Saturday, January 21, 2012
Organised clutter, mixed with a hint of disorder, the long glasshouse may be but it is still a charmed place in the depths of winter.
THERE is something immensely enjoyable about pottering about in a glasshouse when the days are cold, wet and miserable! Indeed the character of my charmed place on any winter’s day is quite explosive, for the light falls in clusters and the silence is sympathetic. !
The modest back-garden structure is truly a magical place, but what makes it so special?
Is it the smell of earth beneath the stone floor that creates that welcoming ambience or could it be the gentle heat thrown back from the long back wall, grizzled now with lichen, green algae and peeling whitewash? It could just as easily be the plants themselves, overwintering in a kind of stupor as they await an increase in day length and stirring heat. How I love their smell, their subtle, musky, resting, aromatic exhalation.
The long structure has stood the test of time and weather, but it leaks and drips here and there, it’s draughty when the wind really blows, and when biting frosts arrive it creeps in through the cracked panes like a fox to a hen-house, blackening all uncovered tender foliage. Any yet for all its impediments and limitations I wouldn’t part with it for the grandest model in timber or aluminium!
A sad-looking bunch of Allium christophii, hanging since autumn from one of the timber beams still hold a generous number of shiny black seeds, but the increasing greyness now creeping over the wonderfully structured seed-heads gives them a permanently frosted look. Time to bin these along with furry-tipped geraniums long denuded of leaves and blossom. I decide to check the root-ball of fuchsias for vine-weevil grubs. The adults, as always, were selective in their choice of plants for egg-laying; succulents, auriculas, primulas, fuchsias and heucheras are infested. Plants that cannot safely be undressed down to naked roots before being re-potted into fresh compost will be drenched with Provado Vine Weevil Killer.
As always, I have lingered too long and it is time I finished, closed the glasshouse door and went in home. That glasshouse will surely survive another January night without me.
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