Making the most of the weather

The Christmas craft fair went very well and we sold most of the forced Hyacinths and Paperwhite Narcissii, as many as we wanted to anyway, as the idea was to save enough to brighten up the castle over the festive season. I did enjoy meeting lots of the visitors as I had not seen very many in the garden for quite a few weeks now. It did remind me of my many years in retail talking and selling plants to the puplic on garden cetres. I am pleased that I didnt have to sell xmas trees though, as that could be a bit tricky at times especially if husband and wife came together as well as salesman often I ended up being a marriage guidance councillor aswell.
Wandering around the garden a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the first of our early flowering Rhodo's was breaking out from bud for us the first one is usually Nobleanum closely followed by Christmas Cheer. My first thoughts were my goodness it does'nt seem like a year ago when they were flowering last. After a few minutes of thought on the matter I realised that perhaps time is not on quite the hyperbole as I had imagined last year these two rhodo's did not start to flower until early February so it was only ten months ago. It's not so rare for them to flower this early in the southern counties but it did suprise me up here. It does also show how the seasons can vary.
Work in the garden at the moment is mainly of a maintainance and construction nature unfortunately sometimes one of these can end up leading on to the other. Old tree stumps can be a real eye sore as well as being a bit of potential source of infection of plant diseases. Whilst digging out and then removing a few the other day I ended up having to dismantle a bridge. The bridge was due for some repairs anyway but I did'nt plan on having to do it right now, it was'nt exactly what I wanted to do in my last week leading up to Christmas. As this is most likely to be my last posting before the break have a jolly good one.