It was a very frosty morning, which meant that the ground was too hard to do any weeding, digging or moving. Mum brought down a couple of new sacks of compost and changed the suet coconut.

The hard frost meant gave good proof that the coreopsis is indeed hardy and must have been there for more than one season. It’ll be nice to see it next summer, supported by the edge of the bed, rather than sprawling over the grass.

I found one job to do and filled in the hole at the front of the front bed, lining the depth with lumps of horrid clay and then leaves from my bin, before filling in the rest with compost.

Most of the visit was spent documenting exactly which jobs need to be done to which beds. I also took a good photo of each bed, so I can refer to them at home. There are a couple of beds that it would be good to do some small-scale work to and then cover them until the spring, giving the weeds a good chance to die. I can’t do weeding now that the ground is so saturated. By the end of my visit, the frost was thawing and I was skidding about in the mud again.