New Year’s Eve & the Garden

NYE this year the garden looks like a skating rink. We had snow, then rain, then warmth and now snow again. It looks very beautiful but it’s lethal for the plants.

There is, however, nothing I can do about it, except to sit back and enjoy the whole sight: the shape of the grasses holding the snow, the gorgeous evergreens and evergolds. I have one which is an absolute corker: Sciadopitys verticillata a Japanese umbrella pine. The shape is conical with long graceful clusters of needles. It’s poking up above the snow right now—just—but might get to four feet. This one makes me want to have many more small evergreens here. What a sight in the snow.

What’s keeping me going are the catalogues flooding in. I’m going to go through the ones I have and tell you what’s really good. The great thing about catalogues is that you can read them in a hot soaky bath.

Meantime my beloved, Jack Batten, and I are going to have a lovely bottle of wine, a very quiet dinner together and then watch The Wire.

Happy New Year everyone.