Out In The Cold

It’s been cold (in case you’ve been away)
This time last year I had Iris Reticulata flowering, the winter heathers were on the cusp and pockets of new growth were itching to just get on with it. This year the Iris has refused even to break the surface of the soil and do you know what? if my name was Iris, neither would I. We’ve lived in this part of Wiltshire for almost 15 years and my tiny sheltered greenhouse has never frozen inside until this year – I’ve even had difficulty just getting the door open.
Big Mistake
My lack of timely attention, apart from the horticultural fleece I rather carelessly scatter around, has meant that I have probably lost most of the plants over wintering in my greenhouse, including the Aeoniums and Echeverias I bought back from Scilly a few years ago. My favourite Echeveria has turned a translucent squeamish green and when I touched it, it felt very, very, solid. I’m hoping that if I increase the protection in the greenhouse the plants may defrost very slowly, rather like a well-placed Camellia in early Spring, but as so often happens in gardening, hope can turn to disappointment. I’ll just have to wait and see.
Your Birds Need You
Even though there’s no gardening to be done, the birds still need looking after. Wildlife gardening is all the rage at the moment; programmes are popping up all over the place, a bit like celebrity chefs, but more use! – but gardening to benefit wildlife (and ultimately all of us) shouldn’t just be a fad or a phase it has to be a lifetime’s commitment. The simplest thing you can do and yet so vital, especially during hard periods like now is to leave a little food in a safe place and more importantly, water, for the birds. Regular feeding saves them the energy wasted in searching and you’ll be rewarded when they return in better times to eat your pests – provided you haven’t laced them with poisons first.
Mr & Mrs Blackbird, rather than just visiting, have taken up temporary residence close to the back door. As we come and go they “eye” us from the garden fence and we dutifully fetch scraps, grubs, seed or sultanas and they fall upon it before we’ve taken our hands away. I cannot recall such tame blackbirds, but I imagine that these two must make use of other humans in the vicinity much as they make use of us. They’ve trained us very well, to the extent that we feel guilty if they run out of food, and if they’re absent for a while, we start to wonder where they are. They certainly look fit and well which is gratifying, but I think they may soon need a “run-way” just to get off the ground.