Frosty New Year

The mornings have been frosty where we are, the garden twinkling and still.

The grass frilled and crisp...

Hydrangea flower heads are encrusted...

And mussel shells frosted.

Ornamental grass looks spaghetti like...

and the teens are over excited (again!). 

And what makes it even better? It isn't my garden so I can appreciate the beauty without worrying about the damage to plants. 

It's the perfect end to another good year. Happy New Year everyone, thank you for sharing our progress through 2014 and we look forward to sharing the next one with you. 2015 will be a good one, plants will grow, flowers will flower and fruits will fruit. They may not be the ones we want, or where we want, but the cycle will roll on and the effect will be glorious (planned or not!).

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2015! xx

Pruning with an agenda!

This weekend was a pruning weekend. Overgrown shrubs, trailing climbers and misshapen bushes - all licked into shape in the space of an afternoon. Why did I choose a weekend so close to Christmas, when the shopping frenzy is reaching it's peak, the preparation for guests is already overdue and we have two teen birthdays two days away to be unprepared for? 

My mind was focussed (or some might argue diverted off track) by the need for festive decorations and my love of the Christmas wreath.

So an afternoon of pruning left me with this...

and this.

So I looked out the willow bases that I made last year...

wrangled some prunings...

and came up with this for the front door...

and this this for the back!

I love a wreath, and I love even more that I grew the materials used!

The greenery I used was Rosemary, Senecio, Ivy, Euonymous (gold and silver), Griselinia and Berberis.

Sadly there is still a massive amount clearing and sorting to do in the garden, it wasn't even dented by my efforts and looks no better. My front and back doors do though!

Feeling seedy?

Dashing through the garden today intent on another Christmas induced panic shopping spree, I just about noticed some lovely seediness.

Spotty pompoms of Japanese Anemone...

 that burst into puffs of snowy fluff!

Twiggy brown Libertia seed heads.

Oriental looking pagodas of Hosta seeds...

and the spikiest of Acanthus seed heads.

Now the question is do I want all these plants seeding all over the garden? The Hosta seeds never seems to germinate, and Acanthus is good for filling a shady spot but doesn't grow strongly in my garden. The Japanese Anemones do grow and these are the dark pink, less rampant ones so I would like some more of those. Libertia seedlings I heave out by the arm load every spring so I would quite less of those, not that there is anything I can do about any of this. 

As usual things will grow when and wherever they want, usually in the most inappropriate place, despite my efforts to encourage or prevent them.

Which is a roundabout way of justifying the complete lack of gardening action there is in my garden at the moment! 

Now, back to the panic shopping - I NEED a snowflake biscuit cutter NOW!