I hope that everyone had a good Christmas and enjoyed themselves. Mine was very quite and I mostly spent it indoors reading, drinking tea and eating biscuits. I only went to the plot a couple of times for a brief look round and certainly didn’t linger.
Following my recent post Plot and windowsill, about tomatoes fellow blogger Sharon, My Slice of Life, very kindly offered to send me some dwarf Red Robin seeds which she had saved. I received them a few days later along with this lovely, and very appropriate, card.
I look forward to growing this variety along with the dwarf yellow Aztek that I mentioned in the post.
The weather next week looks like being much the same as it has been, except not quite as cold or windy as it has been. I’ll probably take a look round the plot some days but doubt if I’ll be doing much, if any, plotting.
Have a good week, take care and I’ll see you all next year!
(Please note that my next post will be on Sunday 4th January)
Underneath the now dead crocosmia foliage there is already new growth showing well above ground so I’ve cleared some of away to give the new shoots some air and light.
The leaves on the strawberry plants are only now beginning to change colour from green to yellow then orange-red before turning brown as they finish dying back.
Best of all is that there is one plant which has just started flowering. It’s an English (or if you prefer Lawn) Daisy (Bellis perennis) tucked away at bottom edge of the main flower patch opposite the shed. On Monday there was one flower fully open with another bud visible.
This morning I cleared the main flower patch of any pot marigold tap roots which had remained in the ground when I cleared the foliage recently. I was thankful that the crocus Romance were showing so I could work round them without worrying where they were. They’ll need carefully hand weeding, as will the the crocus Snow Bunting by the dog rose.
OnThursday I forgot to mention, and show, the vinca/periwinkle flowers out front at home.
The weather so far this month has been rather unsettled with plenty of rain so it’s not surprising that I’ve only been to the plot once, after lunch yesterday, since last Friday. Meantime I’ve been mostly armchair gardening browsing through some of the 20 plus gardening books I have. One I’m going to read properly is 
I have tried growing a dwarf tomato variety at home on the windowsill in the past but generally without success, although I see that back in 2016 I grew a Tiny Tim which did quite well as you can see. 
I’ve also tried to grow Candytuft at home in a pot on the windowsill a couple of times without success but will be trying again next year.
I didn’t pull up the bright orange and golden yellow flowering Oopsy Daisy I had growing in the black plastic half barrel by the shed. I cut it back and hope that it survives the winter then starts growing again in the spring. If it doesn’t I will remove it and sow some more seed.
Sadly this year these were one of the flowers which didn’t do well in the dry spring and hot summer, and I didn’t collect any seeds as I usually do. I recently bought two packets of the variety Royal Dwarf, one Mix (pink, red and white flowers) and one White, from 
Looking back on the year the best plant was the Sunflower Big Smile, the most disappointing was the Gazania flower bud not opening and the most interesting was the Common Nipplewort.
Flighty's plot 
