Although I said that there would be no more updates until spring, I thought I would just mention the recent storm, which reached over 80mph in my little corner of the country. Fortunately, the garden itself is relatively sheltered so the damage could definitely have been worse. The smallest pots of heather in the front garden blew over and in a couple of cases came out of their pots. The chrysanthemums ended up on their sides but managed to retain their earth and a few plants look a little wind blown. The main casualty was the back fence, which has a distinct list to starboard. In order to prevent it leaning further ,or giving up entirely and lying down (and who could blame it) whilst it awaits proper repair, the fence mender of my acquaintance decided an interim remedy was required- at least I hope it is interim. I kid you not, he has tied it to the pond. He probably has memories of just how heavy said pond was to manoeuvre into position.

Although I don’t really like buying plants by mail order, as I like to see what I am buying, there were three things on my must have list that I hadn’t seen all year in any of my garden centre forays. I decided that now was the time to treat myself, so somewhere in the garden is a guelder rose, a windflower and a mock orange. They don’t look much at the moment but I am hoping that they will survive.

It is obviously not a great time of year for things to be in flower but one or two things are braving the December chills, Randomly this includes a honeysuckle, which is in part of the garden that gets zero sun at this time of year. Mind you Storm Darragh kindly deposited a fine layer of sand all over my windows, so it is tricky to see what is going on in the garden, unless I venture outside.