Cayuga Morning,..that's nice to know ,..tell your Daughter i have two 'Clivia',..which grew from a bulbs all the way from 'New England',..still producing blooms up to today though i think the two blooms below will be the last until next time. That unusual white rose that bloomed from Rose (Rosa ' Handle ' ) is still holding on to life despite the temperature dropping to -1 and a shower of snow. The Delphinium is still alive though i doubt if the bloom will fully open.
That rose is beautiful and I'm glad you can still enjoy it despite the temperature drop. I have a Clivia lily too but it's always kept indoors and flowers in summer.
Eileen its amazing how yours blooms during summer where as mine is blooming in October-November,..like you i keep mine indoors out of full sun,..i am the same with my Amaryllis,..some bloom during summer others around December,..must be down to my aftershave . Harts tongue Fern,..still green and glossy indoors. I was helping a boating friend move house last month and as we were loading up the last of his belongings into his van i spotted a broken flower pot with a small rose bush in it,..are you not taking that i asked?,..nope he said,..enough to do without sorting out broken pots and what ever is in them,..so i took it and its growing well in its new container,..he purchased it in LIDL,..Rose ( Rosa 'Casino' ),..yellow climbing scented rose.
Good for you Philip!! Your rescue rose in now in good hands. You must let us see it again when it blooms for you. I gave my Hart's tongue ferns away to a friend who was building a wildlife pond. They do well here outdoors despite out low temperatures during the winter months.
Eileen they are a beautiful Fern,..a hardy Fern as well,..i am sure your friend appreciated them and of course they will drop seed so she will have a couple of generations of them before very long,.. Yes it will be something to look forward to,..seeing how that yellow rose develops and how the blooms look and how the scent is. Nothing much moving in the garden except the birds and a small dog.
Cornus alba ' Red Dogwood Shrub ',..i always admired the red wood on this shrub but its too big for the garden with its spread of 8 foot wide and the same in height,..produces whitish blue berries. Always makes the garden fit in with Christmas,..looks like Holly with its red berries but it is Cotoneaster dammeri,..growing at the bottom of my garden.
I love dogwood in the winter!! The stalks come in so many colours and brighten up these short, dark days.
Eileen its a shrub that one doesn't notice so much during summer,..i have come across one with yellow stalks,..very striking as well. I live almost at the top of a hill and the next building further up was at the back of my garden,..this was a bakery long ago closed down,..after living here for a few years some developer bought the old bakery and decided to build apartments,..the three houses where i am made sure that it was the side of the apartments that would face our gardens as we certainly didn't want to be overlooked,..all went well. When the demolition started i noticed the builders were not using breathing masks when removing the asbestos roof nor did they carefully remove the asbestos to place it in sealed plastic nor even wet it down,..i got on to the town health and safety people who stopped the demolition for several weeks,..it seems the contractor didn't have a licence to remove asbestos. On three occasions when the building started,..they were careless in letting a main roof beam slide off the roof and fall into my garden,..i was in the garden at the time and the beam fell behind me,..it took two workers to lift and remove the beam,..then a huge sheet of steel fell into the garden next door,..last was a sheet of insulation weighing 10 lbs fell and hit me on the shoulder,..they had to pay me 17.000 euro. So when the Aspen Trees they planted started growing very tall and leaves in abundance fell into my garden i wasn't very pleased but let it pass,..until this week,..with storm Caroline coming this way i was looking at the trees and realized they would fall across my roof,..plus thrash my garden,..sent a letter to the developer reminding him that he had to fork out 17.000 euro in the past and it looked like i could be sending him a letter headed 'Compensation 2017',..that i would leave it up to him to decide. Two days later this is the before ( last summer ) and after,..yesterday.
Well done you for getting the Aspens cut back!! Wish our developers would react as quickly as yours do.
Eileen they knew what happened in the past and so the very quick reaction lol,..well the storm Caroline arrived,..much ado about nothing really,..then the snow appeared,..it lasted for three days that is the first snow to remain on the ground since 2010,..imagine the amount of children who never experienced a couple of inches of snow and for a few days. That mystery rose has matured and petals fallen but the bud next to it bloomed four days ago,..a sort of yellow though the cold and snow might have influenced that colour. I left out lots of food for the birds,..also took into consideration the birds that normally remain feeding on the ground. This is the first time my Robin was spotted feeding on high.
My roses haven't done anything for a long time now. I miss seeing them in the garden. Love your robin shots. I always wonder how such small birds survive even when the weather is so cold. I make sure ours are well fed every day and they now line up on the patio each morning waiting for me to distribute the food for them.
I know how you feel,..looking at my garden today is a shocking sight compared to spring and summer,..still its only 47 more days to spring 2018 . Oh i daresay many birds don't survive over winter,..no matter what their instincts are the younger ones wouldn't be prepared for a long spell of hard frost and snow,..in 2010 when we had the long spell of snow i found a Woodcock sheltering at my back door,..i gave it lots of food and kept leaving food out,..Woodcock are seldom seen around town areas. Our European Robin seems at home come winter or is it that it comes closer to the house?,..i think every garden here has its own Robin and dare any Robin enter another's territory,..for such a solitary bird it manages to survive in a garden for years. Nice to hear you leave plenty of food out for them in winter,..yours certainly await your feeding time,..and its not just the food they like a friendly human.
Hellebores,..yep that is what they are,..so i waited all summer for those seeds to grow and this is what i get,..not Tiger Flowers as i was sure i had sown,..they are flowering a tad out of season as we are in winter here and we normally see them bloom come spring,..still beggars can not be choosers,..from checking i see there are more than just the white flower to look forward to. When the bird below was at the far end of the garden i was sure it was a female blackbird,..looks like a very dark coloured thrush.
I'm waiting for the first bud to show on my Hellebores - shouldn't be long now. We're seeing a lot more blackbirds in our garden as they come for the mealworms and sunflower seeds I scatter for them. The ground is still too hard for them to be able to get to any worms.
