Feeling pleased with myself as I managed to spend another hour or so in the garden yesterday morning. Still hacking my way through the lavender. (The wheelie bin smells delightful!) Yesterday, I reached the part that is being swamped by a plant which was originally put in to trail over the retaining wall but which has gone everywhere but! It was pretty tough going. Because the vine has rooted everywhere it is going to be impossible to eradicate it easily but am aiming to keep it under stricter control this year.

Yesterday was glorious. The ideal sort of day to get out into the garden. The ground was very wet but fortunately there is still plenty to be getting on with within reach of the path. I spent 45 minutes or so cutting back the lavender along the drive. I've cut it back very hard. So far I've completed about a third of the length of the hedge - it's quite tough on the cutting hand.
Back in the autumn I took some cuttings in preparation for replacing the plants because they have become quite woody. I don't know how many of the cuttings took. I'm going to leave them another couple of months before I start disturbing them to look for signs of roots. It looks like some of the cuttings have been lost by digging of neighbourhood moggies. I will need to take some more cuttings in the late summer and begin to replant the hedge next year.
Miraculously the snowdrops that I planted (in the green) around this time last year have survived and are now in flower. It lifts the spirit to see them. I say miraculously because they have been pulled up, dug up etc by mistake a number of times over the summer.

What is it that tempts porn sites to try and put links and back links into this blog? I've just rejected another one! Perhaps because there have been no entries for a while they think it's an untended garden. Well they are wrong. I've just been hibernating because it's been too cold, frozen or wet to get outside. The garden is looking very sad and when we had a dry day a couple of days ago I thought that it was time to resurrect the 30 mins a day in the garden routine but a bitterly cold wind put me off that idea pretty quickly. Instead I stay in the warm and plan for the months ahead.
A few weeks ago I chased Marshall's to find out why the clumping raspberry hadn't been delivered at the end of last year. I was told it will come next month so I will need to get out soon to prepare a space for it. Fortunately the broad beans seem to have managed to survive both the big freeze and the digging of neighbourhood cats. Likewise the onions.

Originally posted 29th November

I have been unable to delete or disable the backlink to the porn website that was put in the comment to the post on 29th November so I have deleted the post altogether. Here is the original text.

What weather! We have escaped with only minor damage - a few missing tiles on the roof, some smashed pots, broken fence panels and a garden light smashed when the bench was blown onto it.

The garden is looking rather soggy and sorry for itself at the moment and there is not much to report except for progress on the onions and broad beans I planted a few weeks ago. The onions have some healthy looking sprouts and the beans are just beginning to show through.

The comment to the previous post has been deleted because it was in Chinese and had a link to a girlie porn site. I will be moderating comments from now on (on all my blogs) and will not allow any that are unwholesome or are promoting websites that I would not wish to be associated with. You have been warned!

Over the past week I cleared a part of the vegetable patch and put in some onion sets, garlic and broad beans. I had bought the onion sets from Marshalls and they arived a month or so ago in a net bag inside a padded envelop. I had opened the packet but left the sets inside it. The envelop had resealed itself so when I opened it some of the sets had rotted and many were already sprouting. I think that I got to them in the nick of time! We don't have a lot of space so I planted them about 6 inches apart in short rows.

I didn't buy new garlic this year. Instead I split up one of the largest bulbs that I lifted at the end of the summer into individual cloves and planted them.

The broad beans are the variety Aquadulce Claudia which are for autumn planting. I have put in a double row planting the beans 8 inches apart in two rows 12 inches apart.

And I finished clearing out the drainage grills around the garage. I know that there are still a lot of leaves  on the trees to come down but our worst time for fallen leaves is late March when the beech hedge suddenly looses all of it's leaves in a week or two.

When weather permits I have been getting on with some of the seasonal tasks in the garden. The wind chime has been brought in, washed and the wood given a feed of lemon oil. The fountain on the patio has been drained, the pump removed, cleaned and put away and the unit covered with plastic to give it a bit of protection from the worst of the winter weather. I have made a start on clearing out the drainage grill that runs around the garage and across the drive.

The orange chrysanth that looked so fantastic just a few weeks ago is looking sorry for itself. The flowers had finished and were beginning to rot on the plant so I cut them all off. Then the strong winds that we had on Saturday night blew the pot over smashing it. The poor thing is now temporarily propped up in a large flower pot until I can repot it properly.

In September I started to feed the birds again to help them put on weight for the winter and so that they know where to find food in bad weather. There is a robin that puts in an appearance whenever any turning over of soil is going on. Mark was doing some weeding earlier in the week and caught this picture of the little fellow. You wonder how those tiny legs can hold him up!