Jack Frost has a lot to answer for!

Jack has wreaked havoc in the garden this year. He nearly killed my beautiful ceanothus, he has definitely murdered my spectacular potted hebe, and severely depleted the flowers on my clematis montana and wisteria. While he seemed to have disappeared a couple of weeks ago he was clearly lurking somewhere when I decided to harden off some of my seemingly well established plants, painstakingly grown from seed. I should have waited, but Jack managed to lure me into a false sense of security – he was still making sure the night air was unseasonably cold and my plants are looking sorry for themselves.

Now that it’s warmed up and we’ve had rain in biblical proportions for weeks on end, I reckon he’s summoned every garden beastie he knows to come feast on my young plants and some of the more well established ones too – he’s so spiteful. Poor Captain Sir Tom had a case of greenfly – luckily I spotted them and blasted them off with the hose spray – he wasn’t the only one – my other roses got the same treatment, as did my apple and cherry trees – I’ve warned them it’s unlikely to be the last time they are subjected to this. I mustn’t feel too picked on though – ants have invaded Victoria’s garden and eaten right through her potato stem!

Look out! Look out!
Jack Frost is about!
He’s after our fingers and toes;
And all through the night,
The gay little sprite
Is working where nobody knows.
He’ll climb each tree,
So nimble is he,
His silvery powder he’ll shake;
To windows he’ll creep
And while we’re asleep,
Such wonderful pictures he’ll make.
Across the grass,
He’ll merrily pass,
And change all its greenness to white;
Then home he will go
And laugh, “Ho! Ho! Ho!
What fun I have had in the night!

Then there are the slugs and snails – they look to move slowly when you watch them but they must be on speed at night! The amount of damage they can do is incredible – I don’t know how they don’t explode out of their shells, the amount they tuck away. The small ones are the worst – this is a mugshot of one such criminal taken next to my little finger nail to demonstrate its minuscule vital statistics.

We are now promised a heatwave so next time I’ll probably be reporting that all my plants have been scorched and there is a hosepipe ban – thankfully all my water butts are full to the brim at the moment!