The first rule of garden club is...!?!

[Lexilicious]

hoping Humph's Happy Osteospermumsnet chums will find this... la la la... I'm uite used to being betty no mates though...

Come on in and have a seat/kneeler/foam pad and a virtual , anyone who wants to idly chat about what they've been dreaming of planting, actually planting, buying without a care for having a place for it, propagating, harvesting, hacking and chopping...

I love Carol, Humphrey. Her enthusiasm for her flowers in infectious!

I am in love with Carol and her garden and her earrings. It's official.

Very dry in my bit of Australia, so we are preserving the veggies and good luck to the lawn. No bushfires here, though we are in a very vulnerable suburban zone as we're very heavily treed. We still dig up bits of the last bushfire in the 50s: molten glass in the soil.

Tonight the sky was very dramatic, red, pink and blue, and it struck me that Oz skies lack the changeable nature of England - probably an effect of moisture as much as heat. Rain would be good now - nothing for the last three weeks. When it hit 40 last week, DH saw many possums dead on the nature strips; it seems to be their cut-off point.

gosh, fingers crossed you stay safe echt

Oh, poor possums.

::sentimental::

I've just been to the charity bookshop in a failed attempt to buy my book group reading list. I have, though, acquired Monty's Complete Gardener. And,despite vowing to stop buying plants, I feel I just have to order some hellebores (amazingly cheap) and lilies from my dad's Telegraph offers.

Glad you're OK over there Echt. The Weather on here is all over th placeat the moment. Yesterday was just grey and raining, this morning lovely sunshine and colder.

My first primrose is out ad my Camellia had it's first bud ever. It went in before that hard winter two years go which turned it yellow but has gone back to green finally. My Dutch tulip bulbs are still in the pack but I was pleased to see a perennial cyclamen planted under a tree last year is back up and starting to spread.

Dug my Oca up, not stunning harvest - don't think it was so keen on the wet weather. But enough for a few meals thn lots of small ones for planting. Still picking Sungold in the greenhouse and I'm finding the Aquaponic system great for rooting the side shoots it's producing for new plants this year.

Have made my peace with the Aquaponic System after having a total nightmare with the syphon that drains the grow bed into the tank. It suddenly started working after 20 hours of me trying to get it going and getting stroppier and stroppier with the supplier after each email. All 6 fish are still alive. I've added salt to help them through the nitrite spike. I now actually understand how the whole thing works and finally find it exciting rather than something else designed to make my life hard. And, as warned, it is rather addictive, I'm thinking I need to expand it.

Well I have had my first gardening day of the year! Hurrah! Actually it is one of only a few since August when we switched focus to the indoors.

I pruned shrubs/lavender out the front, cut dead stems of herbs out the back, planted a lot of crocus and tulip bulbs and a handful of daffs. Picked up 3x cat poo and found a very well packed rat run leading from under my decking, across the herb patch (yuk) to next door's dog yard. That'll be why the Jack Russells are yapping all bloody evening these days then. So I set a bait box near the run.

A while back I did something daft with my bulbs - stored them in airtight tins. They pretty quickly started going mouldy and I lost a proportion. But I'm happy to have found today that the £8 pack of three Allium Schubertii I bought at Hampton court flower show have all sprouted while in their paper bag so to stop them going too leggy I planted them too. Will plant rest of alliums in a month or so.

My rhubarb is sprouting well, and I have some interesting new growth just budding at the base of a hellebore. Planted more than 18m ago but didn't flower last year. Hope it will soon!

Have finally got back into my garden after busy/cold/wet December. It's surprisingly interesting for the time of year - last weekend I disturbed a slow-worm in a pile of old leaves, then this morning I found a happily flowering pink hellebore I had no idea was there. Lots of bulbs coming up too. Before having a garden I assumed everything just closed down over the winter, but not at all!

Have spent time in the garden this weekend but nothing that exciting. I took the 'roof' off the veg plot in case of snow & we put up an alternative run for the chickens so the ground of the old run can recover and the chooks don't have to wade through ankle deep mud anymore.

I have, however, spent a happy hour this afternoon planning next year's veg plot. I'm planning on growing some different stuff (in amongst the standard) taking inspiration from James Wong's book. My SIL and I got given some of his seed range for Christmas so we're doing a bit of a seed swop and between us have electric daisies, tomatillos, asparagus pea, callaloo & something else that I can't remember. Going to try and source some other stuff from the book too for fun.

Happy new year all.I'm glad that i'm not the only one planting bulbs.The last 2 days have been beautiful and sunny.I have planted up all my pots -mostly layered bulbs.Taken cuttings from the non-frozed scented geraniums and trimmed the clematis.I've done no gardening for months as i hate rain and dull,dank,dark weather.Most of the bulbs are sprouting in their packets so i hope they will still flower.I have a a massive number of pots now as the ground was too frozen to plant in.I think i've used every receptacle possible.I'm pretty glad i've left it until now to be honest as i think the weathers been so mild and wet any bulbs would have rotted.
Hellebores are out and looking gorgeous apart from the blooming scaffolding ladder plonked on top[murderous emoticon!].I have masses of yellow primroses in the garden but i'm sure they were multi coloured last year.Does this happen?

That sounds like good progress, teta.

My lawn is dying because all the pots and general junk are piled up on it, while we have the patio done. I may be buying a new lawn this spring.

I am pleased with the way the garden is looking now. There is some structure there that provides interest even at the time.

All the primroses are in flower, along with the hellebores. DH says we will have to move the hellebores from the crab apple borders as the plan is to grass them over when the trees have established, which is slightly annoying. I think we will plant a lot of snake head fritillary bulbs instead, and hope that they come up unlike the last lot we put in

you have been busy teta!

Yes, structure is important. That's why I'm pleased with all the new roses - I neglected shrubs for a long time and the garden was quite literally flat in winter.

I have snowdrops nearly in flower. I must wade through the mud to check on the hellebores.

I love the snowdrops - ours are not that far along though.

I love snowdrops too. Most of mine are standard singles and doubles, but I did invest in some Sam Arnott last year. I hope they reappear - they seem to be behind the others.

I'm hoping that the snowdrops I transplanted last year are going to come up. Will have to go and investigate the sprouting things in the lawn to see if they're snowdrops or daffs. Will have to check on the naturalised ones (where I moved them from) too for comparison.

I had a scary rat moment in the pigscot (where the pigs actually are living at the moment) when I heard them scuttling. I mean, I knew there were rats there theoretically, but I didn't like hearing them. DH casually informs me that he "regularly sees them, and they are bigger than you'd think"

AIBU to move the pigfood out of the inside bit and NEVER SET FOOT IN THERE AGAIN????

We have been putting poison down but to little effect seemingly...

My seed order both packets has just arrived!

Ooh, missed Humphrey's AIBU.

YANBU to move the pig food and make DH do all the pig-feeding from now on.

just googled Sam Arnott, they are lovely!

Yes, they are, and fairly reasonable to buy. I love snowdrops but am not going to get sucked into the £30-a-bulb hysteria!

think ours are mostly single

we are very lucky as a friend offered us the clumps from the field that she was going to put a horse in. We got loads so we are starting with lots and lots.

I am hoping for lots of single x double x Arnott hybrids, but as they don't seem to self-seed very much I'm not banking on it! Mass planting is definitely the way to do it, though.

Last year I planted lots of snowdrops 'in the green' from a special offer. I think ordinary galanthus nivalis- simple but amazing in drifts under trees. If they come up then I might branch out this year to get something more sophisticated or I might just plant lots more of the same.
Lily of the Valley are said to do well under trees.

This has made me very nostalgic for a walk I used to take in Kent where a wood had thick drifts of snowdrops. Did they smell, or did I imagine it? Just writing this has made me remember a dream last night in which daffodils were emerging from the ground. Probably a wish fulfilment what with still no rain for nearly a month here.

Snowdrops do grow here, but not as they do in England. Daffs and narcissi do well too. Tulips - meh. It never really gets cold enough for them, and the scented varieties I loved from living in England can't be got here, so I don't bother now.

The hellebore plugs I planted are bearing up in one of the most challenging spots in the garden: dark in winter, scalding sun in summer - not all day, but enough.