Overwintering

Overwintering: the process, according to the dictionary, whereby animals, insects and plants live through the winter.  Or not, as the case may be.  

This was the week we checked on the geraniums in our unheated greenhouse.  After the first spell of bad weather my husband cut them right back.  This week he decided to put them into a home-made structure, something like a cold frame, to shield them from further exposure to low temperatures.  Unfortunately only two plants out of our summer display have survived.  The jasmine however, a native of the Azores, is still with us.

As are the daffodils in our pots at the front.  We planted them in the long front bed and were disappointed in the spring of 2017 to see that less than a third were blooming.  We dug up the unproductive ones, dried them out and stored them in the garage until the autumn.  Now I am very gratified to see that at least three out of the four bulbs in each pot have flower buds.  Truth to tell, they were the cheapest economy sack in the superstore, itself going through rather heavy weather at present.  It takes more than one season for some things to come good.

Other bulbs and spring flowering plants are doing well.  The iris that were new home presents and birthday presents, the snowdrops, the naturalised hyacinths surplus to requirements from my family, our new tulips secured by squirrel-proof netting, the white heather from the aforementioned unlucky superstore are all doing well.  The only other casualties of the prolonged wet and cold have been the cyclamen and a variegated mint that I culled beyond recovery.

We may have snow in the offing, but our period of overwintering is slowly coming to an end.