Well, what a year 2023 was with it’s very dry spring and roasting summer, to the very wet autumn and winter!  The garden is ever so soggy right now with the amount of rain we have had over the last couple of months.  There is moss everywhere, which I actually like but it is dangerously slippy when it is down the ramp and on the paving slabs.  The mossy stones around the pond however look great, as do the mossy logs dotted around the garden.  It is at this time of year that you can see all the weeds at the back wall so they are easier to remove.  The plants in the pond itself looks a bit bedraggled and need some attention.

I haven’t been in the garden much at all during November and December and I miss pottering around checking on the progress of the plants.  I didn’t find much in the way of fungi this year – was I just not out at the right time?  I hate the cold and damp as it really gets into my bones and I just feel miserable spending all my time trying in vain to stay warm.  Now that we have started a new year my hopes are up for a splendid spring.  Even though we still have a couple of cold months to go I feel optimistic when I see all the spring bulbs beginning to grow.  Some of the snowdrops are already in bud and the earlier narcissi have poked their shoots up.

There are a few flowers to be seen at this time of year: some on the witch-hazel (Hamamelis inter Diane), a few sporadic flowers on the Hebe pink paradise, a few tatty flowers on the Viburnum X Bodnantense Dawn  in the raised bed.  Some of the evergreen shrubs have flower buds waiting for their chance such as the Osmanthus burkwoodii and the Erica arborea ‘Estrella gold’.  I do like having the evergreen structure in the garden to look at during the bleak winter months and a few of the ferns have quite a bright, yellowy- green colour which brightens the place up.

I did spot one job that we will have to get to grips with as soon as the weather gets better and that is the harling on the right hand front corner of the patio.  When the rain gets in behind it and that water then freezes, the harling cracks and gets pushed off.

From a rather cold and damp Edinburgh garden: Happy New Year!