Saturday, February 24, 2007

Around the web

Eliot got it wrong - February is the cruellest month, not April. Well, for gardeners in this part of the world anyway. Spring is so close, and temperatures are so mild. Surely, it would be OK to put the seeds in now? Surely it's time to take cuttings from the chrysanthemums? And wouldn't everything benefit from a bit of fertiliser now? I rush to my copy of The Gardening Year, hoping that last time I looked I missed something and it will tell me I can get going. But there is only this stern warning : ".... temperatures may reach 13°C (55°F), but it is always wise to ignore these false springs for the spell rarely persists and cold weather is sure to return."


Trying to tell myself that I'm in Italy not Britain doesn't work. I know there's occasionally been snow in March even here. But given how mild this winter has been ... I'm afraid it's stronger than I am, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to hold out much longer.

In an attempt to distract myself, I thought I'd spend some time catching up with what other people have been doing. Big changes for Trillium, who's changed from being a weekend gardener into the owner of a small commercial nursery. Well, she says it's small but as she also said that "Three of the staff were in ... on Tuesday", it sounds pretty impressive to me. She's started a new blog to record her adventures.

Another interesting post came from John regarding an association which he's involved with called Thrive. Thrive works with disabled people, using gardening as therapy, and has a project going in Battersea Park. They need volunteers for various dates in the spring and summer - follow the link to John's site to find out when. I can't work out from their website what they do in other parts of the country, but John may know if you leave him a comment to ask.

A couple of people seem to have disappeared. Roy in Australia hasn't posted on either of his blogs since January - hope everything's OK, Roy. And Snappy moved house saying he'd be back as soon as he got the internet connected, and is still AWOL. Come back soon Snappy.

Carol of May Dreams Garden has managed to involve her nine year old niece Sophie not only in gardening but also in blogging. And nice posts she writes. The last one was about accidents in the garden. If you've done something daft while gardening, please leave a comment and give her a bit of encouragement to go on writing.

Carol is one of the few people who've managed to go on blogging more or less daily right through the winter. She's great at thinking of topics for posts, and earlier this month came up with the idea of asking everyone to post a list of what was in bloom in their garden on the 15th of each month. I missed it this month (though I'll be joining in next) but can't resist posting this pic of my salmon pelargonium which has not stopped blooming once all through the winter. As you can see, it now needs dead-heading, but there are still new blooms on the way.

2 comments:

Carol Michel said...

Sue, wonderful post and not just because of the nice words about my blog. (But thank you for that!)

I don't expect spring until much later than February where I am, but one can and still does hope that the days are at least above freezing. We had freezing rain, pelting snow, and then more rain last night. Ugh, messy!

Sue Swift said...

Hi Carol,
I have to admit that I cracked today - I suspected I would. It was 11°C and though that's a bit colder than it has been, I couldn't resist. I didn't get round to any seed sowing, because of lack of time, but I did some general tidying up and got alot of biennials and hardy annuals which I started off last autumn into their summer containers. Which made room for the new seed trays. During the week I probably won't be able to resist putting in some of the stuff that usually goes in in March.

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