January ex-flowers, non-flowers and would-be flowers

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day? In this weather? To quote the effusive Mr Gervais, are you 'aving a larf?

Regular readers may remember I rarely have flowers around in winter even in the best of years, so it's even more unlikely in my spring- and summer-flowering garden. I've planted a winter-flowering clematis (C. cirrhosa 'Freckles') and a Viburnum davidii this year to up the quota, but they're still establishing themselves and resolutely refusing to flower. And one of the little tragedies of my year has been that the Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' I planted last spring - one of my desert island plants - really, really hates my acid soil and is languishing sorrily in my front garden at the moment with only a few miserable-looking leaves left. Must dig it up again and put it in a pot before it turns up its toes altogether.

However - a little walk around my garden with my camera, more in hope than expectation, and look what turned up:

the slightly spooky seedheads on my Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne'

Camellia flowers looking promising

Pyracantha 'Saphyr Jaune' - the only one not stripped by the birds weeks ago

Helleborus argutifolius

beefy puffballs of cardoon (Cynara cardunculus)

the promise of ceanothus blooms to come

under the snow, the violas are stirring

...and poking their cheery little heads up


more spookiness from blackened rosehips

and the first of spring's hellebores (mainly Helleborus orientalis) are emerging from the ground.

And there was I feeling grumpy and cabin-feverish and thinking I had nothing to look at. Feeling much better now, thanks!