Winter's here!

The temperature here seems to have taken a nosedive over the last few days, it's certainly cold enough to prevent me doing much gardening until I acclimate to it.
I donned the thermals and made a start on the Adirondack chair yesterday - the greenhouse/workshop gets toasty warm because of all the glass. Have to say this working with plans isn't all it's cracked up to be, I found a fault in the measurements and although at first I thought the fault was mine it turns out that the plans are actually inaccurate - awesome! I'm also having to get used to proper measurements all over again - by "proper" I mean NOT 31" and 7 of the little bitties type measuring (my type of measuring lol). It took a while for my brain to register 31 & 7/8". Seriously that conundrum had me scratching my head for ages I just could not remember what 7/8" was. In the end logic prevailed and I just converted the inch into 8 parts and marked to 7 of them - works for me! Everything else has been relatively straight forward because I used the electric cutter for all the degree cuts, it's just one or two measurements that are inaccurate on the plans so I'm working round them.

On the way back from the workshop I popped on to the garden and took some pictures of what is still thriving despite the gale force winds and torrential rain we had a few days back.

Climbing Rose 'Compassion' is still going strong. I'm really impressed with this climber and in the blooms in general, they have stayed resolute and healthy no matter what the weather has thrown at them while every White Rose I have appears to rot as soon as the rain hits them.

Fuchsia 'Tom Thumb' may be a compact little shrub but it certainly smothers itself in bloom, I love this little guy and really must propagate more of it.

This Skimmia suffered last year as I had it in the wrong compost, most of the leaves had yellowed and it looked really sickly. It may not be the picture of health right now but there's been a dramatic improvement in the colour of the leaves since re potting in Ericaceous compost and putting it in a shaded position - it even has flowers appearing!

This is the plant that I can't identify. We rescued it form a skip and it looked very bedraggled so I cut it right back - that was a couple of months ago and all this new growth has come through.

This Coreopsis is doing remarkably well, I actually didn't think it would survive here and it's still got plenty of buds waiting to open. It's been planted in the wrong place though so next year I'll be putting it somewhere more suitable that shows all its blooms off better.

This sea view never gets boring though the sea is actually much much closer than it looks in the photo but that's a point and shoot camera for you.

Finally, Pampas grass getting ready to bloom as everything else dies off.