The hellebore wakes in November. Our rooftop’s Rip Van Winkle. It mostly slumbered through summer then, suddenly one day, there’s a palm-like frond a fat hand-height tall. We check the pot and it is stirring like half-asleep baby mice. Crimson colours unfurling. Readying for Christmas we hope.
The grape hyacinth is a mass of leaf like Harpo Marx’s hair. Not long now, I tell myself, and there will be baby blue flowers. Happily, the narcissus is still dormant. Last year, in London and Denmark, the paperwhites burst through in early autumn, then folded fast without flowering.
Henri and her brother, Jorn, planted a couple of hundred more narcissi on the edges of the summerhouse meadow (mostly my fault for over-enthusiastic over-ordering). These from Farmer Gracy.
We have finally given up on growing tulips there as the passing deer crop the flower stems. Much as I love their curious visits, I can’t cope with the carnage. So narcissi are joining the fritillaries, the snowdrops and native bluebells, the shyly spreading lily of the valley. Perhaps next year, though, we will plant crocus.
There will be tulips in pots in London, as usual. Staggered heights, colours, styles, flowering at varying times.
The red geraniums in the window boxes and along the roof are in rude health. Some scented, dotted with flowers, other old-school pinks and scarlets, still pushing out blooms. The roses are resting, though the Bengal crimson will soon show bud. The lavender, too, baby violet against the skyline. I have a small cloth bag of buds tucked under my pillow.
I am unsure whether this late-flowering is comforting long-term, but it warms my heart at the start of winter. Meanwhile, I will cut thyme and marjoram for a slow-cooked weekend dinner. I will crush a few leaves of rosemary in gratitude and add to an oven-baked ratatouille.
Now enough about me, how does your winter garden grow…?
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
