End of November round up

Posted Thu 30 November 2017 in garden

A short round up this month with no pictures. A few plants are still flowering which I think have been covered well enough in the other posts this month.

For me the biggest event was the number of blackbirds that were visiting to eat the Cotoneaster berries. Once they finished the deciduous cotoneaster, they then started on the smaller leaved evergreen one next to it. At the very end of the month, they are starting to move over to the Pyracantha.

I've seen at least six at the same time on a few occasions. They are also keen to hunt through the fallen leaves on the ground, but mostly ignoring the bird food at the moment.

There were also pigeons (I believe wood pigeons but I need to learn to identify pigeons and doves more) eating the Pyracantha berries. Interestingly they seem to start at the top, on the branches that barely seem to support their weight and gradually working their way down.

Weather

There were some very pleasant sunny days. A bit on the cold side overnight, with a few light frosts. Then a week with lots of rain and then to cap it all off on the final day there was snow. We probably got about a centimeter maybe two of snow on the ground.

Work on the garden

As already described I have removed one row of shrubs from the front hedge, shredded them and spread the chips around the front and back gardens. I also had a bag of shredded bark and obtained some more wood chips which I have also spread around, mainly on the right hand side of the garden that does not get the leaf fall.

I dug out the two rose bushes.

Flowering

• Penstemon - still looking good
• Gaillardia
• Gazania - the yellow one has two flowers that are not exactly open, but are also decidedly not dead.
• Primula - bought this month and its flower is still out.
• Cyclamen the two I bought this year are still flowering fine and indeed more flowers appear to be out now.
• Geranium - My Rozanne has had more flowers this month than earlier in the warmer parts of the year!
• Lobelia erinus - grown from seed - still flowering.
• Salvias, the Hot lips, Wendy's wish and Radio red are all still flowering at the end of the month.

That's it for this month, on to December...

Posted by Steve