Cleaning up amidst Midwinter Fire

Took out my gardening journal started some yonks ago.  Its just a cloth-bound large notebook - the sort you don't want to write in, don't want to mark it (in which case, ALWAYS make a mark to get over the hump), but it has the remnants of a few rose pictures I stuck on the front and is definately a bit tatty and 'gardenish' now.   For those who lapse in their intentions, I share your pain.  I resurrected it from the back of a shelf a few years ago and it still serves as a record of hastytasty endeavour despite its gaps.

Last September I did a walk-around and made notes of all the things I should do in October.  I can't tell you why I'm going to do those things in February - can't blame a cold spell as there weren't many.  The list told me of all the perennials I need to move, all the spaces I need to clear.  Yesterday I started.  I find that ticking off a list gives enormous satisfaction so... the spirea I moved from a dark spot was properly pruned back hard.  Enough roots now to establish some really strong growth this year. Roses had their second pruning - not to an outward facing bud.  I found rose pruning to be a bit mythic and enjoyed reading about the trials on roses that were just sheared down.  Apparently the small twiglet growth at the top spawns many great blooms missed by the mighty secateur.  Never looked back.

Picture doesn't do justice to the
magnificent Midwinter Fire dogwood

Today was just a bit too frosty to move those perennials.  Sometime this week will do.  Instead attacked old twiggy growth in the small herb bed and took a great picture of my wonderful specimen dogwood.  You'll have seen it in a previous scribble, now it is glorious in the sun.  Just one plant.  Modestly magnificent.

I want to plant a Bramley Apple Seedling and have been wondering where to plumb it in.  I've read about dwarf root stocks for 'patio' plants but know the latter are really vulnerable.  You even had to watch for competition from weeds for goodness sake - and I'm not one for weeding.  So no, if I'm being host to this venerable cooker it will have to have room to spread.  Oh dear.  I'm minded of what Alan Titchmarsh once quoted from an old gardening book:  "No matter how small your garden, always make space for at least two acres of woodland".  There's never enough room is there?  Well, I think I've spotted the place.  It will take a bit of veg growing space away but it will give me even more incentive to develop the ornamental kitchen garden.

That's one of the wonders of this time of year.  Spring is 'in the post' and still time to walk round and make plans.  Even if they don't come into intended fruition, who cares!

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