Mid November

Well, it's mid-November and the house is full of the smell of Christmas Cake baking in the oven - lovely! Too wet underfoot to garden so I popped out to take some picturesI love winter pansies - such cheerful little plants and no trouble at all. I've got them in pots and borders. The flowers will die off as the weather gets worse, but they'll bounce back in the Spring.

The brightest flower in the garden to-day is this purple primrose

. The leaves have all dropped from the trees, most of them on to my lawn!
This is the nicotiana that lived through last winter - it's still flowering!! I'm keeping an eye on it to see if it manages to last another year
The geraniums on the deck are still flowering outside. The cuttings I took a while ago have all taken and are safely indoors
The pink patio rose is still going strongMy wallflowers can't wait until Spring !!
Poor, sad, collapsed hydrangea - this is the hydrangea that collapsed under the weight of it's huge flowers back in the Summer when we had all that terrible rain. I'll have to be brave and give it a good old prune!!

The litle viburnam is covered with white/pink flowers and clusters of buds

I tried to take a photo of the yellow winter jasmine, but I didn't want to walk over the wet soil. Anyway, you can just about see it on the fence

The garden in November .....

The big cherry tree in the front garden is looking stunning in autumn colours, but one more gust of wind and I'll be picking up piles of leaves again. My compost bin is full to the top already. We've had a fairly busy week in the garden, pruning the smaller cherry tree in the middle of the front lawn as it was getting too leggy. We also tidied the tall Leylandi hedge in the back garden. No time to garden today, but I did buy some more pansies which I will plant later in the week. I'll also try to do some more tidying up which will probably be the last chance before winter sets in. The clocks went back a week ago and I just can't get used to the fact that it's dark at 5.00pm !! Here are the trees over my left hand hedge - very pretty, but not many leaves left.

I've still got lots of colour in the back garden from roses, red geraniums, purple pansies, berries and the fading heads of my huge pink hydrangea bush. Even the spring wallflowers and some of the primroses have started to flower! It's been fairly mild and dry for the time of year, but weather forecast is for much, much cooler weather in the week ahead. Next weekend we're off to the NEC in Birmingham for the craft exhibition. We're also collecting a new cutting machine which Andrea pre-ordered - I believe it weighs in excess of 10kgs so we'll have fun carrying that back to the car, along with the huge pile of stuff she usually buys!!Andrea bought this adorable snowman - he's supposed to be a Christmas decoration, but he's so big, he's standing in the sitting room - I wonder how long he's going to be there ????