Friday, November 26, 2010

Name Of The Shrub


This luscious green leaves shrub has these dainty white flower buds on it. I do not know what it is called. We had it in the garden growing in compressed soil. It is not very tall. I transplanted it into a small Grecian urn. I keep meaning to re pot again in a new bigger, roomier pot.
I have been working lots of nights, and day shifts. I keep thinking about doing a blog post but procrastinating.
The weather here has turned decidedly wintry. Snow has fallen for the earliest time in 17 years. Scotland and the North East have been hit by heavy snow fall..
Here in West Yorkshire the temperature has dropped to minus seven last night. The soil has frozen solid (good thing I planted the Spring Bulbs at last) and nothing is moving around.
The squirrel has blunted his claws trying to dig the frozen earth up in my planter tubs..
All the water in the garden has frozen, including the pond. The Pond has only frozen over the surface. There is water beneath still liquid. The resident Frogs are probably sleeping at the bottom, absorbing oxygen through their skins.
I topped up the birds food today. I'm always aware of their plight when freezing winter hits. There was a good program on BBC4 about the history of Garden Birds.
One of my favourite tags "Garden Birds" was a Victorian invention, after mass movement from the country to industrial cities. The workers missed the birds that they saw in the country. The only birds that followed were House Sparrows.
A severe Victorian Winter killed many Goldfinches, and started the craze to leaving crumbs of bread for the Birds. People were yearning for a country idyll, and the charitable urge to help all Gods creatures.
All the bird tables, Nesting Boxes feeders, fat balls, and water bowls came from this Victorian charitable instinct to feed the birds.
The temperature never rose above two degrees today so all the frozen water stayed frozen. December is nearly here.I wish i knew what the evergreen shrub was called.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have tea olive in your country?
Sallysmom

Sue Swift said...

It looks a bit like pittasporum.. But that's usually a darker green and the quantity of leaves is denser .. If you don't know it though, google it to see what you think.

We've had snow here too. It didn't last long, but they say it's coming back tomorrow and Monday. A sleety rain has already started to fall, so given that temperatures will drop tonight, I guess tomorrow morning will be white...