This time of year it is hard to find six things in the garden. Here’s a view from the back door, looking out over our Somerset garden which faces north and slopes downhill from the house. It does not benefit from much sunshine in the winter, but we do get to see views across the valley when there are no leaves on our neighbour’s trees.

This morning is dark and wet, with not much chance of taking decent snapshots, so I’m sharing some of last week’s photos.

The raised bed at the bottom of the garden is full of spring bulbs for cut flowers, with lots of green shoots emerging. The copper beech tree behind the old stone wall has no leaves, and so we can see views to the other side of the valley that are hidden in summertime.

Sage cuttings in the greenhouse. I took these last autumn, quite quickly and without a great deal of care, but they seem to be doing ok so far.

Monstera babies – two of the three monstera cuttings have produced new leaves. The other (not shown) has a promising looking green shoot. I love how glossy the new leaves are, and how quickly they’ve grown.

Monstera family photo – pruning and propagation

The monstera babies were cut from the plant in late summer, and sat in water for a few weeks. I planted them into soil in November, and they’ve been sitting by the window and a radiator since. I’ve watered them every couple of weeks, and I have no idea what I’ll do with them when they get bigger.

The green apply tree has been pruned by my lovely husband, and there’s a fine collection of sticks that I’m planning to use to make plant supports for peonies.

Edges and hedges are looking neat and tidy. None of this is my work, so thanks to my lovely husband, Simon the gardener, and the contractors looking after the garden of the care home next door for all that trimming and strimming. Between November and the end of January is the best time for hedge trimming and pruning around here. Hedge cutting should not happen during bird nesting season, which is officially between March and September, but I’ve seen some garden birds already looking to pair up and scout out nesting sites.

In summertime, this concrete pathway is barely visible with all the chaos of the wildflower patch around it.

Back to the veg bed, where the green shoots of the spring bulbs are popping through, guarded by the little concrete dog that we found in the garden when we moved here. Behind them is the compost bay that recycles and transforms our garden waste into magical compost, and next to that is the large pile of brambles and dormant bindweed that I usually don’t show in the blog.

I’m going to do a bit more recycling, by tapping into a meme that looks back 10 years to 2016. This meme is probably already passé, but anyway… Here’s a snapshot of a remarkable tree, from 10 years ago, when my lovely husband and I lived in London. We enjoyed taking the Parkland walk along an old railway line from Finsbury Park, where we saw this tree growing from an old wall. The tree is a local landmark, and I love the way that nature reclaimed this space.

For more ‘Six on Saturday’ garden selections, please visit the garden ruminations blog, where Jim has tales to tell of Storm Ingrid, Camelias, Cacti and a garden jigsaw.

Have a lovely week,

J xx