Through the garden gate

This week I am joining with Sarah at Down by the Sea for her monthly garden slot--'Through the Garden Gate'. In this slot you are invited through the gate into my garden.

This is the gate which leads out of my garden, but I thought I would show it to you as I rather like this view. Of course the photo  was taken in the summer, but it's good to remind myself in the dreary winter months when there's not much colour in the garden that things do get better.

As we move through February and into March I am now looking forward to new growth in the garden. I am also thinking about new projects and plans I have for this year.

It's taken me a few weeks but I have finally finished clearing the borders of all the dead plant material in both the front and back gardens. The work never ends though, I'm sure in a week or two I will be starting again with the weeding. As I worked in the borders I noticed areas which needed re planning, some of them I have been thinking about for a while and am not sure what to do about them.  They keep getting put off each year.

In the front garden there is a bed where at the end of last year we removed a couple of very old and tired looking hydrangeas and lots of crocosmias. Crocosmias are really difficult to get rid off so I know they will keep reappearing . But I now have a big space in this bed and I'm wondering what to plant there.

At the moment I am enjoying the spots of colour coming from the tete a tete daffodils, but as I look around I can see other flowers just starting to open up. There's pulmonaria, anemone blanda and vinca-- lots of blue. Also there's a euphorbia with yellow bracts providing a bit of brightness in the shady areas. The back garden has a lot of shade and I have to work with that and just see what will grow. Spring  is usually a good time for these areas, before the trees get into full leaf.

cyclamen and snowdrops in a shady spot

Here's another gate in my garden. it leads into what we call the woodland garden.  There's only one tree, a lime tree but it's big and so the area gets very shady in the summer.  I've got three white foxgloves  to plant which a gardening friend grew from seed.  I think they will look lovely in the woodland garden later in the year.  In the meantime the daffodils and crocus are looking good.

The last of the parsnips

 
I dug up the last of the parsnips from the allotment last week and had just enough to make some parsnip soup.

A few years ago, out walking near Settle we stopped for a soup and sandwich lunch at a pub.I didn't realise until after the order had been placed that the soup was curried parsnip. This did not appeal to me at all as I am not a fan of curry, but by then it was too late to cancel the order. I was very pleased to find that the soup was really delicious.

I have since found a recipe for curried parsnip soup and it has become a favourite in our house. With just a hint of spice it is a very warming winter soup.

Curried Parsnip Soup

40g  butter
1 medium onion skinned and sliced
700 g parsnips, peeled and finely diced
2 or 3 small potatoes (optional)
5ml curry powder
2.5ml ground cumin
1.4 litres chicken or vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 fl oz fresh single cream (optional)

paprika to garnish

1. Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions, parsnips and potatoes, stir round to coat in the buttery juices and cook very gently with the lid on for about 3 minutes.
2. Stir in the curry powder and cumin and cook for a further 2 minutes.
3. Add the stock, bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for about 45 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
4. Cool slightly then whizz in a blender until smooth
5. Return to the pan. Adjust seasoning, add more stock if it is too thick. Add cream if using, reheat very gently. Serve sprinkled with paprika.

NB. The potatoes help to thicken the soup, but if you like a thinner soup you can leave them out

Garden calling

The garden has been calling me for a week or two now. But I have been neglecting it and giving all the attention to the allotment. Not that this time of year and the current weather conditions are really gardening weather. But a gardener will always find something that needs to be done. Having spent most of January doing jobs around the allotment I decided that I needed to give some time to the garden. The garden does tend to take second place to the allotment, but it's good to see that it can look after itself for a lot of the time.

In the autumn I cut back some of the very messy looking dead plants and left the rest--the grasses and seed heads, to give some interest through the winter and provide homes for insects and food for the birds  I decided that now was the time to finally cut back these plants and get ready for spring. I was glad to cut the grasses down, there were bits of dried grass blowing about all over the garden. Not sure if that was the result of the winter storms or Holly the cat who likes to roll about in them. Holly supervised as I worked and was probably a bit miffed that I had destroyed her playground. The birds might feel a bit more secure now that she can't hide behind clumps of plants as she likes to do, ready to pounce.

The garden looks a bit flat now, but soon new shoots will be appearing and the empty areas of the borders will fill up. As I cut back I discovered some treasures-- snowdrops, narcissi, crocus. I also found a lovely pink hellebore flowering for the first time since I bought it from a charity plant stall two years ago. The  hamamelis, otherwise known as witch hazel is now flowering. It's yellow spidery flowers are a welcome bit of colour at this time of year.  I  potted up some tete a tete narcissi into small pots to display on the garden table.  These can  be seen from the house and look brighter every day as a few more flowers open up.

As I worked on the borders, Richard dug out some compost from the compost bins.  He managed to fill an old dustbin. My next job after I have finished clearing all the borders of debris will be to mulch the borders with compost or leaf mould, but I will need more than a dustbin full of compost for that.

Seedy jobs

The weather is showing no signs of improvement and I wonder if it will ever stop raining. As the wind was howling outside and the rain battering against the windows at the weekend I decided a good rainy day activity would be to sort out my very untidy box of seed packets. It took nearly all day, but I now have a neatly filed box, a seed list on computer and a long list of new seeds to buy for this year. Very organised, I thought!

Holly was keen to stop me from working

 I will need to be starting off seeds very soon and I am so pleased that our allotment greenhouse is now fully assembled and it looks great. I couldn't wait to get something in there and before Richard had cleared away all his tools, I had put in some trays of spring cabbage seedlings which I started off late summer and seemed a bit slow to grow. They had been living in the shed.  I'm  sure that before long I will be running out of greenhouse space.  This little greenhouse will not be big enough for all the growing we will be doing, so Richard's next project is to build a bigger growhouse type of structure next to it. This is what he was planning to do all along.

My next job is to go shopping for vegetable seeds and get some seed trays washed.