Up to my neck in bulbs again. Thousands of them. I had to order several thousand further bluebells and native narcissus as it was intimated that huge swathes of blue and yellow would be looked for in the spring where at present no swathes of anything but grass exists. Happy to oblige I'm sure but deep down I still hate doing it and so Daisy and I grumble about the woods for hours at a time dodging rocketing pheasants and staying as far away from the shooters as is humanly and doggily possible.

Everything tender is dug up and either composted or put away under glass. It is rather like gathering in the harvest and if I can do it all before the first frost all the better. This year I was just caught out by a Saturday Nighter and two huge pots of Heliotrope 'Chatsworth' were well and truly decimated, just a black tangled mass where the day before had been a mass of pale blue flowers scenting of almonds and school glue, (I'm talking 1950's and 1960's here). Strangely enough on the same night, I had not expected a frost at home and so had left outside a large terracotta pot of H. 'Princess Marina', a rather superior variety with dark leaves and very dark flowers and it was quite unscathed. How strange and usefully interesting.

We have had a mad time trying to lay 700 sq metres of the finest grade turf on the surface of a bog. Totally wrong in every respect but it had to be done in time for the shooting season. The Indian summer turned into a monsoon just days before work began but with help of ten tonnes of silver sand to fill in the spaces between lumps of wet soil a vaguely acceptable surface was achieved. I just know my old horticultural college lecturers were spinning in their graves at these antics and I must admit it felt terribly unprofessional. The rule now for the rest of the season if 'KEEP OFF' and the first gun dog to set paw on this green sward will have to answer to Daisy.

Because of all this shooting lodge activity, the troughs and containers dotted about have to be filled, not just with tulips and hyacinths for the spring but with evergreen plants and winter flowering heathers, skimmia rubellas, pyramid box and pansies. It looks just like the forecourt of a London hotel, truly elegant but rather out of place in the middle of nowhere 600ft above sea level in the teeth of gales and sheeting rain. Nevertheless, to come up with schemes, which look good throughout the winter months is quite fun and adds a further dimension to the gardening year and now I have just remembered those bluebells, down to earth with a bump I think.