Calm after the storm

It’s been a cold and rather sunless February so far, but no more high winds since the rather terrifying 85 mph gales of Storm Eowyn at the end of January. Remarkably, we incurred no damage, apart from a piece of Perspex that came loose from the greenhouse roof -easily replaced, and a lot of fallen twigs. Sadly some of the trees round about didn’t fare so well…

The storms did take their toll on the remnants of last year’s herbaceous, though, which we left in place for winter interest. Time, then, to chop them down and stack them behind the wall, taking care not to compress or shake the stems to minimise dusturbance of overwintering ladybirds and other insects. It’s tempting to leave ornamental seedheads for as long as possible but there comes a time when it all looks a little forlorn, detracting from the early hellebores, polyanthus, snowdrops and Winter aconites which have now arrived on the scene.

I’ve now finished all the winter-pruning apart from our hybrid teas, which I’ll leave for a few weeks longer until the overnight temperatures improve a little. And the flowering currant, which is due a major haircut but not until the local honeybees and early bumbles have benefitted from its imminent blooms.

The stage is now set, then, for the new growing season. I don’t think the garden ever goes to sleep, there is always some activity. Indeed now, with the lengthening day-length, there are real signs of life, including from the bird population. The dawn chorus is still recruiting and is a little modest but it’s there, with notable performances from robin, blackbird, chaffinch and sparrow, and that lifts the heart after the gloom of winter. Overhead, on a calm day, the pair of buzzards have started to circle, on permanent holding pattern over the garden, hopefully not lining up one of the chickens, and in the end tree, beyond the garden wall, the pair of ravens chat away to each other like an old couple on the bus.

On one rare day of sunshine this past week, I even spotted three of the goldfish peering up at me through the disc of ice that separated us; clearly a rare beam of sunlight is as novel in the piscine world as in the human.

And the bulbs are very much on the move, with carpets of pearl-white snowdrops in bloom in the woodland (how do they stay so pristine?!) and early daffodils marshalling themselves under the big trees on The Slope, waiting patiently for the south-west airflow to return.

Spring is only a few days away.

And finally, eccentric I know, this week I’ve been ‘fluffing up’ the gravel outside the house. Gravel gets very compressed after a while with footfall, mowers etc, and raking it over makes quite an impact. Well, I think it does! I’m pretty sure that most public gardens do this regularly. Heligan certainly does! (Incidentally, they have a rather excellent podcast series ‘Beauty in all things, The Lost Gardens of Heligan’).