The weather has turned cold. It was inevitable as soon as ur plans had been set for a trip to buy bedding, just like the day of our first tennis match is always (and I mean always)  rained off. So we headed off to buy begonias safe in the knowledge that once home they would need to be bundled up and stored for a week.

London rarely sees the snow but temperatures are definitely down to just above freezing for the night. There hasn’t been much frost but I suppose it’s still early days.

Perhaps more frustrating it’s also a problem for my garden’s latest biological weapon – nemaslug! It arrives in a packet (sealed) and you are asked to dissolve it into a 10l watering can and then further delete it 1l into 10l before watering it out onto your beds. The solution contains nematodes a parasitic worm that essentially eats young slugs alive. Gruesome but hopefully effective apart from the condition that the ground mustn’t get too cold ie. no frosts.

I’ve never used it before so won’t know whether it’s the temperature or my incompetent watering that’s to blame if it fails.

Mostly though the garden is looking good. I have that enthusiasm that aways arrives before making up the hanging baskets and gradually fizzles away as the reality of my incompetent watering schedule dawns, year after year.

As well as bedding I have some perennial geraniums to plant out underneath the new roses (blue Rozanne Gewat) and some verbena lollipop bonasiensis to top up the border on the gravel garden. I need to dig some of the many self-seeders out of the gravel path up to the gravel garden before they really dig deep. Plenty of primroses and maybe some violets could be moved along quite easily. I’m not so sure about the iris and fritelaria but they’d certainly be no worse off.

As always each success and failure in the garden brings a new item to the list for next year. The dwarf narcissus underneath the hedge worked well but now I’m left wondering what can be put around them to carry the season forward a little, maybe white mascara, or woodruff or possible some small tulips that naturalise.

As yet I’m undecided about the huge alliums in the fritelaria bed. They’ve obviously dried out at various stages so the leaves have become scorched but maybe their flowers are worth it. they’re about to open into (hopefully) huge white balls and I’m quite excited about what may happen.

But overall the bed seems meagre: just too thin. Like the bed at the back, it could be doubled in width and benefit. One side effect of this would be to make the carrying of the lawnmower all the way up to the back lawn even more difficult. The end of the bed is already being squashed and mangled as the machine is shimmied over the plants, something that I’m unhappy about but the answer has to be long term, probably sinking stepping stones down into the middle of the gravel.

Projects beget projects.

The tulips planted at the back are beautiful and have been a delight this year. Maybe next time I should top up with some of the white and darker bulbs but in the front, some shortish pink bulbs would look lovely. I’d like some more anemones at the front of the rose bed also.

Next time I’m offered some white forget-me-nots I need to accept and stick them in my pots for the early spring. And maybe I could plant up a few more snowdrops.

At the same time, I’m going to start pulling up and getting rid of the comfrey. It grows well in the dark shade but isn’t that pretty. I’m coming around to the bugold though.

And the other thing I need to work on, which might actually help with the hanging baskets is putting together a watering system using some small plastic bottles buried into the compost in pots, specific beds and baskets. I have a whole range of watering globes that basically work on the same system but if I could bury small 330ml bottles into the pots, surely i could achieve the same result by creating mini reservoirs?

And then wandering through the various on-line catalogues there are always new sweeties in the shop…