Seven on Sunday?

With a few random  bits and bobs to post about, it might not actually be seven but having posted something other than a Six on Saturday yesterday, Seven on Sunday has a certain ring to it!

Firstly, I would like to feature a close-up of ‘Rochester’, one of my eye-wateringly expensive witch hazels, flowering properly for the first time. The blooms are smaller than on some of the others, but do have a distinctly warm fragrance when you shove your nose into the shreds. Unlike cheaper witch hazels, the shrub has a more tree-like shape, so perhaps judicious grafting contributed to the cost.

A long overdue clearing of our lofts has kept me out of the garden for much of this last week, but seeking a new home for a knitting machine unused for over 20 years I came across a charity that refurbishes tools of all sorts (including knitting and sewing machines) and sends them to Africa to provide means of making a living. Some types of gardening tools are also on their wanted list, so today I have sorted out some duplicates to add to the growing pile of items to donate. The charity, for anyone interested, is Tools With A Mission (TWAM).

Emptying the last of 2020’s compost was a task I wanted to complete before the end of the year, and I was only a couple of days late; the Golfer can now dismantle the rotten framework and build a replacement, a job he willingly abandoned the loft to begin!

The recent relative warmth has meant Galanthus ‘Gabriel’ has fully opened, the drops bobbing about in the slightest movement of air:

Meanwhile, in the woodland the handful of ‘spare’ snowdrops I planted on a whim after discussion with some of my blogging friends early last year are doing really well, relishing, I think, the deep leaf litter they are planted in and furthering thoughts about relocating all of my specials here. Foolishly (and unusually), I didn’t make a note of the varieties planted here and, although all had been labelled, some of the labels have disappeared. All very odd, as the only cultivation that takes place here is the planting of bulbs. Hopefully, once they flower they will be more identifiable, especially if I check out which varieties I know I had spares of last year. In the meantime, I have had to pull out or cut back ivy which threatens to overrun the woodland, obscuring at the slightest opportunity the bark path alongside which these snowdrops have been planted.

Yesterday, I denied having any projects other than tweaking in mind, and moving all the specials would be a decision not taken lightly, whilst the future of a potentially empty border would require some planning, but the thought is certainly gathering pace in my mind, thereby potentially constituting a ‘project’. Similarly, there is a potential project involving one of the Anything Goes (aka Bold) borders, as I am pondering replanting it as a grass border…but that’s still just a thought, and a very vague one at that. Unlike the other two borders, which face south, this one gets much less sun, and most plants have never thrived:

Finally (and does this make seven?), I noticed today that buds on the stems of pink pussy willow Salix gracilistyla ‘Mount Aso’ I experimentally picked a couple of weeks ago are beginning to open…definitely worth waiting for!