Pic of the week 19/11/23
This year, I have really enjoyed the garden and, in particular, watching plants grow (obviously over a period of time, rather than as an instantaneous spectator sport!) It started in the spring with the bulbs in the lawn, bringing a sense of hope when all was brown, grey and drab; moved through the summer with as the sunflowers reached for the sky, then the pumpkins, large and small, and still the nasturtiums and cosmos valiantly burst forth in colour, continuing to flower into mid-November.
But despite the best efforts of those plants that refuse to give up despite the falling levels of light, incessant rain and howling winds, winter is coming and soon there will be little cheer outside. The best we can hope for is the frozen form of white frost covered seed-heads against a brilliant blue sky, but days like that are few and far between. (We’ve yet to have anything close to a frost – hence the nasturtiums soldiering on.)
So I decided to bring the outside in, and try my hand at over-wintering some geraniums and also nurturing a collection of spider plants – the latter in part inspired by my Mediterranean travels where they can be seen as part of normal outdoor planting. My hope/plan is that mine will spend the summer outdoors reminding me of sunnier climes.
So I put up a new shelf in my room, and also moved an Ikea shelf, and have filled them with six geraniums taken from outside that I hope to over winter, my four cacti, and twelve baby spider plants that I bought of ebay and have potted up.
I look forward to watching them all grow over the coming months, (hopefully) providing an oasis of green and a source of interest over the dark months to come.