How much will you miss outdoor gardening in the next few months?

Seville oranges are the bitter ones used for making marmalade. They are tender and mustn't get cold in winter. If they are too wet in winter they don't flower, which means no fruit.

Here in France robins are shy birds, not like the English ones, proably for the reasons given in that article.

 

That's interesting, @Busy-Lizzie. Our robins, while perhaps not quite as tame and cheeky as the ones we fed in UK, do still come and perch on the fork or spade while I'm digging. They're extremely brave up on the terrace, too, considering that we've got two cats. They flit around in the temporary conservatory, so I have to check carefully before closing it up in the evening

 

We moved to France in 1985 and bought our 2nd house in 1990 to be nearer Périgueux where my first OH had his dental practice. OH had made friends with our notaire who lived in the next village. The notaire invited us to his palombière, which I in my innocence thought was a wooden tower for bird watching. In fact it was a tower for bird killing, shooting. They shot blackbirds and thrushes and said they ate them. I was horrified. France is one of the worst countries for killing song birds. In 2021 there was a law forbidding certain traps, such as glue traps. I think that is why birds aren't friendly here, don't blame them. Funnily enough the protected birds are birds of prey.

When I moved to my current house in Jan. 2021 there were very few birds in my garden, which was just a large area of grass. I've dug beds and borders and planted flowers, roses and shrubs and I feed the birds. My handyman feeds them when I'm not here. I now have a lot more birds.

 

Anyway, this thread is about missing gardening in winter. I replied earlier but I'll reply again.

Winter is a busy time for me. As I have 2 gardens, mine in France and OH's in Norfolk I have to garden when I can. I used to leave the clearing up until just before daffodil time. I won't have time to deal with my French garden then as I'll probably be in Norfolk so I've been weeding, cutting back, mulching and pruning. I mulch a lot, it helps keep the weeds down and the roses like it.

 

We can now buy Algarve Orange Juice commercially in Intermarche and Aldi by Compal.
This may be of interest ...

What I didn’t know about oranges

 

... ? ... oh yes? ... What did you not know about oranges, then? I am dying to know, because I know nothing about oranges, and even less now!

 

I love oysters too, limp or not, they don’t seem to affect me.

My, my, you must have had a limp thumb! Gosh, 250m2! You do have a flair for distances, haven’t you? Were you not familiar with Tom Thumb? In Holland, they call it Tom Puss, but that’s a cake (trust them!). Actually, I got the whole thing confused with Le Chat Botté … I’ve just realised that, en définitive, it’s Les Bottes de Sept Lieues, yes, that was the one you needed for your 40 kilometres!

 

Problem there is that your first step is your last as you end up with your feet 7 leagues apart.
Better would be a seven league pogo stick.

 

How I dislike winter gardening, and water gardening even more! I had mentioned somewhere that I would at some stage tackle the oversized orantium aquaticum … Pfff, the size of that thing, underwater! Were it an iceberg (and, believe me the water is cold enough), it would sink the Titanic (the evocation, in the context of my pond, must be indicative of la folie des grandeurs! … as is indeed the whole endeavour).

We won't talk about the damage it's doing to the lawn!

Mrs Lao had asked How are you going to do this? And I had naïvely said I’ll just lift it out … But wait till you see the next thing, the waterlily plant; I just had a feel underwater, I thought I was encountering an oak tree …

This here is just the orantium aquaticum:

 

You'll have to take that up with the author. I'll give you his details:
Charles Perrault
Last known address: Eglise Saint Benoit - Paris

 

Why did I leave it so long?!?!

Two sessions so far, illustrated below … and that’s still just a fraction of what lies beneath; the suckers are even more virulently tenacious than the creatures in Aliens.

Looking at the second photo, does anyone know if these ‘cuttings’ would flourish when replanted, or have they been killed by being severed?

 

I normally divide waterlilies in spring and then make sure each division has a growing bud attached, if the section of rhizome has no buds I'm sceptical it will be worth keeping.

 

Many thanks for that good advice. I will leave a few strands untouched and divide, as you say, in the spring.

 

Yes - spring for that kind of thing as the plants are more likely to grow away.
Anything a bit iffy, as @pete says, won't be so likely to 'take' because of the time of year.
You've certainly got plenty to work with though!
They do benefit from being split fairly often to prevent it becoming too difficult a job. It's easier in a huge pond because they have room to spread more easily. They aren't easy to compost, but you can just chop the tangled stuff up and lay it on bare ground, or under a hedge etc. as a mulch, and it'll eventually break down. It's easier to split them quite regularly as they become less productive over time as well.

 

I got rid of a fairly large amount of waterlily rhyzome a few years ago buy offering it on a local Facebook page.
In spring lots of people are looking for good sized pieces, the overpriced tiny plants that garden centres sell take a few years to get going.