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...

The garden looks amazing in the snow. We have about five inches here, but it seems to have stopped for the moment.

How about you guys?

4-5 inches, and it doesn't seem I have enough structure in my garden. My rockery around the pond and fence in front of it is the most interesting shape under the snow, and the pots look good. My Cornus 'midwinter fire' is in the wrong place - back of border and behind a euphorbia when viewing from house. Need to fix that so it is in front of some green climber foliage even if still at the back. My blueberry plants in large trough have surprisingly nice coloured stems, hadn't noticed that before.

I'll be going out tomorrow with the ruler! The snow is not settling on the main roads here but side roads are quite snowy. I think there's probably a couple of inches in the garden.

We're up to about 8 inches and it's still falling. Feeling very pleased with myself for taking the roof off the veg plot last week. Chickens are not happy about the snow at all though.

Eight inches? Wow! I have just been agreeing with my neighbours that our snow is underwhelming.

We're not up to 8 inches but have a fair bit. Noticed a big bit of the Loquat (or could be Kumquat) tree has fallen over.

I stuck a few snowdrops in the green in as well last year so hoping they appear. Am a bit cross with myself for not having put the tulip bulbs in.

Oooh. Carol Klein on BBC2 now.

7 ins or so of snow and the garden is looking mysterious-snowballs where the topiary is and mockgreek statues looking frozen under their snow caps and gowns.
There were eddies of snow when it was windy-beautiful.
Tomorrow I am a) going for a walk in the snowy woods and b) going to build a snowman as I was too po faced to do either last year owing to DC being at uni. But this year I am going to ..ahem..let out the inner child..and build the best snow man ever. Being forrin, the snowman has an almost mythical place in the family psyche. I have a carrot. I have a scarf. I have a hat. I have parked the car elsewhere and the drive has a pristine space suitable for a work to astound and delight the neighbours. I am going to ignore admin and housework.
I will update as to whether I actually did anything tomorrow. Snowmen are, I think , OK to be in a garden thread????

Snowmen are the latest garden ornament. Totally acceptable in a garden thread. The girls tried to do snowmen but the dog thinks snowmen are good to eat. No snowmen in our garden today.

I won't allow snowmento be created in the back garden because of the precious lawn. It's difficult enough to keep green because of being on the north side and being soggy clay, so I'm not letting tramping feet all over it damaging the grass.

Plus we have a golf course sized public park over the back fence where DH DS have just gone, armed with sledge. Plenty of snowman scope there.

I could allow/suggest some mini snowbabies along our front wall. If I could be bothered getting up and dressed I might even do them myself before the boys get back...

I have a snow dalek. Only thing is DS built it right by the car and we'll probably have to run it over to get out the drive. Must check the greenhouse today.

That sounds fantastic, funnyperson. Have you done it?

Lexy - I share your clay lawn pain.

We may go on search of good sledging opportunities this afternoon.

she's still out there I think, Maud. It's an Anthony Gormley beating snow hominid. :)

Yes but look what funny's made

Oh that's wonderful!

That's wonderful!
I have had a lovely day.
lexy I built it in the driveway so as not to ruin the lawn and on the side so it wouldn't get knocked down by the car so as it turns out the snowman is a dookeeper.
I went for height -determined he would not be less than shoulder height and in the end he was 5 foot tall but quite- erm- slim.
Engineering was interesting- nutagat and akelrorat (see icelandic lexicon attached) snow has to be packed into aniu (see lexicon)

people.ucalgary.ca/~kmuldrew/cryo_course/snow_words.html

so as to remain stable. At the neck stage one has to provide a broad enough base for the head. For the head I used the rolling ball technique which I have wanted to do since way back when and - it worked! Very satisfying. So I got a ball about a foot across and put it on my column which was looking a bit like Anish Kapoor at the Olympics - ie frail, unsteady, tall but awesome.

At this point the next door neighbour's lads came out and asked me if I was building a snowman. When I said yes, they were astonished and I felt like an utter nicompoop. However I persisted as it is such fun not to be scraping the driveway to get a boring old car in and to be totally and utterly wasting time.

Readers, I should let you know that putting in a carrot for a nose is not as easy as it sounds. One cannot just poke in the carrot as the head, if done properly, is tightly packed aniu. Therefore I had to carefully make a little hole in the middle so as to fit the carrot in and deep enough so as the carrot would not immediately drop off. Old blue small square birthday candles made the eyes and a piece of upwardly curved red dogwood the mouth . A jaunty hat
(from DS school leaving boat party ) and a warm blue checked scarf ensured the tone of the district was not overly lowered and there you have it!

No photo alas as the DC have the cameras. I got a lot of exercise and am planning the next project as we speak! This being my first solo snowman I went for trad but the protest has given me ideas!

Have hopefully added our creative effort on to my profile photos. Not in the garden (due to snowman destructive tendencies of dog rather than a nice lawn to protect), so we built him whilst out walking in the woods.

I like the sound of your creation Funny.

Love your sitting snowperson bertha !

I'm so glad you enjoyed your snowman-building experience, funnyperson. You deserve some fun. And that is very impressive, too, Bertha. Quite cubist!

Love the pix of snow persons.

On another note...

Back from a brief hols to see the garden is a bit crispy, But my NDN watered the veggie patch and we have a pretty good tomato crop. More than a month now with no rain, and I mean no rain, not even a mere shower.

Where we holidayed, in the temperate rain forests, you could smell the bushfires, while still needing a warm vest and fluffy socks at night. :o

The snow is melting and the garden is a soggy squelch. The lawn has only half survived.
Irises and daffs are poking through, but I cant see any snowdrops, tulips, crocuses, anemones etc. Even the Hellebores are looking soggy and frozen, like spinach out of the freezer. I am seriously worried. Perhaps the squirrels ate all the bulbs. My little North facing patch gets hardly any sun in the winter.
Has any one else any signs of spring yet?

I have just come in from a very happy hour potting up my hellebore plugs. Funnyperson, if your hellebores are looking poorly (although I expect they'll recover) I thoroughly recommend the readers' offer on the back of the Telegraph gardening supplement from Hayloft Plants. The plugs are only a £1 each (plus the inevitable postage) and they're really substantial, by the standards of plugs. I feel very confident that they'll thrive.

I have lots of bulbs poking through, although some of the tulip foliage looks a bit odd and I wonder whether they've reached the stage where they're starting to decline. I feel particularly lucky because I had lots of little pots of snowdrops that I bought at the gardening society plant swap that I never got round to planting and feared would perish, but they are very nearly in flower.

This has really lifted my spirits. I was feeling very low last night and now I am smiling.

That sounds like a very, ahem, alarming interesting experience, echt.

My garden has re-emerged from under the snow - it's not looking that healthy but I am hoping it will bounce back from a soggy, muddy mess. All I need is some sunshine...

I've just ordered three set of the hellebores from hayloft Maud, they had the same offer in GW magazine. I am determined not to suffer from hellebore envy on this thread next year.

I'm feeling the hellebore love, Bertha.

I have discovered that the reason I can't see the crocuses is I didn't plant them.
Tomasiniana. Do you think I should just bung them in and hope for the best? Or keep them till this Autumn?