welsh hills again

A couple of months ago a new web based garden centre, Plant me Now, asked me to be an Ambassador for them.  Since this involves being sent plants and reviewing them I hesitated for approximately no seconds at all.  I did say though that I would review the plants just as I found them and my first review, plants sold as annuals, although including some tender perennials went up here . The second delivery of plants from Plant me Now arrived while we were deep in snow.  Indeed we were so deep in snow that it was hard to see the greenhouse, never mind get into it.  So for a few days the plants sat in our tiny wooden lean to greenhouse up next to the house while we waited for at least some of the snow to melt.  They don't seem any the worse for having had to wait to be potted on! This time I had ordered perennials with the intention of putting some in the cutting garden, some in a new bed in the field which has amelanchier and dogwood in it and using some as bedd...

This was the light on the hill last week but now it has gone dark with all the suddenness of winter. Ten minutes ago I went out to lock up the hens and could still see in the gloom. Now it is truly dark and the shape of the pigsties and the bakehouse has disappeared into blackness. Across the valley a single light shines and the line of the hill is still just visible, deeply black against the nearly black sky. We have been collecting leaves today, not all the leaves, that would be as impossible up here as heating the world with a patio heater (hate them, such a stupid idea, why not go inside if you want to be warm, rant) but the leaves from by the bottom gate and in front of the pigsties and the bakehouse and those from the path in front of the house. Twelve bin bags full are stacked in one of our many out of the way corners, holes poked in the bags with a handy ash stick, and will slowly moulder into a lovely leaf mould for the hellebores and cyclamen. If only I knew where the cycla...