Indoor gardening

Frost has stopped play. The pond hasn't defrosted for a week, and part of the lawn is permanently white. As for the allotment... we had to go and buy some parsnips the other day as the ones I've grown so lovingly are now concreted in to a rock-hard veg bed (yeah, I know, should have lifted them and heeled them in somewhere sandier, didn't get around to it).

The BBC's rather awe-inspiring monthly weather forecast says this will carry on for the rest of January, as it's caused by a wodge of high pressure that's apparently "notoriously difficult to budge". Oh help. I'll be reduced to making curtains soon.

Anyway, I'm trying to comfort myself with the thought of millions of tiny slugs freezing solid, and meanwhile doing some indoor gardening. This is long overdue: I'm very late in planning my seed order, which I must send off this week as otherwise the spuds won't be chitting in time. I've also, at last, come up with a coherent design for the front garden, and I'll be measuring up those bits of the back garden I'm not already digging up shortly - all part of the Great Garden Makeover of course. The only trouble with plans is, you then have to put them into some sort of action... which in my case almost always means half-finished projects all over the garden as the summer rush takes over yet again.

I've also been making some New Year's Resolutions to ring in 2009. A bit of a pointless exercise, of course, but I like to see how quickly I jettison them each year. This year, they are more informed at least thanks to all this blogging (mine but more frequently other people's).

• I'm going to start a diary (I do this every year. Never got past March yet. At least I know what I was doing in early spring back to about 1975).
• While I'm taking those photos for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day each month, I'm also going to photograph the whole of my garden, warts and all, as a record of all these improvements I'm making (this of course will be strictly not for publication: all photography found on this blog is a triumph of the macro lens over reality).
• I'm going to start some of those projects I'm planning (see above)
• I'm going to finish some of those projects I'm planning (see above)
• I shall try not to get impatient when my eight-year-old wants to plant tulips in my potato beds, but shall let her with a beneficent smile in the interests of keeping her gardening (and will secretly replant the tulips back in the same spot after harvesting the potatoes).
• My reading of other people's blogs shall not take over my working life
• ... and nor will surreptitious trips to the allotment when I should be at my desk
• I shall cram in as much knowledge as I can about gardening, plants and plantspeople, and hopefully end the year a better gardener.

Right, that'll do for now. I wish everyone who drops by this blog from time to time all the very best for 2009. Happy New Year!

Early autumn

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was an example of lovely autumn colour. It's a horse chestnut tree not far from my front door.

Unfortunately, this rather fine example of a field maple (I think) right opposite will tell you it's not quite time for autumn yet:

As you can see, still in its summer finery.

Around here all the horse chestnuts took on an autumn colour in about August - you could tell which trees in a hedgerow were chestnuts as they were the only ones which were bright yellow. It was the same story last year. If you look more closely at the leaves you can see the colouring isn't anything to do with autumn at all.

This is chestnut leaf miner damage. It's caused by the larva of a moth which has become absolutely rampant in the south-east of England. It comes from southern Europe, and until recently was minding its own business over there, but in 2002 the first ones crossed the water and turned up here. I believe it's now making its way north.

The Forestry Commission are keeping an eye on it, and they've asked people to let them know if it appears in places where it hasn't yet been seen (a few more dots are ominously appearing on their map each year). Apparently, dramatic though it looks, it doesn't do any damage to the tree, though if it appears at the same time as a nasty bark disease called bleeding canker the combination can be fatal.

It seems to me, though, that if you completely defoliate a tree every year for a number of years, it can't do it much good in the long run. I love horse chestnuts - like most people I played conkers as a kid, and I love the fact that they're so big and strong and sort of ancient English forest-y. They're the sort of trees you use as landmarks, the sort of trees you rely on for your sense of identity and place. So to see them all looking so sick, so early in the year, makes me fear for their future. It feels all wrong, like daffodils in December. If this is global warming, you can keep it.