The slope on Thursday – blue is the colour

The weather continues much the same as it was before I went to the Red Sea.  Night temperatures are still hovering around zero degrees C, the north wind blows with an icy chill, the sun shines but its heat is only felt if you are protected from the wind.

Actually while I was away the wind was incredibly strong, a couple of my mutabilis roses were virtually pushed out of the ground, driving back from the airport we saw many trees that had been pulled right out of the ground and shade netting etc. was left flapping around uselessly.  I was therefore very lucky.

The slope on Thursday – Growth

Another good week for gardening!  How wonderful is that?  It is still quite cold but the sun has been shining and as long as you are in the sun it feels quite warm.  This morning I was pruning the wisteria on the pergola around the terrace.  It takes a long time to prune back every side branch but at least now I am past the stage of having to tie new branches into the structure.

The Slope on Thursday – Winter and Spring

I am aware that last week, after a week of dull grey days I sounded rather negative; all that has changed this week.

The slope on Thursday February 5th

February for me always feels like the worst month of winter, even if in reality winter only started at the very end of December, I’ve already had enough of the cold and wet.  This week we’ve had hail storms, rain, thunder, grey skies and one beautiful day on Monday when the sun shone all day, strangely as I mentioned in my post on Monday, just 5 miles away it snowed heavily and on speaking to friends even later in the day when the snow had stopped it wasn’t a particularly nice day so it seems I was living on my own private island of weather!

GBFD A little magic with light

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day, where we celebrate all kinds of foliage, green, evergreen, silver, gold or red.

As the forecast for today wasn’t great I decided to photograph the garden on Wednesday.  The first images were taken in the morning when there was a weak wintery sun.  I selected some parts of the garden that for some reason are rarely featured or are the background to some feature I wish to talk about.

Just as I was beginning to write I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw that the late afternoon sun was illuminating the garden.  I grabbed the camera, and managed to capture a few magic moments.

The Slope on Thursday – Frosty

We seem to be having alternate days of bright sunshine with low temperatures (dropping below zero degrees C at night) followed by milder days that are grey and damp and that actually feel colder than the ‘cold’ days!  Today is one of the sunny cold days, everything was white when I first looked out of the window but the sun rose quickly and melted much of the frost before I went outside to take some photographs.

The Slope on Thursday- Not one flower today

There has been a lot of cold weather since my last post about the slope but today is mild, a bit dull but with sun peeping through the clouds every now and again.

The Slope on Thursday 11th December

At the end of last week there was rain, quite heavy rain but this week has been sunny with blue skies, but it has also been cold, very cold, nearly but not quite touching zero during the night.  Today, though, has been sunny and pleasantly warm, the north wind dropped and it was a lovely day to be outside, hence this post is a bit late.

The Slope on Thursday Is it the first week in December?

Again this week the weather has been weird.  Monday was not cold and there was some sun during the day but as soon as it was dark, the heavens opened with thunder, heavy rain and both sheet and forked lightening.  This was followed on Tuesday by the perfect day, very warm, very possibly 20°C, sun and no wind all day.  That evening I turned the heating off, it had only been on a few days as it was.  Then came Wednesday!  I was woken by the sound of the wind blowing, howling, it was throwing our very heavy outside chairs to the ground.  A lot more leaves have come down whether they were ready or not.  Plus there was more rain until about 4pm when the sun came out, so I rushed to take some photographs as the forecast for today  was much the same as yesterday , but in fact it has been grey, mild and as I write now at 4pm is foggy in the distance.

The Slope on Thursday – Hope for the future

The very cold weather predicted for last weekend didn’t materialise and turned out to be perfect weather for planting bulbs, warm, and very still.  No wind at all is quite unusual in my garden so I took full advantage and have now planted all of the tulips and the majority of the other bulbs.  There are still some Iris, Alliums and miscellaneous others waiting to go into the cuttings beds.  Yesterday it rained for most of the day but this morning there is a watery sun making photography difficult.  Cold nights are again predicted for this weekend.