Last year in the garden was not a good year. The lumpy recovery from my stroke (late 2021) smashed head on into a year with very bad weather for gardening. Now, in early 2023, I am counting the cost of groundwater pollution, drought, freeze, chaotic heavy rain and the massy overshadowing of my property by the trees of my neighbours.
Farewell the Rhododendron I had grown in a pot since the mid-90s.
Plus the two Azaleas I had carefully rescued from outside people's houses and nursed back to health. It was too hot, and too dry, for too long.
Farewell my Bay Tree. When, it started to dry out and sicken, I was puzzled, especially as a Rosemary, in a neighbouring pot, had no such troubles. It was only later that I discovered that the Rosemary had punched through the bottom of its pot and grown a root into the Bay Tree's pot, outcompeted it and sent it on its way. A year that plants fought each other to death.
I'll not say the others are gone until I'm sure, but the dry summer, the drenching autumn rain and then the brutal plummet to minus 11 was quite the trial.
January last year, though, I had no inkling of the horrors to come.
This is my garden calendar from last year. I've kept one for a couple of years. Initially it was so that I could figure out what time of year worked for things like planting. Now it's more like a record of what happened when. I'm not sure last year is going to be a good guide for the future. In honesty, I hope not.
But there is a moment of reassurance here. Yesterday I went out to look for my snowdrops and according the calendar they're not due till the end of January. My orchids are earlier than last year, some came out for Christmas. The Crassula is in flower again, improbable tiny white flowers in winter's depths. But "things in greenhouse still alive"?
I don't think I'm going to be saying that again this year.
All the same, life continues and there are flowers in the garden this new year, here and there.
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