back in the garden

Suddenly the air outside feels gentle.  I took a stroll round the garden counting my losses, after the cold spell.  The leaves on the poor little Phlomis italica growing in the gravel are shrivelled, and I think I'm going to lose the top growth, but it will probably shoot from the base.  It did last spring, and the plant is larger and more established now than it was then, and this cold spell was shorter and less severe.  The leaves on the olive tree look utterly unaffected so far, and I wonder whether the lack of cold wind helped it survive this time round.  The operative phrase in the last sentence is 'so far', since evergreens have a disconcerting habit of looking OK immediately after being hit by cold, and then dropping their leaves later, like somebody who initially seems to have survived their paracetamol overdose, only to die of liver failure after three days.  The leaves on my nice new Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue', that was making such good progress last year, have turned a suspicious colour, and I'm worried about that.  Pittosporum tenuifolium varieties that were hit last year but not killed outright have made little recovery since, though the drought may not have helped them.

The open flowers on the two Daphne bholua varieties are spoilt, burned to a dingy shade of brown.  There are still buds, so it's a case of waiting to see if these open normally.  The leaves on the evergreen Michelia doltsopa, that was turned out of the conservatory to take its chances at the edge of the wood, have gone brown round the edges and the plant looks distressed, but as long as the shoots haven't been injured my money's on it flushing new leaves in spring.  It has managed to pull off that trick in the conservatory, after red spider mite attack plus whatever else it was that it disliked about conditions in the conservatory had defoliated it.

The display of snowdrops is disappointing, after the quantity I planted two and three years ago.  Maybe the cold weather has held them back, and they'll look better in another couple of days, but I fear that some of the places I tried them, coupled with the very dry weather last spring and this winter, have not suited them.  The shortage of crocus I put down to some bastard small rodent eating the corms.

Still, it was very nice to be able to work outside in comfort.  When I investigated what it was like yesterday the wind felt so raw and cold that I merely watered the conservatory and greenhouse and scuttled inside again, but today felt positively inviting.  I've been digging over the area where the Rosa rugosa used to be, and forking in mushroom compost, so by the weekend it should be ready to receive the new shrubs and the Ashwood's hellebores and Hepatica.  I made encouraging noises to the cats to come out too, and Our Ginger and the big tabby came and ran about a bit.  They could do with the exercise, especially Our Ginger. (His diet is not going very well, since the big tabby is still upset and refusing to eat, so we end up having to leave food down for him.  Alternatively he will eat if one of us stands by him making encouraging noises.  It isn't very convenient).

Addendum  The newspapers and Radio 4 have finally caught up with the idea that we are facing a serious drought in the southern and eastern counties, now that Caroline Spelman has been having meetings about it.  It has been blindingly obvious for weeks to anyone who listens to the farming programme, or just notices how much it rains, that trouble is brewing.

revamping the long bed

I've been making progress replanting the section of the long bed I've been working on.  The remains of a Hebe 'Mrs Winder' have gone the same way as the H. salicifolia.  That had not made such a large rootball, because it is a smaller shrub, but over the years it had layered itself to form subsidiary rooting points, and was in fact dead in the middle but very firmly attached to the ground at each end.  My Pilates teacher does not really approve of pickaxes.  Or digging.

The Berberis thunbergii 'Orange Rocket' and the three 'Hot Chocolate' roses have gone in.  The label of the 'Orange Rocket' says that the leaves turn green later in the season, so I hope they stay orange long enough to overlap with at least some of the roses' period of flowering.  I hadn't thought of that when I imagined the scheme originally.  I've added Euonymus planipes to the mix, which I'd been wanting to fit in somewhere for a long time.  The winter buds are attractive, being long and pointed like little cigars, but the main reason for growing it is the autumn colour.  It turns early, to wonderful shades of pink and red.  It is one of those plants whose name I kept writing down in my garden visiting notebook over and over again.  If the same thing catches my eye repeatedly at different gardens I take that as a clue that I really like it.  I've also added a Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue', which has smallish and slightly wavy leaves in a pleasant shade of bluish-green.  Something glaucous should tone down the orange nicely.  Of course if we have another cold winter it could die, but only experience will tell.  My 'Arundel Green' is absolutely fine, but some (admittedly recently planted) 'Tom Thumb' are looking very poorly.  I'd like a bit more of an evergreen spine along the bed, to make the garden feel more enclosed in the winter, when the field hedge is pretty much see-through.

I replanted the best of the iris rhizomes I lifted some days ago.  Since then they have been in a box in the woodshed, and in an ideal world they would have been replanted before now, but having seen how tenacious of life left-over rhizomes are, that have been thrown on the compost heap, I think they'll be OK.

I've dug in all but three of the bags of mushroom compost.  It disappears into the sand with disconcerting ease, and we're going to need to go and get some more next week.  A customer at work recently came up with a great phrase when I asked him what his soil was like.  'Hungry.  Put your coat down on it and it'll vanish'.