Here is the corkscrew hazel again. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice, but this is followed by two close up pictures of the catkins and a bud.

It has catkins that don't always hang downwards. In pictures of this tree on the web, the catikins seem to be different. I am therefore a little doubtful on the identification. Will compare leaves and flowers when they appear.

Here is a new bud with an interesting red part emerging right at the end. It is fair to say that this is not typical and only a few have this red end. Perhaps more will later. Update: as I discovered later this is a hazel flower.

There are some daffodils now appearing beneath the Choysia bush. Well probably daffodils, they are much smaller than the main daffodil patch.

There is now much more sunlight getting to the garden. Early in the day it shines between a gap in the surrounding buildings onto the back fence and border, moving around to the right side fence. At midday, there is sun on a portion of half the lawn. By 2 o'clock the sun drops and only the right hand fence get the light.

There are a few things starting to grow.

Montbretias

Shoots starting to show.

Here is their bulbs or rather corms. There are a number growing on top of each other, so if you pull the top one out there are others beneath it waiting to take its place. They are therefore very difficult to get rid of, they pack the soil and prevent anything else growing. As I have quite a lot of patches of this I am going to start removing several patches.

Crocus

So I …

I decide to cut back one of the shrubs that is growing over the lawn. It is planted very near to the fence but grows forward away from it. The fence just behind is broken and maybe these things are related.

Cutting it back just reveals how thick and woody it is at the bottom. I sawed off many of the thicker branches and would do some more but I want to see how much it is going to grow back first.

This picture kind of shows the tangled mess of branches near the bottom, although it is worse than it looks here. I may end up removing the whole thing if it turns out to be not very interesting.

Daffodils

There are a lot more daffodils now showing. After cutting down the bush and clearing away some of montbretia they are much more visible.

Pheasant berry tree

I also …

These are the pictures of how things were in the garden on the 8th Jan. I have no idea what many of the plants that are still visible are, or what is going to grow throughout the year.

It is split into three parts. This is the right hand border as seen from the house. The fence gets some sun at noon at this time of year. This is the wetter side of the garden. Rain collects in pools by the side of the lawn and the grass is very squelchy even when there has not been much rain.

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There is a whole mess of trees together here and I'm not sure how many there actually are. I like the red berries on this. I'm thinking it is a kind of cotoneaster. You can also see a "herringbone" like branch growing from the ground. This may be connected to the …

These are the pictures of how things were in the garden on the 8th Jan. I have no idea what many of the plants that are still visible are, or what is going to grow throughout the year.

It is split into three parts. This is the back border of the garden. It will get penty of sun later in the year although not so much at this time.

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I am thinking that this may be a Lady's Mantel (Alchemilla). There are a few of these plants with their dead leaves.

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An evergreen creeping plant. It looks like it is going to be a lot of trouble to keep it under control.

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There is another patch of the plant that I am guessing is a Yellow Loosestrife.

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I am guessing that this is a catmint of some kind.

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At first I thought that this was a foxglove, but now I'm …

These are the pictures of how things were in the garden on the 8th Jan. I have no idea what many of the plants that are still visible are, or what is going to grow throughout the year.

It is split into three parts. This is the left hand side of the garden looking from the house. It is on the south west side of the garden. It is in shadow from other houses and the fence for most of the day. This side of the garden is less wet than the other side.

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This is the beginning of the area that runs along side the house. There are a variety of small shrubs and creeping vines.

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There is a patch of what I am guessing is Montbretia, but could be some other Iris like thing.

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There is a climbing plant along a trellis. It is completely dormant, in fact …

It's the day after the shortest day of the year. I now have my first garden although I am not actually moving in until after Christmas.

Even though it is sunny the whole garden is in shadow, the houses are arranged so that they could be blocking the light in many different directions. The garden faces north west, so I am expecting that there will be sun in the afternoon and evening later in the year.

I have a bag of bluebell bulbs that I bought a couple of months ago, so I plant them now as the bulbs don't last that long apparently. The ground is very wet and heavy, one hole I dig fills with water and it is not very deep.

I'm a little bit disappointed, although I console myself this is going to be the very worst time and clearly things do grow here.