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A true stalwart in our winter garden

It is perishingly cold today, after a brief respite of warm and sunny weather that saw our bees flying (from all four hives), the rate of egg laying increase among the hens and shoots start to unfurl. In that few, blissful, days I got the wisteria pruned, the dogwood and ivy hacked back and our standard willow trees clipped to severe little balls of twigs ready to shoot again in a few weeks' time. Richard also managed to cut the grass, and the waterlogged sludge that has been our garden for the past few months finally dried up.

Now there is a blast from the arctic and the ground is frozen solid. We have had to chip out some leeks to make tonight's supper, which needs to be filling and hearty.

However, throughout all of this bizzare weather one particular plant has flowered its heart out. It started  at Christmas and is still throwing up spears of beautiful blue flowers. The individual in question is Iris Unguicularis. We inherited Iris with the house, so I do not know the variety/cultivar, but would recommend her to anyone who has the right growing conditions. These are - an alkaline soil and a dry, sunny situation. This translates as at the foot of a sunny, south facing wall where the wall is built of limestone, which is absolutely what we have in this part of France.

I have divided our Iris Unguicularis up so that we have several clumps dotted along the front of the oldest part of the house. You walk past it on the way to the front door after having parked the car - so they offer a very cheery welcome home at this time of year. They are to be recommended, not only because they flower when hardly anything else does, but because they are easy to look after if in the right spot. Simply cut back the leaves after they have flowered and then give them some cosmetic attention in the autumn before they start to throw up the spearheads which go on to flower so prolifically.

Iris Unguicularis makes a welcome change from snowdrops and crocuses. I love both of these, of course, but they are very over-written about at this time of year and it is fun to be able to discuss something different.

See below the results with the ivy and dogwood. Both are hugely vigorous. The ivy needs pruning now to stop it from completely submerging our terrace under a sea of green leaves and the dogwood needs a good third of the oldest stems removing each February so that it keeps throwing up beautiful new red stems each year.

Incidentally, supper will be leeks and eggs under a gratin made using blue Wensleydale cheese. All very home grown (the cheese came back with us from Yorkshire last month). Off to prepare it now.