December weather.

Overall a mild month with a couple of days of very cold weather at the end of December.

The small pond with the big pond in the background on the morning of December 29th.

December garden.

 

The cold weather arrived near the end of the month with a couple of days of beautiful hoar frost over everything in the mornings. These are the beds of poached eggplant and leeks.

We finally picked the kiwis on December 28th! 

Just before the really cold weather.

Many trees are receiving a light pruning this winter and we are cutting back a lot of willow.  Self-sown willow, often viewed as a weed, is a wonderful plant for wildlife. When it becomes too abundant it makes great material for mulching. We usually lop the branches to fit in the shredder but sometimes Alfie likes to saw them. This day there are holly branches in the mix and Alfie went to get the chainsaw hat to protect his ears from the sound of (the little hand) saw! Angus uses the chain saw (and hat) for the initial cutting down and we take it all away to shred. I have been using most of the mulch material for the paths in the veg. patch.

Here is a path on the right that has been mulched.

Winter crafts.

During some of the dark evenings in November and December we made soap and candles. This year I took no photographs of the making process and just a couple of the finished gift baskets.
 

Coloured dipped beeswax candles.

Soap, ingredients.... Organic coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax, lye, essential oils. Some have calendula petals or salt and are coloured with spirulina, turmeric, cayenne and cocoa.

Calendula petals drying on a tray in October.

Recording moths in the garden.

These photos are from July 26th.

Angus puts out a moth trap every week of the year, almost always on a Friday as part of the garden moth scheme.

This gives an overview of the numbers of moths in the garden throughout the year.

Moths are a good indicator of biodiversity. Many moths are plant species specific, only feeding on certain plants at the larval stage and then going on to pollinate particular plants. Moths (and caterpillars of) are a food source for many creatures including bats, foxes, badgers, birds, spiders etc...

They can be so varied and beautiful, here is a link to a previous post with some of my favorite moth photos.

As dawn comes, Angus is up before the birds to see what moths have come to rest outside the trap and in the adjacent foliage. If he is late any moths not in the trap will be found by the resident Robin, Wrens and Blackbirds.  In June this means being up at 4am when there is regularly in excess of 100 species. In December it's dark until 8am and while zero counts are regular during cold weather, up to 12 species have been recorded on mild nights in December.

This is one of the egg trays from the moth trap on July 26th.

The moths rest in the trap during the day when Angus can record species and numbers. Then they all fly away that night. This one is an Oak eggar moth.

Hoar frost in the garden.

last night the air temperature went down to minus 3.6 C  and the grass temperature to minus 10 C. 

Photos taken this morning....

 Calendula in the veg. patch.

 Frost on the echinops, (Photographed without frost in November).

 Foxglove growing amongst poached egg plant in the veg. patch. 

 Brrrr... looks cold!
 

 Leaves of climbing rose.

 Calendula.

 Frosted flower bud of melianthus major.

Fluffed up robin perched on the viburnum.

While it was frosty outside the cockerels were happy enough with the morning sun shining into the barn.

Season for mince pies.

We made lots of mince pies throughout December. Here are a few photos of Alfie and Tivon helping.

 Alfie.

 Dec 20th.

 Dec 23rd.

Alfie helping to make the Christmas cake at the end of November.

 (Now he is helping to eat it!)

Honeybees on winter flowering cherry.

 Prunus × subhirtella 'Autumnalis Rosea'

Such beautiful tree, flowering all winter long.
 Good for bumblebees and wonderful to see honeybees like it too.

 

Winter flowering cherry, Nov. 28th.

Autumn fungi.

It seems that this is the total of our 2014 autumn fungi photos!

Toadstool town, September 5th. Growing on a birch stump.

 
September 5th.

Puffballs, September 11th.

November sky.

The first 3 weeks of November was rain, rain, rain, interspersed with sunny spells. We had 209mm altogether (twice the average for the month), while the last 9 days have been dry, with a mix of mild overcast days and clear sunny days. We had 23 nights of grass frost, which makes it our frostiest November so far. Temperatures were average for the month.

November poytunnel.

Last tomatoes of the year to ripen on the vine, November 8th.

The Yacon has been growing prolifically and flowering continuously all autumn.
Now that we have had a frost it is time to lift it.

November garden.

Kale, with Swiss chard in the bed behind, Nov. 15th.

The Poached egg plant has thickened and even offered a few flowers, purple sprouting broccoli behind.

The path in the vegetable garden, edged with self seeded marigolds, nasturtiums and borage, all in flower. The nasturtiums were knocked back with the frost on Nov. 27th.

 
A job (play?) for a winters evening.... Alfie podding the scarlet runner beans for seed.

 
The last of the autumn raspberries.


Medlar.

 
Last of the apples.

November flowers.

The Indian summer and mild November weather has fooled a few flowers into a false sense of season.

 Echinops, a wonderful bee plant when the flowers open or cut at this stage it makes a good dried flower.

 Hypericum flowering, defiant of the rain.

 Embothrium in flower.

 The Rudbeckias were flattened by the rain, but flower on all the same.

 This rose has a wonderful scent and it's very own leaf umbrella.

We had a heavy frost yesterday, This rose (I think it is Glenfiddich) is enjoying warmer weather today.

 Melianthus flower bud Nov. 20th.
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Some plants come into their own in winter.

 This crab apple is the epitome of cheerful abundance.

 Winter flowering cherry today. Prunus × subhirtella 'Autumnalis Rosea'.