After the Storm

If your roof is in a mess you can replace it (hence the scaffolding) - not so easy when it is snowing.

Hybrid Hellebore

But does this Hellebore care?  I don't think so.

It was 11 years ago that I who had no interest in gardening walked out one winter day into our then back yard for a smoke when I noticed something flowering in a pot.  I was amazed - I didn't know anything flowered at the beginning of January.  But there it sat, a lowish plant with a mass of creamy white flowers that I learned later were not really flowers but the tinted sepals that protect the real tiny flower within.  I told my late wife and she did not know what it was either - even though she had bought the thing.  So, for safe keeping we got it out the pot and stuck it in the ground.  We moved it several times over the next couple of months as we both discovered we liked gardening and the plant flowered its socks off.

Later, finding the label, we learned it was Helleborus niger 'Potter's Wheel' - a very special form of the Christmas Rose and the label also told us it didn't like root disturbance.

Two houses later I am alone, having moved here in December 2012, but I still have some hellebores which are just beginning to get established.  And in January when in flower they still amaze me, all the way through to late spring.

But it's not just Hellebores that amaze me at this time of year - the stirring of life through the frost still never ceases to blow my mind.

Crocus chrysanthus

Snowdrop - Galanthus elwesii - the leaves are greyer (glaucus) than the more common species.

Iris reticulata
A small Iris that might flower in February

Viola odorata - Sweet Violet trying to flower:
My hope is this will spread itself freely around along with the dark-leaved Viola labradorica

These Crocuses were given to me by a friend from her garden
and look like being the first to flower this year.

But it is not just about bulbs for there are buds too:

Hydrangea petiolaris
I am hoping this 2 year old climbing Hydrangea
will one day cloak this fence

This unknown Paeonia left by a previous incumbent is determined to grow

And finally, even in all this cold some seedlings are doing very well although they look so vulnerable:

Mostly these are Foxglove including some of the white form.
This is my "Nursery"!
Digitalis purpurea

Earlier this month the roof was ripped from my mini plastic greenhouse in fierce winds - but these seedlings don't seem to care.  So, while the house needs a new roof, these don't and that's fine by me.

A Winter Plan

Okay, it’s official – I have depression.  But don’t worry, this is not a baring the soul confessional of self-loathing and grey despair – it IS a gardening blog.  And gardening is the total antithesis of Depression.  In the cold and darkness that is winter my little back garden is nonetheless celebrating life with a gentle defiance that is determined to live in spite and sometimes because of it all: Hellebores are budding and beginning to flower; Snowdrops heads are waiting to open and there are sheaths of streaked yellow Crocuses appearing.  They are not obvious in this little patch – you have to look for them – but they are there.

My plan for this blog is to follow my back garden through the course of this year and to embrace the life it brings forth of which Depression would gladly deprive me if I let it.

  

Maybe.