Notes from my January Garden

A crunching underfoot, but not the evocative, comforting one of autumnal leaves but of dying grass, starved of all its life. Tinder dry, there is a tension in the air as we all wait for the weather to break. The forecast promises rain again & again, but nothing comes. Finally the sky darkens & heavy clouds roll in around the mountains. We hear the first pitter, patter on the roof & run outside to greet it. But the weather in the mountains can change in an instant & as quickly as the clouds moved in, they have disappeared again.

A couple of injuries in Spring means that I have not been able to do much gardening. So seedlings have been planted & watered but otherwise left to their own thing. It is wild & weedy but beautiful & abundant. Hop vines rampantly tangle their way through the garden, binding their way around any stalk or branch that they come across. They are going to have to be tamed, but for this season I am quite grateful for them covering the areas that never got around to being planted.

What I am harvesting:

Veges: Cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, purple sprouting broccoli, kale, spinach beet, basil, coriander, parsley, courgettes, potatoes.

Flowers: Dahlias, larkspur, phlox, pansies, california poppies, shirley poppies, Iceland poppies, Sweet peas (Iceland Poppies and sweetpeas both struggling in the heat), first of the rudbeckias.

What I am sowing:

Foxgloves, kale, cavolo nero, spinach beet, swiss chard and spring onions.

Another gentle ticking of rain on the roof wakes me - is this it? Or just another broken promise? The sound fades away & I fall back into sleep. When I get up, it finally arrives. Within the space of a minute the silence turns to a heavy hammering on the roof. Doors are thrown open to hear the rain, to smell the rain….ahhhhhhhh. The tension in the air dissipates & both us & the plants are grateful for the change. And while it didn’t last for long, it was enough to replenish us all for a few days.