Friday 18 December 2009

So winter is finally upon us and a conundrum for you.


This is the view from the office this morning, not as bad as I had expected but it seems to be causing the usual chaos out there. Our christmas tree blew over twice yesterday, once I have sorted it out I will post some pictures of our Christmas efforts.

I have had an interesting week I went down to London for a work meeting. As most of you regular readers will have worked out I am a homeworker for a major company. This was the first time I had seen my boss on in fact anyone from my team since September 2008 yes 2008! The company has had a travel ban in place to save money which is OK but the effect has been to make workers like myself feel very isolated and vunerable.

My Christmas present from Sharron arrived whilst I was in London so the postman left it next door. I think Ron was a bit puzzled by a very thin light 2m long package, he found somewhere out of the rain to keep it dry which was quiet funny as it is designed to get very wet! What is it? I will tell you after Christmas as it would spoil the surprise , but it's not for use in the garden and it gets just as wet in the sun as the rain?

And finally,

Q. Why did Frostie move to the mid Atlantic?

A. Becuase Snowman is an island.

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Global warming? And big changes

I have always been a firm believer in global warming and have seen lots of evidence to support it, earlier flowering, survival of tender plants, but I wasn't expecting to still be picking tomatoes from an unheated Cambridgeshire greenhouse in December! So far this year we have had one very light frost, both the Willow trees in the garden are still in leaf and the tulips are already coming up.

Also in the greenhouse are these sweetpeas I have started off for next year. I will let them grow on a bit before pinching them out. They will then either stay in the greenhouse over winter or get moved out to a coldframe.

I went a bit mad buying bulbs for next summer. I bought about 80 alliums, which seemed a good idea at the time, then I had to find places to plant them all. I think next June the garden will be nothing but purple globes, oh well never mind!

Last night we had the last meeting of the 'Village in Bloom' group we have decided that it had run it's course as the amount of interest in the village has waned.. In it's place we have launched a new conservation based group called Natural Woodhurst. We intend to apply for some conservation grants to help fund some local projects as well as working with local volunteers. In fact we have already started some of the projects, we had a seed collection event with the aim of growing native species to repopulated some local hedgerows. We have also been working on projects in our village conservation area and with a couple of ponds in the village. So what of the 'In Bloom" competition? Well, we will still be maintaining the various planters and flowerbeds in the village and if we feel like entering the event we will, it just won't be the main priority anymore, in fact we may well be looking at other schemes that recognise our enviromental efforts more.