Month: March 2024

We always enjoy walking by the sea and wandering along promenades and piers. The North Wales coast gives plenty of opportunities to do this. In the middle of February we drove north and then west for a couple of hours to the seaside town of Llandudno, a place we visit often.

We began our day at the seaside by wandering along the promenade assisted by a strong wind making our way to the pier. The two photos below illustrate just how dark a day it was.

Typical of seaside towns created in Edwardian times, Llandudno has a front created out of huge hotels built in response to the surge in interest in seaside holidays made possible by the improved transport systems. These hotels are all impressive at the front to impress but behind this frontage they are really badly built.

The promenade was across the road from the hotels so we just saw the tidy neat fronts. The wooden sculpture piece of the White Rabbit has been there for as long as we can remember. He looks quite a character!

Towards the end of the prom as we reached the entrance of the pier we found these giant red poppies left in that position after Remembrance Day.

We then entered the pier and were greeted by the usual sweet sickly aromas of doughnuts being cooked and candy floss being spun. Sales booths and entertainments sit along both sides of the pier at this end. Everything for sale here is bright and mostly plastic. Music played from most booths so we had to listen to different songs all around us.

The huge building alongside the beginning is the Grand Hotel, still being used despite looking in need of some tlc in places. Iron beams decorated with fussy patterns form the structures from the original pier entrance.

Once beyond the bright noisy sales booths and the children’s rides the pier became quieter with wooden benches lined up along each side, many dedicated to people who loved the pier. The cast iron “fences” along the sides were painted in white and a rich blue, discoloured in places by rust.

The annual upkeep of the pier must cost a fortune with the constant repainting of the woodwork and metalwork and sometimes having to repair the wooden boards of walkways as well as the main iron framework.

I shall now finish off with a gallery of my photos.

We always enjoy our days at the seaside and this was no exception!

As I began my journal entries for March Jude, my Undergardener, wondered if I had posted the February journal. I hadn’t – so here goes!

This is the second report on our monthly visits to the garden at Oakgate Nursery. We wondered how much had changed between our January visit and this our February wanderings.

As usual, our first port of call was the excellent cafe for a latte for me and a cappuccino for Jude, my Under Gardener. From there we took the path over the bridge that took us over the pond where we enjoyed a few moments fish watching. We also took a close look at the wisteria now that it has had a recent prune.

As we entered the garden from the outdoor cafe seating area this Acer, presumably Acer p. ‘Sango Kaku’, immediately caught our eyes. Nearby an Hydrangea was at its last winter stages with its bone white remnants of its seed head.

Several trees and shrubs were showing signs of their buds fattening up.

While these buds were preparing to spring into life several shrubs were already in flower.

The most obvious perennials of all at this time of year here at Oakgate are hellebores but now there were a few more joining them.

Hydrangeas were admired when in flower last year now share with us their more subtle biscuit coloured dried flower heads.

So that is my report on our February visit to Oakgate Nursery and Garden, showing how the garden is getting itself ready for exciting fresh growth and flowerings.

See you soon to share our March visit to Oakgate.

January usually feels such a long month so it always seems such a relief when February arrives. This year being a leap year means that February gets an extra day which means it lasts 29 days rather than the usual 28.

As February arrived I wrote, “February arrived bringing with it more rain and wind, making gardening difficult and on some days impossible. However the garden took little notice and looked interesting. Early bulbs and shrubs gave us lots of colour.”

I also noted that, “A few winter aconites remain in flower from January but other new bulbs have joined them – crocus, cyclamen, fritillary, muscari, iris and last to join in the family of daffodils.”

I then shared photos illustrating these flowering bulbs.

On the page opposite I considered shrubs that flower in the winter, when I wrote, “Throughout the winter months, a few shrubs give us flowers attracting moths and early bees. The number of pollinators we notice in the garden increases day by day.”

Onto the next double page spread I considered work we did during February and a sketch of a leaf skeleton. I began by writing, “We had very few dry days during February so we had to take advantage of any that came. We spent long days enjoying being in the garden and we loved every minute.”

My sketch was created in fine fibre tip pens. Beneath it I wrote, “Leaf skeleton found when tidying the borders of dead leaves and weed seedlings.”

The final two pages in my entries for February were all about our garden wildlife. Concerning this element I noted that,“Once past the middle of the month light values improve. We feel better and many aspects of wildlife step up a gear. Many birds change their calls to song, notably Song Thrush, Dunnock, Blue Tit snd Great Tit. This reminded us to replace old damaged wren pouches and bird nest boxes. We cleared out old nests from last year from nest boxes and repaired those that needed it.”

As a link to the opposite I wrote, “Sparrow terraces are loved by wasps as much as by sparrows themselves. Two wasp nests took over one space in two of the terraces.”

And so to the opposite page where I continued to write about wasps and nest boxes. “The two wasp nests belonged to two different types of wasp and this showed up when we removed the nests. Our common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, built their usual spherical nests, built of their own spittle mixed with fine strips of wood from our fences and sheds. The other type of wasp, a much smaller type, built their nest to fill one section of the sparrow terrace, so it ended up as a cuboid . These wasps were small and calm.”

Next I wrote that, “Our wildlife pond is like a cauldron of mating, very noisy frogs. these two below spent time on our door mat.”

That is it for February, another wet, windy and frustrating month for gardeners. Soon we will move into March and I hope I don’t have to complain about the weather yet again early in that month as well.