eggs

This morning I found another sign of the approach of spring.  Opening the chicken house to top up their food, I discovered two eggs in the nesting box.  Nice fat dark brown ones, slightly speckled.  The chickens have looked distinctly bouncier in recent days, more active and alert, and have started taking an interest again in the world outside their run.  In the shortest, darkest days they just stood hunched in the corner, looking as if they were waiting for winter to be over.  It'll be time to start letting them out for an afternoon constitutional soon.

I got another three rhododendron stumps out of the wood.  That was cheating slightly, as I picked on the ones that looked least likely to offer resistance (two were completely dead).  The three left to go still have some leaves, and may have more of a root system to contend with.  Still, I feel I'm approaching the home straight in the end of the wood.  I filled up the trailer with another load of brambles and ivy, and managed not to poke myself in the eye on the brambles during the course of the day.  The Systems Administrator obligingly got out the electric chainsaw, and removed a branch of a coppiced hazel that was growing into the airspace of Magnolia campbellii 'Charles Raffill'.  It's all beginning to come together.  I should be safe buying a Eucryphia x nymansay, when I see a good one at work, as I now have the space cleared to put it.  (Finally.  I identified the spot where I wanted to put it back in 2009, which shows the speed at which things sometimes progress in this garden).

There was one solitary snowdrop in bloom.  There are the first leaves of a few bluebells showing, but in general the bulbs in the wood haven't yet started coming through.  I remember panicking about this in past years, thinking that by mid January there ought to be more growth visible, and that something must have happened to them (I don't know what.  The biggest vole invasion in the history of gardening).  They have always turned up in the end, so I expect they will this year.  It's a mystery why this one lone snowdrop is so early.

I finally ticked the Italian garden off my list of things to do.  That has shrunk since I set it up, but is still far too long to finish by the end of February (or probably before the end of 2012).  There are some jobs on it that I haven't touched at all.  Mind you, there are some that are to all intents and purposes finished that I haven't crossed off.  It seems I have a neurotic reluctance to declare any gardening task actually finished.

The black cat was in the wars again, this time with a septic eyelid, but his shot of antibiotics last Monday seems to have been sufficient to nip trouble in the bud, as it looks better than it did.  He is now famous at the vets, following his cruciate ligament operation.  Although they have not explicitly said so, we are more and more certain that he was the first ever cat (as distinct from dog) they'd tried the operation on.  Well done that cat, for being a medical pathfinder.

stumps (day two)

The forecast rain didn't arrive until after dark.  We do need rain.  Down in Sussex they have a drought order, but when  I read the tips on how to save water they were all the things that we do as a matter of course anyway.  Don't run the tap while you brush your teeth.  I haven't done that for about thirty years.  Take a shower instead of a bath.  Always do, and I turn off the shower after the initial wetting while I soap myself.  Don't wash your car with a hosepipe.  I go one up on that, which is not to wash my car.  Well, maybe once a year, at winter's end to get the salt off.

As it wasn't raining I returned to the stumps.  One big rhododendron finally came out, when I managed to find the last buried root that was holding it and saw through it.  It is a satisfying moment, when you work out why a stump won't shift, and conquer the last point of resistance.  A lesser stump came out fairly easily, but a large elder root is proving intractable.  I could leave that where it is, except that there is a great deal of elder in the wood in toto, and I want the space close to the house for exotics.  Don't tell the Essex Wildlife Trust.  One of the things I want to plant is a couple of pots of Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill', which are rooted suckers from my original plant.  Bees love it, and it flowers very early on in the season, so it has some benefits for wildlife even though it does come from the Himalayas.

I planted out the Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' that has been sitting in its pot by the entrance to the wood all summer since being evicted from the conservatory.  It was looking rather sorry for itself, and on tipping it carefully out of the pot the rootball was far from solid.  It ought to find the soil in the wood to its liking, and I hope it manages to get going.  I have no idea how the gardeners at The Savill Garden keep their plant under glass looking so healthy, as mine was a constant martyr to red spider mite no matter what I did.

There will be space for an Oemleria cerasiformis, a large suckering shrub from North America with scented white flowers in late winter, which I have long coveted but lacked anywhere suitable to put one.  I think I am far enough along with clearing the ground to be safe buying one the next time I'm at work.  I try nowadays not to buy things unless the site is ready, as it's so easy to believe that it will soon be clear, and then it isn't for one reason or another, and the plant sits around in its pot for months or even years, degenerating.  Burncoose rates Oemleria as hardy down to minus fifteen degrees celsius, so I'd probably be OK planting it now.  Its common names include Oso berry, Oregon plum and Indian plum, but to get the fruits you need male and female plants, and I don't have room for more than one, and plants offered for sale don't seem to be sexed anyway.  I don't mind about the fruit, it's the flowers that do it for me.

As the Oemleria, the Daphne and the Michelia will all be close under our bedroom window, I hope that their scents will drift in.  Behind them, eventually, we should see the gigantic pink flowers of  Magnolia campbellii 'Charles Rafill', but that is one of those magnolias that doesn't flower at a young age, and although mine was planted in November 2003 and must now be a good 4-5m tall, it is quite devoid of flower buds again this winter.  There is a story in the garden guide for Caerhayes (one of the very great Cornish gardens) that they bought a magnolia from the Hilliers nursery, waited many years for it to flower, and when it finally did it was the wrong variety.  Hilliers refunded the original purchase price.  I hope mine will not turn out to be the wrong thing.  If it is straight M. campbellii then it might not flower at all until about the time that we're ready to move to the retirement bungalow.  The ground drops away from the house to the wood, and if all goes according to plan then the huge pink flowers should be at the same height as the bedroom window.  There is a plant of flowering age at the Blakenham Woodland Gardens, and it is a beautiful thing, very exciting.