Gardening
It’s been a good year for snowdrops in Cumbria; these are in my back garden in Keswick, the area around the folly. The cold snap in January was early enough not to harm the buds, and this February hasn’t been so wet as to rot the bulbs.
Cacti don’t make it easy to keep the weeds down, you need good 3-D vision and co-ordination to avoid the spikes. I find it’s best to pull out what I can and snip the rest. Anyhow the cacti have much more extensive roots than the parasitic weeds so the summer heat in Marseille sees off the weeds more effectively than I can.
Many of these cacti need potting-up and separating but it’s not a task for the faint-hearted; though none of this collection have poisonous or irritant spines - one has nasty hooks and another some vicious micro-barbs - but all the gloves I have tried have been penetrated, then it’s actually a worse “sting” than on the naked skin.
I realise not everyone has a folly in their garden, but as my garden in Keswick does feature a folly it seemed a good idea to reveal it from underneath the fast-growing vines, brambles and hedging plants that have overwhelmed that corner of the garden. This is a containment and control plan for the autumn rather than a particular idea or feature; a pond would be fun but more work than I want to take on at the moment. I also have a hedgehog hide in the garden, even so, I was being very careful in case of sleeping hedgehogs in the tangle. Also revealed, another mythic beast, I’ve taken him to the shed for winter. Fantastic autumn colours all around as I work.
The result is a resurgence in the wildlife interest in the garden: more birds at my feeders; the hedgehogs - wherever they are - didn't show themselves.
Young cacti, a welcome Christmas present and eventual addition to my cactus collection. The package was marked “Handle with care” with good reason. They’re growing alarmingly fast out on my patio in London and are going to need potting-up pretty soon - these are just 3 cm pots, see coin for scale.
The tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica) in my patio garden in Hammersmith, West London, is now up to the height of my face. Clearly it is happy with where it has been for more than 25 years.
