The first part of January was unseasonably mild and we were quite worried as many buds on trees and shrubs started to swell and lots of flowers burst open much too early in the season.
Pulmonaria.
Category: Elemental circle
Floral notes in December.
When I moved from Sweden to Ireland in 2004 I was most struck by the lack of winter. Coming from a place of snow, ice and soil sometimes frozen solid for months on end, I was amazed when the last leaves falling off the trees and the last flowers of the year were met by hellebores, snowdrops and daffodils without so much as a snowflake to separate them. Read more
A touch of frost.
November is often thought of as a month when not much is happening in a garden. We can’t agree with that. There are still lots of vegetables to harvest, beds to cover and mulch, areas to clear of unwanted plants and a few cherished newcomers that will need planting.
All of the above is probably the reason why we are a bit behind on posting here on the blog. It is high time for our summary of last month in the garden.
September gone.
We have entered October and there is a definite change in the garden. All the lush greens of summer are slowly transforming into browns, russets, buttery yellows, we could go on… It is lovely to walk around and experience the slowing down process of nature. All the leaves are turning and falling as the trees and shrubs prepare for the cold in the coming months.
August harvest.
August has been another busy month on the land. There are so many things to harvest and process so that they will keep for the coming months. One unusual and tasty vegetable is the strawberry spinach, Chenopodium capitatum, which we grew from seeds in the spring. The red “berries” taste sweet and fresh in salads and the leaves are good in stir-fries.
Unicorn frills.
July was certainly a busy month on the land. We worked quite hard for the first half of the month, weeding, pruning and generally preparing our garden for the open garden weekend on the 14th and 15th. The weather was very warm and dry, right up to the open days, when the rain and wind created a somewhat dampened but very pleasant event. We made some new friends and caught up with old ones.
For the second half of the month the weather has been changeable and we have not spent a lot of time in the garden, apart from when harvesting vegetables. Our cabbages have grown exceptionally well this year, along with our courgettes and raspberries.
The vegetable patch in June.
We are just over a week into July and it is time to sum up the past month on the land. So much has happened in the garden. At the start of June plants were still catching up after the very late cold start to the season, but at the end of the month, they were starting to show signs of drought after weeks with next to no rain.
