Hairy Lumberjacks

Morning all,
What a difference a week makes. The farm chainsaw gang, fresh from their weeks tree felling training, came up on Tuesday to make a start on cutting down our rather sad Leylandii hedge. It has been tidied up on several occasions over the years but ended up brown on the sides and overhanging our prop tunnels at some height. It was initially a daunting task and approached with some trepidation. Once started there would be no turning back and the felling of each plant needed to be pretty precise to fall on the track between the prop tunnel, which is full of young plants and heated, and the donkey paddock fence. For a change things actually went better than expected and we should have only one more day to go before the whole lot will be down and cleared away. We just had the one exciting close call, with one tree falling rather adjacent to the tunnel and brushing the cover a bit firmly, but it held out, so sighs of relief all round. The difference it has already made to the two closest prop tunnels is astonishing, we used to have to put on supplementary lighting in one for the winter mornings, when it would take until gone 12.00 before the sun shifted the dense shadow and now we can reduce that input. Next job will be to order the replacement mixed natural hedging we are planting in its place. Hopefully we can keep better control of this one and being mainly deciduous it will still let plenty of light though in the winter. Mondays forecast looks promising and the heroic farm team are due back then, so this will be a great job to get completed before the break.
It might make up for the disappointing progress on the nursery office rebuild. I have been really struggling to leave the old one, it just seems such an upheaval, all that history, all those wires connecting me to the rest of the nursery/world and all that accumulated stuff on the shelves, however I am feeling inspired by last week's hedge transformation and the thought of seeing this tired, freezing cold, old wreck of a portacabin gone, is suddenly quite exciting. Greg had a good go on Friday and removed a load of equipment, stores and dismantled a big shelving unit and worktop so it now looks like something might happen. Looking forward now to reassembling it all in the new version. Scary stuff.
If you can see past the current Brexit chaos, it's great to see there seems a bit more urgency coming into the latest world climate change talks. Hopefully some meaningful actions will come together that are more than token gestures. I know not everyone is joining in, but that is no excuse not to do your best. Don't forget we can all help as individuals to do our bit, we can't leave it all up to the big boys to sort it out for us, let's rejoice in taking some responsibility for ourselves.
Christmas is nearly here so I'd better wish you 'all the best' for the festive period just in case you have already gone away by next week's update, or if I've decided started early on the celebrations and don't make it in that weekend. We are in a run of three 60th birthday parties over three weeks with the last one being a big barn dance next weekend. The timing is just a fluke coincidence really, it's something to do with the much older circle of friends we mix with and definitely nothing to do with my advancing years!

Availability highlights
Helleborus orientalis in a variety of colours are now well under way, for that winter interest and early exotic colour. Stonking bushy plants which are mostly from a strain (Crown series) that has a high percentage of first season flowering. I hardly dare mention it, but there are a few odd plants threatening to flower already. I haven't put them on the list as being in bud as there aren't that many yet. The winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum varieties we grow are now showing colour. The strain we grow has an exceptionally long flowering season with colour usually showing from November through to March and even April. They rarely get swamped with masses of flower at any one time, they just keep going on, producing a pretty and dainty show for ages.
We still have a few of the hardy autumn flowering Cyclamen (hederifolium) left with attractive evergreen winter foliage. We have a load planted in the garden by a hedge and they make a lovely winter ground covering. There are a few purple flowers beginning to show among the Primula Wanda, there will be loads more next spring.
I'm not sure for how long they will continue flowering but we have late potted batches of Armeria maritima (both the pink and the white forms) which are in flower with more bud still coming.
Compact and chunky Leucathemums are generally pretty evergreen throughout the winter. There are several varieties looking very strong.
The massively popular Erigeron karvinskianus Stallone is still sprouting a few flower buds. If the weather is not too harsh we have had these still flowering at Christmas before now and they could well do that again this year. Foliage starts to be of interest at this time of year and there are some good shows of colour from the Carex Evergold, Ajuga,Lamium and Euphorbia.

Have a great Christmas from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.