Spring Projects

It's only mid-January, but in contrast to last year's bitter cold weather, it feels as if we've skipped straight from autumn to spring.  This little snowdrop was photographed at Trentham Gardens less than a week ago, and there are early green shoots and flowers peeping through at home too.

It would all be lovely, if it wasn't generally so wet and windy.  I'd rather garden in colder but crisper conditions, and in fact a persistent chesty cough, picked up on our travels south for Christmas, has stopped me feeling much like gardening at all.  I did take advantage of a bright morning to tidy our back garden and found a few little gems starting to show through.

It's great to see the Hamamellis in flower, as I though it was dead last year when there was no sign of life at all.  It seems it was just settling in!  It gives some idea of how mild things have been that its flowering at about the same time as those we saw at the Hillier Arboretum, two-hundred miles south and about five hundred feet closer to sea level!

The snowdrops are tucked away in a shady corner at the bottom of the garden, but will be out soon, well ahead of their usual date, so I'll have to watch the news for the status of the Rode Hall display, which will also reach its peak earlier at this rate.

I've remembered to remove the old foliage from the Hellebores this year, so when they do burst into flower they should be even more of a spectacle than usual - I love hellebores, and its a treat to have soil they like.  Another winter favourite doing well is the 'Christmas box' Sarcoccoca humilis - I must strike as many cuttings as possible this year and get some more plants dotted around the garden for winter scent and structure, as they always look so glossy.  I did hope to edge the herb garden with it, but I'll need a lot of cuttings to make that idea work!

Back indoors, I've been working on a couple more writing projects - the continuation (and conclusion) of the saga set around the Solent Welfare Rights Project and another story entirely with a completely new set of characters focused around this part of the world and centred on the redoubtable 'Narrowboat Daphne'.  Both are a long way from being fit for human consumption! 

Plans to turn 'Limited Capability', the Kindle-based serial, into a proper paperback book (or two) have been put on hold by computer problems at the home of my self-publishing outfit Completelynovel.  I did wonder if they'd been conned into buying a load of second-hand computer gear off Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP, as they've had glitches aplenty since Christmas, but luckily (unlike the Universal Credit project) it does appear that everything is back under control again and to their credit the team have been open and honest about what's been happening and kept everyone up to date with progress and pitfalls at every stage of the process.  So now I need to sort out a cover design (or two) and get on with it.

However, this is supposed to be a gardening blog, and those of my readers who want horticultural humour and weird taters won't thank me for blathering on about my literary pretentions, especially as I'm planning something of a 'relaunch' of the original books as 'Severe Discomfort' reaches its official first anniversary.  So all the aspiring author stuff is going to be shuffled off to a brand new blog and this one will just be about plants, gardens, fruit and veg.  I'm sure there will still be occasional side-swipes at the 'Daily Mail' - I just can't help myself, people - though with one of their councillors apparently suggesting, without a hint of irony, that our flood-filled winter is retribution for the Government's legislation to allow Gay Marriage, I think UKIP might be the butt of one or two snippets of political satire too. 

I wonder if I've got a potato somewhere that looks like Nigel Farage?