Christmas Posies

Did the usual Christmas harvest of flowers for the dinner table.

From top left, clockwise: Winter jasmine with Setterwort (Helleborus foetidus) and Arum italicum subsp. italicum 'Marmoratum'; Camellia susanqua 'Narumigata', Hesperantha coccinea ''Major', Rose 'Irene Watts', Dame's Violet (Hesperis matronalis) Setterwort flowers; Agapanthus 'Headbourne Hybrid' Sarcococca (flower buds not cold-primed to open yet); Bergenia cordifolia - old pink cv.; Prunus subhirtella autumnalis 'Rosea'.

Late December

I went to Uppsala just before Christmas.  I was invited to examine a thesis on P. infestans as it attacks potato in Sweden by my colleagues Jonathan Yuen and Bjorn Andersson. Sweden was in the middle of a cold spell with maybe 20cm of snow and subzero temperatures for seeral weeks.  The snow was still decorating the trees with white tinsel.


Jonathan Yuen's garden

My Hotel room was very quiet and looked out on to the garden of the real Carl Linneus

 

When I landed in Mancester, it was still raining and a balmy 8C.

 

Our topiary holly at the front door is a male and needs a bit of adornment for the festive season so Lorna took this year's harvest of Agapanthus umbels and gave them a coat of red paint. La voilà



Merry Christmas!

Today was the day for digging up dahlias and noticing that the labels didn't really correspond very well to the flowers we had last summer.
The unlabelled light orange cactus-flowered plant gave us by far the greatest number of flowers through to mid-November. Karma Sangria seems to be the name of the Karma type we had. Flowers were in general a bit smaller than previous year, and I think I need to put in more food for them when I take up the tulips.
Which have now all arrived and it is time to plant them, pronto. Hope for some decent weather for that tomorrow.
November must have been yet another month for record-breaking rain. The A55 was flooded by the Ogwen at one point.