All my fault
According to my friend John, this is all my fault for saying in my last entry that we hadn’t had any snow yet.
The first snowfall for the new ponds
Despite the fact that I am re-reading my complete Perry Mason collection during the snug winter evenings, I cannot think of a defence.
The snow fell on Saturday evening, and therefore some of it has now sublimed off into the atmosphere. I think the depth was 5 cm at most, so this is a minor event in comparison with what we have had in the last two winters. However, even before the snow, the temperature has been too low to do any gardening, sinking to -7.3C on Saturday morning. I suppose I could have picked up some more fallen leaves for about ten minutes before my fingers froze solid, or I could have pruned the bay tree, but I decided not to. My wrist is now nearly recovered, but I may still not be able to lift any pots if they are stuck to the ground with ice.
With the Met Office forecasting a month of cold weather and probably some more snow, this month is going to be a month of armchair gardening, as I draw up my shortlist of shrubs and work out where to buy them from. There is a chance that I may be able to partly solve the problem of wanting more shrubs than will fit into the space by putting some of them in pots. I would have to make sure that I only chose very hardy shrubs, because shrubs in pots are much more vulnerable to cold than shrubs in the open ground, but I will have plenty of patio space once I have planted everything that is meant to go into the permanent planting.
The other gardening-related thing I have in mind is to spend a month tweeting about gardening on Twitter and see if I can get the RHS to follow me. The RHS follows all sorts of people, so I think I could be in with a chance.