Festive greetings!

We celebrated Yule and the winter solstice yesterday with a walk to Scorhill stone circle up on Dartmoor. Pools of sunlight slanted between broken clouds, highlighting the wind-ruffled, blonde grass. Then, broaching the last hill onto 'the top of the world', we caught sight of a rainbow, with one its pots of gold inside the circle. Magical. And I wasn't carrying my camera!

So here's a frosted periwinkle, instead. Just starting to open in the wilder parts of the garden and the hedgerows, they're tough little beauties.

Hooray for longer days! Happy Christmas, bloggers!

Winter honeysuckle, honeybees and queen bumbles

A warm, mild day at last, and Lonicera fragrant-issima fills the air with a sweet honeysuckle fragrance, drawing in queen bumblebees to sup from nectaries in the base of the tubular flowers. I have exploited the five foot, arching shrub’s tough nature by planting it against a north-facing wall, in a raised bed above the porch. It flowers reliably through December and January, a wonderful source of energy for insects when indigenous plants are at their least generous.

I put mine in eight or so years ago, and with a simple hard prune after flowering and occasional compost mulch, it has thrived and required little maintenance. Since planting it, however, I’ve discovered the shrub in other gardens, growing in full sun, and, to my disgust, with twice the number of blooms. Therefore, for whatever position, so long as your soil is rich and well-drained, winter honeysuckle is a treasure I'd recommend to all.

If temperatures rise high enough in the middle of the day, honeybees are also tempted out of their hive. Not a true hibernation, they spend the winter in a tight cluster, clinging onto wax frames around the queen. They shiver their wings to generate heat, and by taking turns at the chilly exterior of the ball, a colony endures the colder months. But when sunshine hits the hive entrance, they seize the opportunity, emerging for short flights, to empty their bowels. And if they find the air sufficiently balmy, they will even consider a forage, bringing them over the lane to the honeysuckle in the garden (see image above).

The frosty spell continues, and every morning I’m grateful for the crunchy trail of frozen leaves that grants safe passage across the treacherously slippery lane. Thus far I’ve managed to reach the vegetable garden and poultry runs without skittering and skidaddling on the ice, unlike Seeka, our two-year-old Heinz, who still, first thing, erupts from the door like an energised ballistic, to be swiftly taken out by her four paws shooting off on separate missions.

I have covered the salad crops with tunnels of fleece, despite their proving amazingly hardy last winter - they are sweeter and more tender when grown under protection. In the middle of the day I open up the beds for an airing, and so long as the blankets themselves don’t stick together with frost, it is only a matter of seconds to flip them closed before dusk.

Even as I grimace at the prickly pain of thawing frozen mitts once again this morning, I can’t help but welcome the benefits of a long, cold spell. The army of slugs that has proved enemy number one throughout 2008 is at last demobilised, and fungal diseases that thrive in warm, moist conditions are halted in their tracks. Vernalisation (the winter effect), is essential to trigger spring flowering in many wild and cultivated species, from commercial sugar beet and wheat to the apples and blackcurrants in my garden. In addition, the good number of ornamentals that, confused by recent mild winters, have been flowering out of turn, should appreciate nature’s realigning to their expectations.

Nevertheless, I do hope this is not just the prelude to an exceptionally cold season, as South African dierama, Californian carpenteria and South American Acca might well not survive. Yikes, I’ve just remembered - the poor dahlias are still in the ground – it may not be a biodynamic ‘flower day’, but I must dig them up right away.

The Christmas Goose

As anyone who keeps animals outside will know, providing stock with water can be tiresome in cold weather. If, having broken thick ice on the goose bath, I find the chicken’s water is frozen solid, I check the pond to ensure the wild birds too have plenty to drink (I don’t feed the latter until the pyracantha and holly berries have been eaten, usually just before Christmas).

Traditionally at Bertie’s Cottage, the first weeks in December are overshadowed by the necessity of slaughtering many of our animals. However the ewe and lambs went to the chop months ago, and for the first year in many, there are no fat geese for the festive table – over the summer a badger broke in and gorged the whole clutch of eggs, (followed by two ducks, which rendered him so bloated, he had to forgo a trio of chickens he’d also savaged, just in case he had space). Fortunately Sam, the gander, and Gosie and Biba, his girls, looked sufficiently threatening to be spared. With luck next year they will have more success.

We chose to rest the pig field this year to stop parasites from building up, but fortunately our next door neighbours reared two Berkshire porkers, and in return for half one of our baconers last autumn, they brought us a bulging sack containing half a pig. Chops were the choice for supper (wretched Bitsa, the Jack Russell, stole the liver). I fried them till the inch of sweet fat had softened, browned and crisped along the edges, then seasoned them and flamed two tablespoons of gin around the pan. Accompanied by mashed Valor potatoes from friends just over the hill (ours are all eaten), plus veg from the garden - baked beetroot and steamed kale Cavolo nero di Toscana – the result proved so good we raised a glass to locals and seasonal food.

Viburnum farreri 'Candidissimum'

Sleet, hail, four consecutive dawns of glittering frost – winter has come early to Bertie’s Cottage. With the last of the tulips and Anenome blanda corms still to plant, I’m hoping that the sun, now climbing a cloudless blue sky, will thaw the soil before it too swiftly dips back over the horizon.

It is late for planting bulbs, but whilst narcissi should be buried before the end of October, tulips still thrive stored well into December, so long as they are kept in a cool, dark place, and are regularly checked for mould. If blue patches do start to form, dust the bulbs with powdered sulphur, an effective, natural and user-friendly fungicide.

The ornamental garden may be at its lowest ebb, but Viburnum farreri ‘Candidissimum’, is covered in clusters of white buds, that open a few at a time when temperatures allow. Happy in a north-facing position, next to a path, the tubular flowers generate a cloud of spicy scent that catches passers-by with surprise and delight. Well, generally delight – one nasally challenged friend complains at being mugged!