Re: Our Garden Over Christmas

bett mctigue wrote:
> 
> I walked around the garden today - clad in wellington boots, waxed cotton
> coat etc.   There are a few little violas, the leaves have gone from the
> Hazels and stiff little catkins show.   There are bright red berries
> exploding from the Iris foetidus, they look well with the marbled leaves of
> the arum italica. ....   

Bett 
I read your description of your winter garden with some nostalgia,
although the last English winter I experienced was just over 50 years
ago. It was in '48 to be precise and where I was staying in Sussex there
was a heavy and spectacular hoarfrost over Christmas eve, so we woke to
a fairyland of frozen sunshine on Christmas day. A beautiful final
memory.

When we came to New Zealand about five years later it was often
described as the England of the South Pacific, but in fact apart from a
few mountain areas our winter climate is far more mild and in almost all
districts our summer heat more moderate than the British Isles, due to
our position as a sea island with no big landmass near enough to have
much influence.

I can see a great charm in having a garden which really sleeps over
winter. There is so much to look forward to and the first snowdrop or
the first daffodil can be eagerly awaited, whereas here they may be a
bit lost in the brilliance of big clumps of perennial wallflower or 
drifts of Primula malacoides and violas. Surprisingly, snowdrops do
flourish in my garden and I have huge and ever-growing patches of almost
every known species, which seem to get by with no more attention than
keeping the forgetmenots from overrunning their sites.

Happy New Year

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand. (on the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
Lat. 41:16S Long. 174:58E. Climate: Mediterranean/Temperate
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index