new directions in flower arranging

 I'm having a quiet few days, looking at unfinished artworks, eating snacks and reflecting on the strangeness of this year. The garden is a mass of filth, dead leaves, undone tasks. But then, it's December; if it wasn't you'd have to suspect me of doing this gardening lark professionally (I don't).

One thing I have managed this year though, is to have flowers in the house. Sometimes they were garden bouquets, scattering aphids and romping off to seed. Sometimes they were lockdown supermarket purchases, made quickly between the onions and the apples, trying not to inconvenience any other shoppers. A few came from concerned friends and colleagues, with get "well soon cards" attached. Bittersweet, those; some things will improve, others are likely to be permanent.

Videos like this are a pleasing reminder that when it comes to flowers, thinking outside the box (though hardly necessary for you or the flowers) can really give them (and you) a boost.

Dialogo from blo que on Vimeo.

Also recommended: London Flower School on Instagram.

the #circulareconomy garden dream dies here

I had the idea, earlier this year, of not clearing things from my garden. Instead of processing the waste, rotting it down on my plot. The idea of the #circumareconomygarden might have been sound, in a year when I'd been fit and had a normal amount of leisure. 

At the beginning of the year, it felt like it had worked, to some extent. I did not take any garden waste off my allotment or my garden. The rotting heaps did, indeed work - reducing, somewhat, over time. But not as much as I had hoped; and up at the allotment, this was very much mistaken for neglect.

Then the pandemic workload (already high) intensified. An early exposure lead to a fortnight lockdown at home, which gave my garden a rather different feel; more the place I drew a few anxious breaths in an abbreviated lunchtime than a space I could spend time in.

Still, I persisted. The corners of my garden became ghosted with waste woody weeds, rotting the fences and resprouting among the paving slabs. I didn't have time top get clever with anything. The neighbour's willow tree, already a concern, romped skyward in the wet weather. 

The crunch moment came very late. After my car got totalled by an errant delivery lorry. After a medical accident partially blinded me, leaving me unable to drive, ergo no more trips to the tip. 

Sometime in the autumn I cracked and got the brown bin, anyway. Late December, it finally turned up. I'm going to have to remodel the entire front garden to give it a good space, mind, as right now it's sitting on top of a Dicentra and a Vinca.

 Full of Curry Bush, Privet and other things that can't rot fast enough to disappear in a garden as small as mine.

Harvesting Housemartin Guano

This year, for the first time since we moved in, no House Martins nested in our eaves. 

It's possible this was my fault: last winter, for the first time,  I set up a bird feeder in the front garden. This lead to a great deal of excitement (including a notable morning when Mr Sparrowhawk, of the Donnington Sparrowhawks, swooped in, caught and partly consumed a sparrow with nonchalant unconcern while ourselves and some house guests goggled from the living room window) and the establishment of an excitable, noisy and vigorous sparrow gang, regulars at the bird feeder and noisy favourites of ourselves and the cats.

When the House Martins turned up, in smaller numbers than usual, the Sparrows had words. They'd been eyeing it up the Housemartin Nest (we only had the one) as possible overflow nesting from their main lair in next door's ivy. The words turned nasty, the nest was squabbled over. One morning we came out to find it in bits at the bottom of the wall. Very small, dusty, fragile bits - no-one had chanced eggs in it. I'm not sure it would have safely taken them anyway. 

It wasn't in great repair, and we are a distance from mud for repairs. But I missed our birds, in such moments of mind I had over from the many other crises of this year.

The Housemartins did not rebuild. But could I help them with that? Building a House Martin Nest Box feels like it might just encourage the sparrows. I like sparrows too of course, so that might not be a problem? But there's also the possibility of actually painting the house, now there aren't any residents, and in the long run that might even be better for the birds, who apparently prefer painted houses.

In the end, next door had to cut their ivy, and the bird feeder got closed down when it became more of a mammalian attraction. The sparrow gang are off feeding on this season's enormous glut of berries. I'm forbidden from ladder work following my stroke, so the topiary chameleon is shaggy and unkempt. But I've heard the odd explosion of chirps or whirr of wings as someone investigates the feeders out front. Maybe it's time to get the Sparrow (and Sparrowhawk) feeder provisioned and back up.

As far as the House Martins go, well. Let's see what happens next year. 

counting my december flowers

I'm no longer so surprised by my December flowers. But this year's are quite striking. Fuchsia Grayrigg, Salvia Hotlips, some random geraniums, an Erigeron (which is happily flowering away), a rose or two from the small rose bush that got big. Another Fuchsia, one with lovely lime green leaves, some of this year's Chrysanthemum set (grown from last year's seedlings of course - I haven't been to a garden show this year) including Santa, which actually is quite strikingly red and green and from the looks of it, will be flowering for Christmas. 

It was only when I got it inside that I noticed the aphids. Our cold snaps have been very snappy and not too cold, and nothing is suffering hard - yet. Including the aphids, it seems. Still, think of it as a Christmas treat for the house spiders.

 

 

coming home to yellow

 A couple of years ago, one of my neighbours put pot chrysanthemums outside her front door. Lovely rich tasteful burnt orange balls of flowers. I always quite liked the look but it seemed silly when we would only be home after dark. 2020, and I was home all day, and I found some suitable flowers in Sylvester's, one of my favourite local flower pushers when I was picking up some bulbs for next year.

This is a good signt to come home to after my daily health walk.

autumn strangeness : teasel sprouts in seed heads

This year has been a bumper year for lots of things. Up and down the towpath, where widening work has scarred the edges of the newly smooth cycle track, thistles and teasels have grown in cheerful profusion in the disturbed earth. We have a pretty reasonable number of goldfinches in the area, but this year they were swamped; the plants too effusive and productive to lose all their seeds. You might have heard this year described as a mast year, here and there. Mast years, when the profusion of fruiting bodies (nuts, drupes, and famously acorns) overwhelms their usual predators. When the plants lay down the future generations. In extraordinary quantities.

Somewhere in all that profusion, things like this happen. Seeds get stuck in a seedhead, and in the long damp of  an English winter, they start to stir, reaching for a spring that is still a long way off, locked away on the other side of hard winter.

Teasel Seeds sprouting in their seed head during warm autumn weather.

There's a curiously unnatural aspect to this image. One of my friends likened a similar situation (with a poppy seed head) to spiders feeding on their mother's body. But there's more to this than just the visceral reaction of seeing the young feeding on their body of their parent. These seedlings are in a dead end. They won't survive the coming cold of January and February and they can't anchor themselves in a soil that is in some cases six or seven feet below them. 

 

 I don't know, do I maybe hear a tiny voice crying: rescue me?