. I was astonished to find the spring bulbs peeking up through the soil, under the weeds: I covered them up with some leaf mould mulch, since I had removed their cosy weed covering. Down at the allotment the weeds were doing well too … Continue reading December: four seasons in one week

Growing vegetables, fruit and flowers, Why I garden7 Comments

26 vegetables – update

Reclaiming Paradise

Seven months ago I used the fundraiser “26 challenge” to see if I could find 26 fruit and vegetable plants in the garden. See the results here and an update at midsummer here . I though you might like to see how my 26 vegetables got on as winter sets in. Here as they were in April and at their harvest peak. Apples Howgate Wonder have been wondrous as always – about 14 apples I think, which is not the biggest crop but they’ve been just as big as usual. 2. Apples Red Falstaff have been quite prolific – the … Continue reading 26 vegetables – update