Tete-a-tete miniature daffodils on the back porch, just coming into flower.
It has to be said: the garden doesn't look a lot different from my September 2019 garden journal post, except for the emergence of spring flowers. With the wet weather in the autumn, I didn't do much after the last harvest.
I was prompted by the latest garden journal challenge post to tidy the vegetable beds, harvest the dried beans left hanging unceremoniously on the vine and scatter some annual ryegrass everywhere as green manure. I'll turn it into the soil in April, before I plant summer seedlings. I'm wondering if the seeds will survive the pigeons.
I had a good crop of Polestar runner beans to plant this year. One of my neighbours stopped for a chat while I was out tidying the garden. That's another great thing about being in the garden, there's often social engagement with neighbours and people working on the houses. The other day a guy delivering flyers helped me load garden waste into the back of my car.
Bowl of Polestar runner beans sitting with my weekly organic delivery box. After mentioning celeriac to 
I really like swede - either boiled and mashed with lots of butter and black pepper and served very hot or sliced into postage stamp sized squares about a pound coin thick and added to casseroles, soups, stews.
I'm very fond of Cornish pasties, a regionally protected food from Cornwall in the southwest of England. These little sealed pastry packets traditionally have a filling of meat, onion, potato and swede, all diced, and seasoned with salt and pepper. They take between 45 minutes to an hour to bake in a hot oven, the filling cooked in the steam and melting into a taste deliciousness.
Last year, I learned how to make a vegetarian version, substituting mushrooms for the meat. The mushrooms are chopped, salted for a while to remove excess water, then squeezed dry and added to the filling.
Here's some I made last week. I used some all butter puff pastry I had in the freezer. They were very nice, but I prefer shortcrust pastry. Most ready made pastry is vegan, too (unless it says all butter on the packet)!
I live very near the University of Leicester Botanic Garden and usually have a walk there every day, especially during the winter. I love visiting at this time of year, and I'm always excited when the first camellia blooms.
Here it is: "Gloire de Nantes", always the first to appear. This was taken at 4.59pm on 26 January 2020. It wasn't as dark as it appears in this picture, sunset was at 4.38pm. It was raining and I could either get the green leaves with a washed out white flower, or this little beauty, a closer reflection of the flower colour, sitting on its own in the dark.
Here's the same plant taken at 4.53pm on 4 February 2020, sunset was at 4.55pm. So just under twenty minutes increase to the length of the day, but it felt very different going out at that time of the early evening.
The camellia, white periwinkle and snowdrops were the only plants blooming on the 26 January. The silhouettes of the trees looked magnificent, though, in the twilight.
I was pleased with this random shot with my ancient mobile phone camera. This was taken at 5.01pm (sunset 4.38pm) on 26 January 2020.
I enjoy visiting the Botanic Garden in the evening, any time of the year, as it is often filled with beautiful scents. They seemed to permeate the air in the late afternoon, early evening. It is the perfume sometimes that alerts me to plants that are flowering - the blooms themselves are not always easy to see.
The aroma from these blossoms was very heady indeed. I think they may be blackthorn. I was reading about the ancient festival of Imbolc, which took place a few days ago. Before we had clocks and calendars, the first blooms of the blackthorn was one of the signals for Imbolc. This was taken at 4.45pm on 4 February 2020, ten minutes before sunset.
A scentless but beautifully coloured crab apple, blossoming by the carp pond. Taken at 4.49pm on 4 February 2020, just before sunset. You can see the trimmed hedges of the sunken garden through the pillars.
A spooky night shot of Mahonia blossoms, also strongly scented. I was intrigued with this picture, taken at 5.11pm on 4 February 2020, ten minutes after sunset, and twenty minutes after the previous picture. It reminded me of Dora Maar's later photographic experiments which didn't use a camera.
Lucky for me I'm on Steem - I was also prompted by 
Garden Journal Challenge with 