One of my New Year resolutions this year is to take a photo of the garden every day and post it on facebook. I did it about three years ago as a way of seeing what’s good in the garden, rather than seeing the weeds and the work. The byproduct of this was that I went into the garden alot more and did alot more gardening, the garden was the best it has ever been that year…and it’s been going down hill since!! I’ve a lot of plans for the garden this year so hopefully this will help me get the energy and the drive to get it done! I quite like the decaying winter garden look, but I think it’s time to get out there and sort it…

This week there’s been quite a lot of chopping down, falling down and pushing over!! It started a couple of days ago when an old lilac tree at the top of the garden fell over. They seem to be prone to this, they get to a certain age and then just go rotten at the base, after previous experience of this I do give my lilacs a bit of a testing push every so often! Lucky it happened now and not in a couple of months time when Mr & Mrs Bluetit would have been nesting.

Our neighbour is having a lot of work done in his garden at the moment, including replacing the dividing fence, which is great news as the current one looked very patchy. He was outside yesterday clearing some of the shrubs and I took the opportunity to cut down a philladephus. I’d been planning to do this before the spring anyway as it’s becoming quite a thug and as there is a much bigger one on the back lane, we will get the scent anyway. It worked really well as it’s in the way of the new fence so he was more than happy to help and even better, his digger will pull up the roots!

I had a huge pile of twiggy branches when I turned my eye to our other lilac which is also spreading over the boundary. I decided to ‘test’ the main trunk, very wobbly, it didn’t take much to pull that one down. I then check a side branch and that came straight down too! I now have a big pile of wood to sort out! Good job we’ve got a wood burner!

On a more positive note, I found the first shoots peeping through, I think they’re snowdrops. The cyclamen are still flowering too.

We’ve quite a few evergreen shrubs which add a bit of interest at this time of year, this is osmanthus (great alternative to holly in Christmas decorations!) and eunonymous, which after years of just being a heap on the ground has suddenly made a bid for freedom up the wall!

Here’s an overview of the back garden, looking I have to say, a bit sorry for itself! The area to the left is being cleared for a new graveled circle with deep beds.  Other areas need tidying or clearing, depending on how infested with weeds they are. The chickens are sulking after the one month quarantine imposed by DEFRA was extended to three months! It’s all to do with preventing bird flu but  they’re not happy! We’ve not had one egg!!

Spring will soon be here and then it will start looking better 🙂