Temperature-wise, it's spring in my garden. Everything is alive
The only thing I protected all winter was the crown of my tree fern, with a small ball of fleece, which is now removed. To tell the truth, my garden was due a mild winter after quite a few harsh ones. This winter my trachies have not stopped growing, the basjoo is slowly pushing out new rollers, the tree fern feels like it's ready to explode into life, hanging baskets still have the bedding plants from last summer alive in them! Also, the fish never once became dormant.
However, it's not been a good winter overall thanks to that hurricane force wind just before Xmas. I had to spend about 1k on replacing the fence and dwarf retaining wall on the left. Took me weeks to do due to the volume of concrete (footings went 1m down and were set into a concrete path and concrete retaining wall). Felt like I was out there every day with the kango and I now have a large pile of concrete to get rid of.
Still, the garden is looking very green and the recent days of sunshine have given me time to tidy up out there. The only slight worry is that my neighbour's black bamboo is now sending up shoots 1 foot into our garden. Only 2 so far, but will have to keep an eye on those.
Barring a few light frosts, 2011 was frost-free for me, so everything was very early that year. Also I enjoyed a warm and extremely dry spring that year (less than 5% of the typical rainfall during those 3 months). Perhaps 2014 will be another largely frost-free year. We'll see.
