no work in the garden this month owing to gales and more recently rain, I feel the plants above ground are being blown away and below the earth plants are drowning, goodness knows how the poor wild creatures are coping and those poor pregnant ewes, just so some flesh eaters can have their lamb chop or roast, humans are such selfish creatures and we think! we are a caring animal…….
hmm that wasn’t where that paragraph was meant to go when I started it, I had just intended saying as there was no work in the garden this month instead of an end of month view I’d do an end of year view,
despite all the downs with the weather I am feeling fairly good about the garden as when I look at photos from the end of last year/beginning of this several areas have come on a lot, others have stood still but I have finally accepted that I can’t do everything at once,
the area I am most pleased with is the tweenie garden, it is the area between the trees that were here when I moved in, it is fairly well protected especially from the dreaded south westerlies but is exposed to the easterlies, because it is between the trees I kept calling it the between the trees garden which I have now shortened to tweenie, like the tweenie maid who worked between floors of the big house.
this is how the tweenie looked in January, I had finally got most of the moss out and the grass down, there is also horsetail sleeping it’s winter sleep under ground,
April and with the good weather February I got started on removing turf, then dug up some plants that needed moving, the bronze fennel split in two and so did the marshmallow, the kniphofia was split into many pieces and I planted some of the lilies I had bought,
a week later the trees and shrubs I ordered arrived and most were planted here,
early May, before the storm, looking from the trees across the tweenie to the damp meadow, carex pendula in the foreground,
early June, everything growing including the grass grrrrr……. the dug out curve across the lefthand corner has daffs planted and the frothy green above it is 4 lady’s mantle plants planted several years ago and needing rearranging,
late August, I had got the grass cut and covered with newspaper and sand to inhibit further growth, the line of pebbles on the right are where I planted a row of daffs and writing this reminds me I had better move them so the bulbs can come through, I put the pebbles there to mark where they are and don‘t inadvertently dig them up,
early November, I was away for much of September and October was gales every day so no gardening was done but the first few weeks of November were beautiful so I got lots done as well as the Alder garden digging I posted about last month, I cleared the newspaper and sand and moved several plants here, I also started another river of plants, as I said when I made the river of daffs on the slope garden I had been thinking and wanting to do it for several years and finally have, well I found and started reading Christina’s blog this year and she has a river of Stipa tenuissima and several other rivers through her flowerbeds, this had me thinking yes why only have a river on it’s own, so when I was doing this planting in November I decided to move the daffs and blue geraniums from the jungle in the front garden to here, so in spring there will eventually be a river of daffs across this bed and in summer a river of blue geraniums, I started them on the right just in front of the kniphofia and then curve across turning back around the bronze fennel,
early December, from the other side looking back to the path, I got some more done but didn’t get the planting finished so the rest will have to wait until next winter, I’ve planted up to the big pebble,
from the pebble to the bottom of the photo and in the next photo I have dug the line but not planted, the weather turned non garden friendly, after the gales of October killed the top growth see how the mild November has encouraged new growth from the fennel,
this is where the bulbs and geraniums came from this bed in the front garden is so over grown and weedy I call it the jungle and have decided to move everything and then feed the soil and decide what to plant which is why I have just mulched where I dug out the plants with shredded heather,
I thought I would finish with something a bit colourful, the tweenie was a green garden and this year I have added some colour not everything grew, these did, I put the flower collage onto a photo of the airy fennel flowers, I love them,
thanks to everyone who commented on my wordless Wednesday post, for those who wanted to know, there is lodge pole pine, leylandii, holly and a bit of variegated ivy, the coloured stems are red = native dogwood, orange = willow, no berries so the 2 red hips are from the dog rose and there were few of them, unfortunately I don’t think the birds had them but the wind,
the one thing I will be glad to say goodbye to 2011 for is the storms and gales, I’ve lost count of the number of times we have had winds of 80 – 90 mph this year, when I went into town Thursday there are a large number of trees down and we don’t have many to start with soon we will have none, with the gales this year I have more and more been struggling to find something good about ‘wind’ rain waters the earth, heat is needed for things to grow, even snow blankets the earth and protects but wind is useless, it just destroys, I am growing to hate it and have lost reason as to why nature/god created it!!
blog update linking to Helen’s EoMV follow the link to see what other gardeners have been doing,
wishing you all a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2012,
©Copyright 2011 Frances Caple. All rights reserved. Content created by Frances Caple for Island Threads.
I had 2 green and 3 variegated, one of each here and one of each under the pine trees, I planted the third variegated hebe in the tweenie garden, all sheltered places as I had taken cutting before and then lost them to the weather, well I had previously thought it was the weather, this is how they looked on December second, 
