Friday 7 December 2012

Bringing a little of the outside inside


Holly
At this time of year I go into a kind of torpur - my hibernating instincts come to the fore and I hardly seem to leave the house.  Any visits to the garden consist of hurrying up the garden path to the compost bin, averting my eyes and carefully avoiding looking at the flower beds which need attention.  The not-so-statuesque seedheads which, according to most professional gardeners, should be left over winter to look beautiful when frosted, only look rather sad and soggy.

The only time I perk up is when it is time to look around the garden for foliage and berries to bring indoors for decorating the house for Christmas.  Luckily, I have a plethora of plants with berries and interesting foliage and lots of ivy  - you know, things that you wouldn't necessarily notice at any other time of year.



table decoration
For me, reds and greens epitomise Christmas and I like to make full use of what is available a couple of days prior.  I won't be bringing the foliage in too early as it tends to dry out fairly quickly in the warm conditions of the house.  A display along the mantlepiece of cotoneaster, pyracantha, holly and trailing ivy highlighted with the white flowers of the viburnam is a sight for sore eyes in the gloom of a dark winters' day.

cotoneaster

pyracantha
So all I have to do now is assemble all my ingredients and start cooking up a decorative Christmas storm.


Pinned Image
redoitdesign
When I am not Dreaming of a White Christmas I spend my time putting the house to rights, it gets sadly neglected over the summer gardening months, so out comes the feather duster and long reach brushes to try to de-cobweb all the corners where house spiders have most inconveniently built their little fly traps.  They seem to come back pretty frequently as though they are sticking their tongues out and saying 'catch me if you can'. 

I did manage to rally myself and get all last years seed packets out to see what needed ordering for this year, thankfully very little - it seems I went a bit overboard last year and still have plenty of everything, including half a dozen packets of radish seed!  Give me a rack of colourful seed packets and I seem to lose all reason.

A lot of reading gets done over the winter months and gardening books collected in order to inspire me for the coming gardening season.  I have lots of plans going round in my little brain for what I want to achieve but I realise that I actually need the winter wind-down in order to be able to appreciate the coming spring and the hectic schedule in front of me when the weather takes a turn for the better.

14 comments:

  1. I'm similar to you, I only do the basics during winter. I seem to have spider's webs all around the house too!

    You do have some wonderful berries there so will have super deccies for Christmas.xxxxx

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  2. You have a lot of colorful greenery that you can bring inside, something that I don't have here. I like the window shaped wreath with the little bird. Seems that you have plenty to do over the winter. I like the the idea of lots of reading.

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  3. Red berries and glossy green leaves make a good combination.
    I think that a winter break for some armchair gardening does us good so enjoy! Flighty xx

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  4. I also like and need a winterstop in the garden, doing some housecleaning, and reading books, making Christmas decorations so that in early spring we have lots of energy for the garden again. You have lots of berries for your decorations. Two weeks ago I had lots of red holly berries and now the birds have eaten them all....

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  5. I think we all need the change of pace and focus that winter offers, it is naturally a time for reflection.

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  6. Winter cheer from outside to inside :-) Though, when you mention seeds, I'm only reminded of my many seed failures this year. I think I'll just admire other people's successes.

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