6-8th December

After breakfast I sat down with a coffee and a couple of seed catalogues and went through deciding what flowers I would seek to grow next year, but more of that later.

 

 

8^th December
Recently the weather has been quite chilly – not the sort to welcome you as you poke your nose outside, thus I have been taking the lazy option and doing nothing. I peer out the window and see a garden that longs to be tidied up, and those toys that still need cleaning and putting away! The nicotianas have finished, as too have the sweet peas, although the stems on some are still as green as a few months ago. Today I tackled the front garden and planted 8 red and yellow tulip bulbs in a circle around the central fuchsia. That left 2 more which I planted either end of the bay window wall. I dug around a bit and found some other bulbs planted by friends who rented our house a few years ago. They had not planted them very deeply and so have not flowered much, so I replanted them between the two tulips in a line parallel to the wall.

25th November

Autumn colours from Kew Gardens

Next post: 6th Dec

20th November

These are from a walk in the New Forest

Next post: 25th November

15th November

Some seasonal photos:

Next post: 20th November

10th November

Well, things are pretty slow in the garden now, and also pretty wet. We have had some serious rain with some local flooding that has caused a nearby crossroads to be closed after a car became stuck in the water. I was diverted coming home by the police and fire brigade who were there to rescue the car. This sounds huge but I could still see the car's tyres so it wasn’t like the real floods you see on the news.

 

 

My brother-in-law has taken out some fir trees in his garden and is trying to clear soil away and a few weeks ago he left 10 bags of soil for me which I took down the allotment where they are still sitting. Last week, my wife passed a local house outside of which are a fair number of bags of soil with ‘free garden soil’ written on each. Last Friday I took 2 bags – it was all I had space for, but today I took 4, and I will have more space tomorrow. So the allotment looks like a building site – various bits of wood and plastic sacks, and not much of use growing except spinach and some leeks which are still small.

 

Some allotmenteers are hanging up their gloves for the year!

 

I came across a sign for a local reclamation firm that was advertising railway sleepers so I phoned them to see if they sold scaffolding planks – the ideal raised border fencing. They did! The cost is £10 for a 10 foot plank. I was keen to get to the allotment and measure the width of the plot – 20 feet. So for 9 sections I would need 36 planks – two each side of each section, bringing the cost to £360 and that would be just for the long sides of each section, not the end pieces. So my hopes raised and dashed once more. I was foolishly thinking I could do this for around £60, silly me.

 

What I have done is planted the new bag of 10 purple tulips in the back garden, and harvested a couple of handfuls of carrots from the tub.

Next post: 15th November
 

5th November

Some more summer colour to hopefully warm you up.

This and the following photo are from Houghton Lodge near Romsey

A sunflower in the garden

A bee busy at work in the back garden - I know how he feels!

Next post: 10th November

1st November

As we move into later autumn, let's review some summer colour.

Michaelmas daisies in the garden



sunflower at the allotment



This and the one following are from Hillier's Gardens near Romsey

Next post: 5th November