Tag Archives: Winter colour

Some Winter Colour (But Frankly Not Much)

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I know that things are a little bleak for us global northerners at the moment. But, on the positive, here in jolly Sussex, each day is a little longer than the one before and step by tiny incremental step, signs of life are shyly, (oh, so shyly), showing themselves.
And a  little winter sunshine can do wonders with what can otherwise be drab, dismal, dark, dingy, disagreeable, desolate, dispiriting, (help! can’t stop), dolorous, dead, dim, (running out of synonyms here), despondent, discouraging, doleful and dull.  Phew.   Oh, and depressing.  And disheartening.  (That’s enough now – Ed).  Dreary.  (Stop it – Ed).  Demoralising?  (Eeek – Ed).
 
A beam or two of sunlight illuminates a couple of large oak trees on the river bank.  It almost looks warm out there.

And a flash of sun ignites the beech hedging into the warmest russet.  It draws you closer and invites you to huddle round it and warm your chilled cockles.  Like a fiery brazier.  A bit.

Similarly, the dead stems and leaves of yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris) suddenly look magical when back-lit by that same low winter sun.  Bergenia in the foreground provides some seasonally rare verdancy.

Some facets of beauty are far more subtle.  That winter cliche, the ivy, is no less perfect, no less a miracle of shape and form for all that it is such a prevalent and common or garden plant.

And there is the odd flower basking (!) in the Sussex winter.

This unkindly named stinking hellebore (Helleborus foetidus)  is not so very colourful.  But it is nevertheless very welcome.  I have planted ordinary hellebores (Helleborus sp.) at the Priory too but they are slow to get established.

Some colour is less obvious and generally goes unnoticed even though it is there all year round.  Doing it’s thing.  Quietly.  I for one am a great fan of the little things:

the lichens, the mosses, the liverworts, the tiny ferns.  As a boy I used to plant up miniature gardens with liverwort, moss lawns and mini fern trees, ardently spraying them with water to keep them moist and alive. (This was before I discovered cider and cigarettes).  Well worth getting up close and personal;

Lichen and moss growing on one of the Priory statues.

Yes, at this time of year some beauty needs to be sought out.  A close up of the east lawn (more moss than grass) was captivating (at least to me) in its lushness and vitality

and whilst whooing over this shot of grass, moss and acorn (“whoo whoo whoo”.  I don’t get out much)

I noticed that the daffodil, February Gold, which I planted here three years ago is already emerging.  Hoorah!

The silver seed heads of Clematis ‘Bill MacKenzie’ are reminiscent of tribbles on a stalk; merrily dancing on a light breeze.  (Did tribbles dance?  I don’t suppose it matters).

And the buds of Photinia are pumped up and a’quivering on the blocks.  They’ll be up, off and away before you know it.

Some plants simply shouldn’t be in flower at this time of year.

This Erysimum bicolor ‘Bowles Mauve’ for instance but gosh, I’m not complaining.  Such perfect flowers are thin on the ground.

Elsewhere are winter stalwarts, like Viburnam bodnantense ‘Dawn.’  She grabs hold of (and tugs me in by) my nose every time I pass.  The scent blows my socks off.

Another January dependable, winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) cloaks much of the east wall of the house.  It is a massive amalgamation of several plants, twice my height (and in places taller still), 30 or 40 feet wide and currently smothered in flowers.

Flower buds on a lichen encrusted Magnolia stellata

After a short slumber, the gardens seem to be on a long, slow, deep inhale.  Things are stirring and about to get interesting.

Hold onto your hat.

Red

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Are you feeling a little glum?  Depressed at the thought of weeks and weeks of grey drizzle and overcast sky?  (If you’re in the Northern hemisphere that is).  Do Christmas songs on perpetual loop drive you to random acts of meanness toward strangers?  Well ,what you need is a great, big slap of red.  Technicolour red.  Right here, right now.  I’ve been trawling through my backlog of unused photos and thought, mid-December, that  a splish of crimson, a splash of scarlet, a splosh of vermilion might do you the world of good.  So here you are then, whether you want it or not …… RED!

Cotoneaster berries. The Priory – November 2011.

Opium poppies. The Priory – June 2011.

Malus ‘Gorgeous’ crab apple. The Old Forge – November 2011.

Just a few drops of red. Soldier beetles (Rhagonycha fulva). The Priory – July 2011.

Pyracantha berries. The Priory – September 2011.

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quiquefolia). The Old Forge – September 2011.

Ivy leaf Pelargonium. The Priory – July 2011.

Dahlia ‘Dark Spirit.’ The Priory – July 2011.

Rosa rugosa ‘Roseraie de l’hay.’ The Priory -July 2011.

A blush of red. Sedum and nigella. The Old Forge – August 2011.

Another opium poppy – with visitors. The Priory – June 2011.

Holly. The Priory – December 2011.

There you go.  Did that help?  Less glum – more happy?  No?  Oh well, suit yourself.

Priory Picture Post # 18

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Life can seem a little too drab, a little too grey in December.

So a plant (even in the greenhouse) that explodes

into outrageous colour

(and then hangs around for several days)

is only too welcome.  Thanks Pleiospilus nelii.  You’re a little star.

Frost, Sunshine And Blood

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Yesterday morning, I considered myself a lucky man.  The Priory garden looked perfect;  touched with a fine frost, under blue skies and a warming sun.

The west pond. One of two in the grounds
Well no; it didn’t actually.  It never looks perfect.  Not to my eye anyway.  There are always some leaves that need raking up, a clutch of weeds slyly emerging in a border, the mulch from a neat looking bed  manically cast out onto the lawn by a blackbird or the realisation that a cherished plant is mush.
Dogwood stems in the morning sunlight
Still.  Some things looked damn fine and I did enjoy the overall effect.  Generally however, the beauty was in the detail and as I looked at things close up, through my camera lens, I began to feel rather more pleased with myself.

Agapanthus flower heads that survived the winter storms

Young Betula jacquemontii (gleaming because I wiped them clean with a damp cloth a couple of months ago)

I noticed the first crocuses in flower and the perfection of a winter jasmine flower

and how even unprepossessing hardy geranium leaves were transformed by that frost.

Since I have been working at the Priory (almost three years),  I have planted thousands upon thousands of daffodil bulbs into the lawns, wildflower meadow and along the driveway leading to the house.
Daffs (February Gold) slowly, oh so slowly emerging.

And hey, today, after officially the longest January on record (?), they are beginning to emerge. I even found myself greeting them.  Well – there’s no one else to speak to.

That slight whiff of hubris from my morning inspection must have lingered about me into the afternoon, as later I pruned the enormous top-heavy growth on the rose tunnel.  As I snipped through a long, whippy shoot it purposefully (and with malice aforethought) lashed out without warning and sliced open the skin below my nose.   Flippin’ painful and with a very, very impressive amount of blood.  Pints of the stuff.  Amazed I didn’t resemble a wizened prune by the time it stopped. And I didn’t cry.  I just strode manfully to the greenhouse for an Earl Grey and Starbar solace.  As I daubed my wound with a non too clean hanky, I happened to glance at the growing list of “things to do” list.  So many jobs.  So little time.  Where to start?  Where to finish?  Good grief.