After having many days od sitting around either at home or visiting relatives it made a wonderful change to get out into the fresh air and spend half a day pottering at the nursery. The weather was suddenly milder, temps up to about 11 degrees which is quite a contrast to the highs of around 3 degrees during the last week or so.

I had a good look in the polytunnels, and found that a few plants needed watering. There doesn’t seem to have been any damage from the frosts. A large rat was in the rat trap, Philip can deal with that.

Next I put boots on and had a wander all round the garden to count the plants which are flowering on New Year’s Day. Only 9 different things outside and a further 17 in the tunnels. No snowdrops or hellebores yet but the buds are showing so it won’t be long. Plenty of evidence of rabbit activity which will only get worse partly because we aren’t there much at the moment and I’ve brought George home after his expensive trip to the vets over Christmas.

I’m so pleased that the hardwood cuttings of Salix exigua look alive ( I’d potted a few up a while ago and they looked very iffy for weeks) so I dug up some more to pot up. One thing generally leads to another………………there were many seedling cowslips where the willow was growing so I decided to dig them up and transplant them to the border which already have quite a lot. Its a semi-woodland area with scruffy grass under the trees which I’m gradually taming by introducing various ground cover plants which one day will beat the grass and look beautiful……………maybe later this year? We shall see.