Dec 21st is the shortest day of the year, so after new year we start to get longer days. I tend to discount the time between 21st and 31st as I am busy anyway!

I took a trip around the garden to see what is going on – this year has been so  mild that apart from rain we have not had any cold weather and not much in the way of cool weather either.

The perennial bed is, of course lacking much in the way of green color but the pieris is adorned with pretty dark pink preflowers. When the shrub is bigger I will pick some of those for winter wreaths but for now they are staying on the shrub.

In the vegetable bed, the salad greens and winter carrots etc are all snug under a rigid plastic sheet that I covered them with. I cut the 8×2 sheet into 2 4×2 pieces that cover the 4ft square beds. Bricks keep the sheet off the leaves and help to keep the sheet open when the sun is out. This is an experiment only this year to see what survives and continues to grow through the earliest part of the year.

The mild weather also means that I can still use fresh parsley, thyme and sage for seasonal stuffing over the holiday season.

So there is plenty outside to look at, including some little bulbs that are coming through prematurely. I hope they stay very small for the next two months!