FEBRUARY

I was, towards the end of last summer, getting a bit sick of this wisteria. On the front of a not massive three bedroom terraced house it’s a hard plant to keep tidy, especially as it’s still young, doesn’t yet flower, and produces a vast amount of foliage. I either have to embark on a little and often pruning schedule, which can get a bit tiresome as it involves using The Big Ladder. Or I just have to let it go and embrace its wildness before I can give it its summer of winter prune. Neither of these approaches appeals hugely to me (really, this plant is too big for this house) and I was seriously considering getting rid of it and replacing it with, say, a Trachelospermum jasminoides, which would enjoy the heat, smell good and be much more manageable (IE, slow growing). But then the leaves fell off and I couldn’t help but be seduced by the weird twists, turns and shapes that the ripened wood is starting to make, and the the increasing thickness of the ever maturing truck. It’s starting to obtain the character that all the best wisterias have. The weird twists, turns and shapes exist, by the way, because I pruned the plant incorrectly for two or three years before I worked out what I was supposed to be doing. So there are far too many stems climbing up this trellis, which will almost certainly be pulled off the wall one day. But whatever. I love this plant. It has grown alongside my gardening knowledge, and it has both withstood my ignorance and benefited from my greater understanding of the hows and whys of pruning vines. When it eventually flowers (not this year, I’ve closely inspected the buds) I’ll sit on the lawn in front of it and have a little cry. A happy cry, in tribute to my efforts finally being rewarded.

The bird bath, which lives among the ferns and in the shade of an olive tree and a mahonia and, as you can see, does a good job of collecting the petals and berries that fell off said mahonia. I like it, and it looks good from the house, but it seems to be a bit too tucked away and doesn’t get any regular feathered visitors. I need a highly visible bird feeder or two, so the birds can come for a meal and stay for a wash.

I really do like it when Olive takes an interest in any sort of flower. Here she is gently cradling a hellebore like it’s a baby sparrow or something. And this hellebore is an absolute champ. It lives in a pot, in deep shade, out the back of the house. It has been in the pot for, maybe, six years? It mush be pot bound. I give it no love. It gets no food. I’ve never repotted it. It gets hardly any sun. Granted, I water it, and seemingly that’s all it needs because it comes back every year and I am always, always, always delighted to see it.

In a small garden (and probably, really, in a large garden) Narcissus ‘Tete-a-Tete’ cannot be beaten. Always nice and early, always perfectly formed. Delightful.