Merry Christmas!

 I haven't managed to post for some time, for a variety of reasons, and the last few months have been particularly fraught, and also particularly noisy, as our neighbour has been building a huge extension.  I'm hoping for some peace over Christmas, and also to be able to start blogging again in the new year!

To anyone reading this, best wishes to you for a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.

Things To Do (Wherever You Are)

Here are a few ideas of garden/wildlife related things to do this month (whether or not you're in the Cotswolds!):



If you have the time, space, and energy, you could turn an area of your garden into a wildflower meadow - but even if you don't, you could save energy and still encourage wild flowers and wildlife by saying no to the mow and leaving all or part of your lawn long over the summer.



Whether your lawn is long or short (or a mixture of both), you could count the flowers in your lawn during the week of 23-30 May, and send the results to Plantlife, who will send you back your own personal nectar score, to tell you how many bees your lawn will feed.



If you're missing visiting gardens at the moment, you could visit a garden virtually. The National Garden Scheme have asked people to film gardens they'd normally be opening to the public and posted the films on their website. Some of the film tours are very short, but some are 10-15 minutes long and well worth a look - out of the ones I've watched so far, I particularly liked this one. The NGS normally raise money for various charities when people actually visit gardens so they're asking visitors to the site to look at some of the virtual garden tours and then give a donation - they're currently collecting for nurses and medical charities.



Other places offering virtual tours include The Woodland Trust, while other things to watch include some of the highlights of the last few years of The Chelsea Flower Show, which is being celebrated on TV all through this week (from 17-24 May) and will remain on the BBC i-player all year.



If you want something a bit more active, the RSPB website has various wildlife-friendly activities you can do to give nature a home in your garden, and the National Trust site has some suggestions of how to make your garden a haven for bees and butterflies.



And for some more exotic wildlife, here's a short film from Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust - there are more on this page, along with some puzzles and other activities for children.



Finally, why not create your own garden tour, with photos and/or videos to share online with friends? This is mine - all photos in this post were taken in my garden between early April and mid May this year. Click any photo to see a slideshow of them, and if you would like me to identify any of them for you please leave a comment.



Edit: since I wrote this post, I discovered that Springwatch is being shown now (26th May- 12th June) - unlike Chelsea this is not highlights of past years, but a new series, broadcast live from the presenters' individual home areas. If you've missed any of it, you can catch up on the BBC i-player here. I think it's the best series they've done in years - the presenters not being together means there's less banter, which means there's more wildlife! And if you want to do some wildlife-watching of your own, the Springwatch team are asking people to take part in the Open University's pollinator survey, recording the insect pollinators in our own areas - you can find out more here.

Things To Do In The Cotswolds #2

See Some Snowdrops

I haven't been able either to garden or to blog for a long time, for a mixture of family and health reasons. I haven't visited many gardens either, but in February last year, I went to Colesbourne Gardens near Cheltenham to look at the snowdrops. The gardens are well worth a visit if you are ever in the area, though they are very popular in the snowdrop season, so do be prepared for crowds.

A large part of the gardens are woodland, underplanted with vast swathes of snowdrops.









There's also a lake walk, though it is not very easily accessible for disabled people, with a steep slope at one end and difficult steps at the other. I did in the end manage to get down there, though, and it was worth the effort.











Near the house are some areas which have more colour, with patches of Crocus, Aconites, and Cyclamen among other early spring flowers.









But most of the gardens are given over to snowdrops.

Spring

My garden is looking like spring, though the weather here is currently trying to be summer.



Above and below are some Crocus blue pearl, very popular with the bees.







Galanthus, mostly unidentified ones which were here when we moved in, along with some Galanthus nivalis we brought with us:







Some unidentified yellow and lilac Crocus which were here when we moved in:





Crocus Ard Schenk:







And some early Narcissus - Rijnveldt's Early Sensation at the top, and February Gold below:

Waterperry Gardens

I hadn't realised it had been over a year since I last posted here, and it's much longer since I blogged about my garden. I haven't managed to do very much in the way of gardening over the last couple of years either, partly because we are still looking for a gardener to clear our garden so we can start planting. My ME has not been great lately and my cognitive function is now very limited, so I've had to concentrate on doing more vital things than blogging, and after I've done those I don't have any brain left to write blog posts.



We have managed to visit some lovely gardens though, and as I've been sitting around with a cold for the last couple of weeks and not up to doing much else, I thought I'd clear some of my huge backlog of photos. These were taken at Waterperry Gardens, near Oxford, last September. They had an exhibition of sculptures through the gardens, made from metal and stained glass, and based on different plant forms. I don't normally like "things" in gardens, but I loved these, and the way the light shone through them. My brain isn't functional enough to think of anything else to say, so I'll let the photos speak for themselves.