What a difference a year makes
Frost on Russian kale
One of my most repeated mantras is that you should always garden by the weather and not the calendar. And how the years vary. This autumn has been very mild and we have still not had a frost although we had some cool nights with temperatures down to 2c at the weekend. But looking back at last year’s photos we were already well into winter on this day.
Persicaria campanulata feeling the cold
We woke to everything covered in white frost. It is just as well because I seem so far behind this year with bulbs still to plant and the wallflowers are still not in their flowering places. I have been lucky so far – I had better get a move on though, winter can’t be far away.
Iced bolted lettuce
And as if to show the difference, here are some primulas at Mount Usher last Saturday, flowering six months early!
PS
Well what a difference a day makes too! I wrote this on Sunday night in preparation and guess what – we had our first frost Sunday night – and it was a stinker too! Talk about counting chickens…
Macro Monday Nov 22 answer
Well done if you knew it was a nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus). I posted about this one a while ago and it is ‘Phoenix’. I was a bit rude about it because not all the plants had the required frilly petals but I have to say that the plants, though bigger than expected, were very showy.
The Biking Gardener 
Great photos and sensible mantra
Lovely pics. I never get everything done before the first frost,never. I suspect that there would not be enough days in the year to do all we would like to do. Good job that winter does eventually come.
Murphy’s law?
indeed!
Because of the late autumn, I too have been caught out and have not planned my planting for early spring flowering…I am just going to skip it, and if I find nice flowering bulbs for sale, will buy and pop them in gaps. After all the garden is so full, I would probably be planting bulbs on top of bulbs!