Into Winter …..

Funny how it’s already mid-December.  In my mind we are still in late summer/early autumn with jobs undone that should have been completed months ago.  Clue to the onset of winter being the recent frosts!    In reality I am probably still rooted in Spring,  with too many packets of seeds remaining unsown.  Some of course are the very welcome free packets on the front of gardening magazines, but I know if I look properly I will find some seeds from gardening society seed exchanges that have never made it into a seed tray.    Maybe this winter instead of avidly scanning the seed exchange lists I should ignore them and instead find out the unopened packets from last year, at the same time making an early New Year’s Resolution to sow them.    They may grow or they may not,  they’ll have a better chance of germination in a tray of seed compost than in their packets!

Regardless of wet and windy weather with a few frosts thrown in for good measure, gardening continues.  Three silver birch trees have been planted in the orchard, the variety “Snow Queen” which is renowned for its bright white bark.  We bought one year old bare root trees so at the moment they are only around three feet high and very spindly.  The rabbit guards around the trunks are more obvious than the trees themselves!

We already have two of these in one corner of the orchard and after 11 years they are splendid trees and their bark is wonderful.   Let’s hope the new ones grow equally as well.  A fourth tree to be planted is an apple, Laxton’s Fortune, to replace an Egremont Russet that died this year having been ring barked by rabbits.

I took advantage of a recent frosty morning to take photographs of some of the dead stems in the garden.   For a change there were quite a few that looked good with a dusting of frost.  Next job though is to cut everything back and mulch the flower beds with as deep a layer of compost as I can manage.