Waterworld

Poplars along a flooded stream

Rain has certainly been a feature of this winter so far...!  We thought it was bad in December but the second half of January has seen an endless scattering of showers and much more prolonged rain, with occasional heavy cloudbursts of hail.  It's not a good idea to work on saturated ground, even though weeds continue to rampage between the emerging bulbs, and now other plants are coming into leaf thanks to the mild temperatures.

Helleborus niger

Current interest...

A joyfully reliable perennial at this time of year is the Christmas Rose, which has seeded itself in damper parts of the garden and produces flowers in various mottled shades of pink and cream - with just a hint of green.  

Using a digital camera with a flexible viewfinder is a great way to enjoy these rather downward-facing blooms which are otherwise awkward to photograph.

We have a large spread of hellebores in a shady area under the barn wall where the lack of guttering means they get battered by rain running off the roof.  Being such robust creatures, they rarely suffer from more than the odd splash of mud - and even that can be avoided if you spread some bark mulch around them.  (Nor do they seem to mind if you remove the largest leaves once they start to go brown.)

Occasional spells of warm sunshine have brought out some crocus in the south-facing garden, encouraging them to open their petals and bask in the strong light.  They provide a splash of gold in an area where the yellow winter jasmine held sway for several weeks but has now faded and mostly dropped its starry little florets.

Bringing the outside in

Something else which has bloomed for weeks now is the window trough containing three cyclamens.  The dark pink one on the far left (not shown here) has only just come into flower, so that should keep the display going for a while longer. 

I have to say these plants seem to do much better in the open air, where they can be admired on the other side of the sitting room window, with wooden shutters closed over them at night to offer a bit of protection against cold showers.  They get watered about once a week and are mulched with gravel to stop their lower leaves and stems from rotting - a problem which seems to occur more readily when they are kept indoors.

Hippeastrum hybrida

On the other hand, if you want an exciting plant for the living room - one to amaze and amuse you over the festive season - then look no further than the Hippeastrum from South America (more commonly sold as 'Amaryllis' in a department store near you).

They are so statuesque with their in-your-face trumpets and with stems so rigid they could almost be forged from steel... fabulous to photograph in all stages of development.

These days you may get more than one stem from each bulb and the flowers last for a couple of weeks, making them really good value.  It's not worth trying to keep the bulb for another year, so just start again with a different colour (they're all fab!) and, unlike lilies, they're not heavily scented and won't drop pollen over your furniture

For something more traditional, and with a scent which really can fill your room, plant up some hyacinths a few weeks before Christmas. 

I don't know if it's just my imagination but the blue-flowered ones seem to be more pungent than the others.  We usually let the foliage die down naturally in a dry corner of the shed before re-planting them in the garden.

Again, I'm not sure if I'm 'mis-remembering' which colour I planted in our front border but they have all come back as a deep red-mauve instead of blue, which might have something to do with the soil but, in any event, matches the tulips which often appear at the same time.  A case of serendipity...

Walking across the sodden landscape on a grey day, when there is little to divert your attention from the puddles ahead, I am suddenly transfixed by the sight of silvery, spidery lichens enhancing a hedgerow like forgotten Christmas decorations.

Similarly the mosses, engorged as they are with rain, appear more vividly green than at any other time of the year.  I want to pick some and take it home to make a nest for the indoor hyacinths, but somehow I sense it will never look as natural and fresh as it does outside, clothing the lower branches of a shrub.

Mother Nature knows just how to enliven a dull day with some unexpected piece of country decor!

Being able to photograph these tangled thickets of vegetation in low light, in order to admire them later on a screen, provides a useful exercise in close observation - something you do naturally as a child, when you're nearer the ground and everything seems new and extraordinary, but tend to ignore in later life when you're busy getting from A to B and trying to keep the rain off!

Shrub of the Month - January

Viburnum bodnantense "Dawn"

This viburnum is fairly mature now and attracts its own share of lichen as it's planted in an exposed area on the garden boundary.

It's been covered in blooms all through January and they are sweetly scented, a bit like vanilla.

These viburnums are not particularly fast-growing and don't need much pruning - just a tidy-up now and then - which makes them very easy to look after.  They enjoy chalky soil and will reward you with long-lasting flowers in pink and white clusters.

Fine weather for ducks...