Every time I look out of the window in early January, the garden is a stark reminder of how many jobs I left undone in the autumn.

I am reaching the conclusion that January may be my least favourite month for a variety of reasons but a contributing factor is the garden.

Every time I look out of the window in early January, the garden is a stark reminder of how many jobs I left undone in the autumn.

The bare bones of the garden are laid out before me – warts and all. As I look I can see several large clumps of hellebores that I dug up last year to make way for the new pond. Did I re-plant them – no, they are lying on top of one of the beds in the cutting garden roots exposed to the cold winds, waiting for a home.

Somehow, the cold weather in January did not deter the weeds from growing, and I now have weeds on top of my weeds in the flowerbeds close to the house.

When I go into the utility room – there are still a couple of packets of Tulip bulbs, if I peep inside – the bulbs look mournfully back and I know they are thinking that they would rather be in the ground than on top of the washing machine.

The greenhouse took a bashing in the high winds after Christmas, with 4 broken panes of glass and a broken door – it looks wounded and miserable – not to mention damp and cold. The temperature in there is now colder than I had hoped for, yet not cold enough to stop the slugs from nibbling at the over wintering seedlings.

The kitchen garden has bags of soil improver stacked at the end of each bed – I only dug one over in the autumn. I fully intended to do them all, plant green manure and/or cover the remaining beds with black polythene to protect the bare soil from the winter weather. Meanwhile, I yearn for salad and order far to many seeds for my small plot, seduced by the descriptions and the photo shopped pictures in the catalogues.

In January, instead of finding hope in the garden, I only notice the undone, not working, must change, aspects of the garden. Whenever I come indoors from a little wonder around the plot Shedman asks if everything is all right, and I grunt at him.

But however much I beat myself up about my neglect and tardiness Nature carries on in her own sweet way and proves yet again that she can do perfectly well with minimum intervention from me.

Despite lolling around out of the soil for several months, the Hellebores are pushing up their flower spikes. I will plant the rest of the Tulips this week, and they will come up when they do. My seedlings will grow into sturdy little plants rather than sappy mollycoddled specimens and as for the weeding – well, one day I will have a garden so full of plants that there will be no room for the weeds to grow.

Thank goodness Mother Nature doesn’t get grumpy in January, but gently, quietly carries on doing what she has always done best – encourages things to grow.

Right, must get back to my tax return, which of course is the other reason that I have the January blues.

The picture in the post has absolutely nothing to do with January blues. Another reason why I have been AWOL this month is that I am doing an online image manipulation course … very taxing on the little grey cells!