July flowers

Welcome to July in my garden! Winter weather has set in and it's been incredibly cold. No snow I'm happy to report, although there have been a couple of storms with sleety showers. But we're well into the frosty mornings and it's been the norm to wake up to minus two or three degrees, and even -5 has not been that unusual lately. Frosty mornings are standard for winter in the South Island of New Zealand, however we have had a lot of heavy frosts lately (and the last two winters were milder than average) so it's feeling pretty damn cold!

My garden is noticing it too. Usually at this time I have something in flower that I can pick, such as pansies, borage and rosemary (I often use these edible flowers on cakes in winter!) but the pickings are very scarce this year. All the borage have succumbed to frost, the rosemary buds are barely showing, and the pansies are hiding their faces. This time last year the first of my hellebores were opening, as was the daphne and even some early spring bulbs. This year the buds are still tightly furled. Luckily I still have camellias and wintersweet to fill my vases... although I am starting to crave a bit more variety.

Above, clockwise from top left: symmetrical succulents, wintersweet, daphne buds, a frosted seed head, camellia Fairy Blush, a dried hydrangea flower head, frosted leaves, some brave geraniums in the glasshouse, a red rose hip, a crazy flowering lavender, a slowly opening camellia Cinnamon Cindy, a pink armeria in the glasshouse. Middle: an ikebana arrangement with azalea branches and camellia flowers.

Here are some photos from one of our -5 degree mornings. It's a very invigorating way to start the day... quite refreshing! (Have I convinced you? I haven't convinced myself!) Oh well, at least everything is reasonably tidy and will stay so as long as it's too cold for weeds to grow! Just as well because there are still plenty of other jobs to do, like pruning the roses. Guess I'm not quite ready for spring then!

Linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.