One day of heavy snow in January does not make a winter but I am told that there is a cold spell coming and so to-day I have been placing my tenderest of potted shrubs in the cold greenhouse just in case. I have quite a large collection of trees and shrubs in my compound at present as I am gathering together material for the new gardens. When planting time does arrive, in March, I want to have all my materials around me and so I am buying, like a fury, now. Some of the stuff is quite tender but not usually for us, we have a very equable climate here and do not suffer greatly from weather, wind is our greatest enemy. Any heavy rains just run away and frosts do not usually come this high and linger. Grey swirling cloudy mists and unexpected jet fighters appearing out of nowhere provide alarming atmospheric and sometimes heartstopping interludes.

Long awaited landscaping works in the gardens have at last commenced but alas, the ground is two feet deep in mud and slime. Men in machines are having to scrape the goo off and cart it away to be replaced with imported sub-soil,  which is then covered with good quality top soil and woe betide anyone who drives or even walks over the new ground. Where there are new (and extensive) borders we are using an even better topsoil and placing a layer of well-rotted manure below this. Nothing is too much trouble. Now we are, literally, landscaping I find that I am changing my mind all the time as the work proceeds. All the designs were in my head anyway so no one knows that I am making it up as I go along, apart from the JCB drivers that is but they are my poodles and will not blab. There is another small dog on site who is thankful at present not to be blessed with a curly coat and that is Daisy my Jack Russell who is at present the scruffiest, filthiest brownest dog that ever got stuck in a mud filled tyre track and had to be rescued with scaffolding planks and wooden poles. She only has one bath a week and that is four days away so a quick blast with a cold hose is all she gets.

All my seeds have arrived and I am keen to start but the propagators are still full of rooted cuttings, I must put aside a couple of days next week to finally finish potting them up. I have seriously neglected the greenhouse recently, it looks like a horticultural jumble sale and there are withered leaves to remove, areas of botrytis here and there stuff that wants pruning and the prunings to be used as further cuttings and masses of hyacinths all coming into flower at once because they did not arrive until late November and I potted them all up at once for fear of wasting them. I could place some in the full cold greenhouse for a while just to give me breathing space..........there are only so many bowls of hyacinths one can use in a room. I still have plenty of Indian azaleas coming into flower to use as well as pots of narcissus. Branches of forsythia and ribes, which have been in the greenhouse for weeks are bursting into flower too. In fact, indoors, spring has sprung and I am sure that outside the grass would have 'riz', if we had any that is.