welsh hills again

This year I absolutely promise that I am not going to turn my back on the garden and just sneak off inside.  I am going to clean the greenhouse and cut back and mulch and all those good things.  Honestly.  But there is nothing like a rainy day to set me thinking about winter projects.  I am not one of those people who carefully finishes one thing before starting another but even I was surprised at how many things I seem to have on the go or waiting.  Confession time. It is a bit of a giveaway that the basket which holds all the wool waiting to be worked is my  parents' old log basket, i.e quite a big one.  The bag on the top contains the project which at the moment is at the top of the queue.  Younger son and his wife are expecting their first baby in November and I am making a blanket. Not a delicate white blanket for a newborn but a cheery, cosy blanket for the car and the pushchair. The wool is a soft merino aran and the pattern is fr...

The end of month view for October is a depressing sight.  In fact it is so depressing that my laptop seems to have lost the pictures.  If I can raise the enthusiasm I will go round again but in the meantime I can give you a verbal picture: blown over, brown, grey and green, tatty, floppy, flattened. There is a lot still to do in the garden but I am suffering from my usual response to putting the clocks back: I want to stay in and keep warm.  I have managed to plant out practically all of two hundred new daffodil bulbs which I had ordered and I have some bare rooted plants coming this month so will have to force myself away from the fire to get them in but in the meantime I am ignoring the falling over fennel and the shabby Shasta daisies and getting excited about blankets instead. These are the new daffodils, to add to the thousands I have already: February Gold Actaea Pueblo Thalia Peeping Jenny All the images are from Peter Nyssen 's catalo...