Slow progress in the garden

The days are starting to get a little longer. It's coming lighter in the mornings and staying light for a little longer in the evening. The garden can look a bit drab and dreary at this time of year, but as time goes on plants are starting to emerge. Snowdrops are flowering, and other bulbs are pushing their way through the soil. 

The witch hazel has been in flower for a few weeks now. Next to it is a yellow stemmed dogwood and behind the witch hazel clustered around the base of the silver birch are a group of cyclamen. 

I planted these the first winter after we moved here and were making a new garden.  They seem to increase in number every year. Also in this area of the garden, the hellebores are starting to flower. This corner of the garden is definitely a winter garden, which was planned so we could see it from the house windows during the winter. Spring is not far off.

I'm trying to get back into doing some gardening work whenever the weather is good enough to go outside.  But with the awful cold,windy and rainy days we are having at the moment, that's not very often. I also have to divide my time between the garden and the allotment. To get my body back into doing the physical work of gardening I have just been doing half an hour or an hour at a time. I've been cutting back the dead flower stems and grasses in the borders. I removed the leaves from the hellebores to expose the flowers. On the little woodland/wildlife garden after clearing the debris I have put a layer of bark chips down. It looks quite good and it shows up the snowdrops and cyclamen nicely.

 

The crab apple tree produced lots of fruit in the autumn and made a beautiful display. In the last few  weeks the fruit has attracted interest from the birds, especially the blackbirds.  We have seen as many as four at a time pecking at the fruit. A lot of the fruit fell off onto the ground over the last few months and has made the patio a bit messy so I'm hoping that when the birds have taken all the fruit from the tree itself they will start on the fallen fruit.

I feel I'm making slow progress in the garden, but Spring is not far off and seeing all the new growth appearing makes me think of the better days yet to come.

Back to work on the allotment

There's a pattern to the work on the allotment. The same jobs are done at the same time of the year, which makes it difficult as I write my blog to find something different to say. It can become a bit boring. But I do like that repetition. I think 'oh here we go again, we did this last year'. It does make me feel good though and that I might be doing things right.

Three sessions on the plot last week made me feel good. I am making progress, but the weather at this time of year can put a stop to all that so I feel lucky that I was able to go three times in one week. Arriving on the site we saw that some wood chippings had been delivered and the path down to our plot was quite muddy as it often is at this time of year. As it's a job we often do at this time of year that was going to be Richard's job for the afternoon.  

Spreading chippings along the path is not actually working on our allotment but it does help if we get it done, it benefits some of our plot neighbours too. Unfortunately Richard ran out of time and energy to get the whole path done that afternoon, so  planned to carry on with it next time. Imagine our delight when we arrived a few days later to find that someone else had finished the job for us.

       
                                                   

I cleaned out the greenhouse, swilled the floor and left it to dry out. I have started sweeping up the leaves and scraping up moss from the paths. They get very slippy if the leaves and moss are not cleared. I didn't get them all done and realised it was a bigger job than I thought. So next time maybe.

Another job to do at this time of year is to sort all my seed packets out and order what I need for this year. So that has been done and the postman delivered  them this morning.

I also did a new allotment growing plan for this year. You can see it in the photo. It's not to scale and I might still change some things, but it's roughly what I will be doing this year.