Gardening in the winter

This time of year I pull out books by my favorite garden writers .  Usually  I read a chapter  before I go off to sleep at night.  I've started re reading ' My Garden in Autumn and winter ' by E.A. Bowles  and ' An all the year garden' by Margery Fish . I skipped straight to the winter chapters . 
Both of these gardeners spent a great deal of time " well wrapped " enjoying , taking stock, and working in the winter garden  . 

" Of course some people  don't want to go into the garden in the winter"  that  from Margery Fish  ,   Walter her husband didn't . 

 I can be a bit that way . I usually leave things till  there is a nice sunny clear day in March . I don't get on with  a" wrapping up" and I hate the damp, cold and grey. 

But, inspired by these two gardeners of the past , I  have  been pushing myself to get out " wrap up" and get out there.

So I've  started  pulling, snipping and raking . Gathering armloads of dead stuffing and filling all my big buckets ... it's  not so bad after all , but it was dry today.

 

In a vase on Monday

 

As luck will have it ...I sniped all these today .

December in the garden

I seem to have missed ' November in the garden' , but it rained  all month .  

                  The old chopped down Lilac tree stumps have become mossy stepping stones.

Styrax japonica  

 Lots of this about...

Not Lilac stumps , real mossy cement with  mondo lawn 

 

Late Summer in the garden

After doing not much in the garden all summer ...too hot, too smoky, too lazy.  I am now starting to get a few things done while I can.

First thing on my list : Get that bamboo out of the stock tanks , three to start with .                                           Then I'll see about the other, I'm not even sure how many I've got along the fence. They have been the privacy barrier for a few years . First in the ground ,  then  stuffed into stock tanks. 

One stock tank with chopped down bamboo , and tipped upside down . Will all the soil and bamboo just drop out . Of course not ....

Stock tank number two ... same technique . I think I'll leave these like this all winter.

Stock tank number three ..... 

 

Garden Blogger's bloom day

I quick trip around the garden  while the air quality was just hazardous this morning , and not off the dial like yesterday .
My first Dahlia  bloom ... grown from seed !

A new lawn

           It's two years in the making , my patch of lawn . Digging up and spitting the clumps , replanting . 

                    I like it so much that I've started another area ... I'll let this fill in  ,  then who knows.

 

Path clearing

Iris again

Back at  Aitken's Salmon Creek Garden
  The Japanese Iris are at full bloom just now . 

The clumps are huge , so are the size of the blooms . It isn't so easy to get in to weed these days.

Two hours of removing spent blooms ...

...I 'll have this full soon enough .

Heres Terry taking photos as well .

I took possession of a nice freshly plowed row . No Iris , just my spare Annuals I grew this year from seed.