Garden 2013 no 1

Garden 3013 no 1

It feels so good to write that…. GARDEN 2013 NO 1 

This will be brief, obviously there is not a lot to do or to see in a garden in January but the there are two things I find worth celebrating. The first is that I was well enough to brave the January cold for about an hour and go outside to the garden. The second is that once out there, I saw tiny signs of new growth. My fruit bushes are in bud. It’s early, and spring is still a long way off but it’s reassuring to see the bushes in bud ready for the spring. I did very little, I picked up some rubbish that had blown into the garden, clipped a few blackberry runners off before they embedded themselves into the ground, raked over the soil to level it off after the recent rain and wind, threw some spring bulbs into the ground and then threw handfuls of soil on top. (I’m not sure they will actually do any thing but I had forgotten about them and they spent the winter in a bucket in the shed). I’ve nothing to lose, the bulbs weren’t going to do any thing in the shed and even if they do nothing this year, they will be nicely buried into the ground by next year.

On the plus side, I’ve caught a lot of the water that’s been falling from the sky. My water butt is full to overflowing and the various buckets and bins around the garden are also rapidly filling. I’m thinking of using the wormery I bought a couple of years ago as a second water butt. I didn’t have much luck using it as a wormery because all the worms died.  I think it’s too cold here to keep worms outside and the bin has been cleaned and stored in the shed, it's ideal because it has a tap on the bottom.  I think I’m going to adapt it and use it as a second water butt, seems a shame to throw all this water away when it could be used to water the garden s next summer.

But for now, it was so nice to spend an hour outside.