Getting going again

Yippee its February! Spring is just around the corner...allegedly. As I write this blog entry there is a blizzard blowing outside, gale force winds and the stove is roaring. Since Christmas we've had temps in double figures, frosts and plenty of gales but the warmer January has woken up the garden. Already there tulips have put up leaves and there are heads on some of the daffodils too and in even milder parts of the British Isles, the daffs are putting on a good show.

I have to admit, its kind of caught me out. At the back end of last year I decided to 'leave the leaves' on the beds. This was to partly create an insulating layer on the ground and also to be a bit more wildlife friendly, by giving the insects somewhere to over-winter. I'd also left all the dead stems on the plants. But now with the bulbs leaping out of the ground and the need to give them a bit of daylight, I'm attempting to clear leaves without damaging the emerging leaves...no easy task! Much of the clearing has been done from the edge of the borders on my knees, delicately picking the leaves out. There seems to be a huge amount of bulbs this year. Each year I pop a few more in the ground, and without fail, I forget what I have put where despite the note and picture taking. Inevitably I dig up bulbs again when I am planting, but when I see how little space is left I've decided to let myself off the hook a wee bit.

Its not just the bulbs that are romping on, the echinops and crocosmia have both started to regrow and have now had their old stems cut back. The large buddleia 'Loch Inch' got a drastic hair cut and has now been moved to a spot between the conifer hedge and fence to hopefully stop it getting a bit too overbearing with the other plants in the border.

I've made a couple of sowings and in the sun the greenhouse is getting up to 10 degrees. I'm always to quick to sow and lose most of the early sowings...so why do I do it? Well sometimes you get a plant or two survive, but its just for the thrill of seeing a new shoot poke through the soil. Winter seems to get longer every year and for me, beyond the daffodils and crocuses, those first germinations are the sign that there is hope!

Here in Moray, its finally light at 5pm and the sun is higher in the sky and I had a crazy notion to get the solar pump for the pond out again and see if it still works...it does, and in a bid to revamp the vegetative pond filter as well as stabilise the mound of soil behind the pond that shifted in last years prolonged rain, knocking a couple of the edging stones into the pond, I've lessened the slope, popped in a wee retaining wall and... built a mountain stream! It works, after a fashion, and still needs a bit of tweaking but so far so good!

So the frustrations of winter are far from over, but there is a mountain of work to do in the garden and between the showers and gales work is progressing. I'm sure February will go quickly and then its next stop March and clocks changing, I can't wait!