As the year winds down into winter, so do I. I'm no winter gardener (I hibernate) and there is so much that needs doing while the weather is still mild. As lots of gardening work all at once can be rather overfacing (not getting any younger, you know) I have to do it little by little and what does not get done, well, does not get done! The weather has been strange across the UK; episodes of sun giving relief, downpours of rain causing flooding, and winds that create havoc for many on the roads and elsewhere. While we in the UK are doing better than many poor souls across the world right now, coping with wars and disasters, we did get downgraded Hurricane Ophelia swinging east across the Atlantic a couple of days ago. She devastated areas of Ireland, then followed that by smashing into the UK's west coast causing loss of life (3 people) in Wales. When storm Ophelia arrived where I live, high on the Pennines of West Yorkshire, the wind was still howling and continued during the night. In the morning I looked out of my front window, hoping that a tree hadn't come down on my car. None had. I didn't even see signs of a branch having come down anywhere. I looked into my back garden, fingers crossed in the hope that all was well. And it was. Miraculously, one might say, as the
ash trees in a neighbour's garden had been crazily lashing around in the wind and I was worried that one would come down and smash
my new fencing and
my garden room. But all was well, with not a thing out of place, not even a pot turned over, and no obvious signs of damage to plants. Imagine that.
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| Wild Eve rose - 18 October 2017 |
And, although I haven't had a glorious display of climbing roses this year (I had to cut them back significantly when the new fencing was being erected), they weathered the storm and
Wild Eve, in particular, weathered wild Ophelia and is putting on a delightful, but small, show right now.
We haven't had any frost yet this autumn but it felt slightly chilly early this morning in the garden. The thermometer in my garden room indicates that the temperature in there has not yet dropped below 8C yet. Good. I'm keeping a close watch on it to see how the room, which has no heating, fares when outside temperatures get down to zero and below. The
garden room doors and windows are double-glazed and the walls are insulated, so I'm hoping for the best.
Meanwhile the spells of sunshine continue and Alfie, the resident Ragdoll cat, has been doing a spot of sunbathing on top of my plastic storage box which I often use as a potting table. It's a little suntrap there among the pots, the hose, the trowel, and the 'muck'!
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| Alfie sunbathing on the storage box |
