The last week of November, with a heavy dew and trailing mist hanging low over the river, as the sun warmed the morning I thought it would be a good day to have a look around my garden for fungi. It is their time to shine after all, but what struck me most, was just how many plants are still flowering away as if there were insects still on the wing to pollinate them, and there were. Besides small clouds of midges, a fat queen bumblebee was investigating a pile of compost, I guess looking for a place to hibernate, and my honey bees were busily coming in and out of the hive as if it were still early autumn and the first frost still weeks away.
Our climate is changing and the effects are showing in our gardens, but roses and geraniums flowering in November can’t be all that bad can they? Well yes, because there will be irreplaceable losses too.
My garden is dominated by an impressive old birch tree and birch are trees of cold countries, in Britain they’re already at the south end of their range and as our climate warms up there will be long periods of drought with which they will not cope.
Roses in November might look beautiful to us, but so do birch trees, I hate to think of losing one just to have the other.
