Two Ladies Stopped by…

There has been a lull in gardening updates. Let me trot out the excuses – bad weather, a garden which is completely saturated, it’s been cold, I’ve been lazy, unenthusiastic and have done very little gardening in the last while – so there was very little to write about and I wasn’t in good enough form to write. And then, the two ladies stopped by…

It was mid afternoon, after a late lunch as we had been out for a walk on the Waterford Greenway in the late morning, and I had gone to the garden to empty the coffee grinds from the coffee pot. Mary generally places them neatly under some shrub or in some bed which she considers would benefit from this choice mulch while I take a fling to the furthest reaches approach and let it fly, of late across a bed of azaleas under a large Magnolia soulangeana. But then, in Mary’s style, I wandered off down the garden to check on some snowdrops with the coffee pot still in hand. I was under an Amelanchier canadensis, admiring a spot of Galanthus ‘Trumps’, when I noted a car stopping outside the lane gate. I stood quietly and observed – one never knows who might be around or what they might be doing! – and the car moved along a few metres and stopped again; the window opened and a lady pointed to something on the ditch or in the garden. I was spotted and greeted with “the snowdrops are looking lovely” so I approached with ease for I guessed that anybody interested in the plants hardly had any bad intentions and was told, “I cut the leaves off my hellebores this year, something I had never done before, after reading it in your blog.” We moved up to the garden gate to chat further rather than shouting at each other and one of the ladies told me that she read my blog every Saturday morning. A voice in the back of my head said that I hadn’t been that regular with my writing and that I should get my thumb out and start clacking on the keyboard again to keep myself occupied if not to give the ladies something to read – one never knows who reads what is written. And then I went indoors and related all the above to Mary who asked the obvious question, one I had neglected to ask – who were they? What were their names? What was the number of their car? I hadn’t a clue but I may find out when days of better weather return as they have been invited to come for a walk around the garden. In the meantime, I hope they enjoy this update which will rely heavily on photographs:

There have been nights of frost and frosty mornings which followed and the garden can look attractive in that peculiar wintery way – good to look at, to photograph, but perfectly uninviting for the gardener to do any work there:

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And, as the frost clears, the low angle of the winter sun shows the garden in a different light, a contrast of bright rays of sunshine and strong shadows:

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Finally, a few flowers for, thankfully, we have a few things to give a little colour at this time of the year. I’m going to hold back on showing a lot of snowdrops as it is my intention to do an update on how they have been going and I’ll get round to that soon, very soon – and that will spare the two ladies pricking my conscience and bringing to mind how slow to the keyboard I have been in recent weeks.

Kniphofia ‘Christmas Cheer’

Hamalelis x intermedia

Iris unguicularis ‘Kilbroney Marble’

Kniphofia ‘Christmas Cheer’

Cyclamen coum

Helleborus x hybridus

Helleborus niger

Helleborus x hybridus

Snowdrops and Cyclamen coum

Helleborud x hybridus