Hello friends, Gary here.

Late again, two weeks running. This time I have a better excuse than a birthday.

Olivia has been on a school trip this week at Norfolk Lakes, about an hour's drive from us. Most of her class stayed over. Olivia didn't want to, and when it came to it, neither of us had the heart to make her. So every morning we were on the road in the half-light to drop her off for quarter to eight, and every evening we were back out to collect her at half past eight. Four hours in the car a day. I have seen a great deal of dark road this week and not one minute of my own garden in daylight.

I haven't touched it. Not a weed, not a pot, not a seed packet. On Monday I wrote about budgeting honestly for the light you actually have. This week the honest budget was nothing, and I have decided to let that be the answer rather than the failure.

What I will remember is the drive home. Half past nine, the heater on, a tired eleven-year-old telling me about her day in pieces, with long gaps between them. She could have stayed. She wanted to come home. I would have driven twice as far.

Next Sunday the clocks go back. That leaves this Saturday and next as the last two with a proper afternoon in them before the evenings close in for winter. Friday brings a few showers, then Saturday turns mostly dry and mild, around thirteen degrees, with nights holding at about nine. There's no frost in the forecast yet, but it is coming, and in Norfolk it rarely gives notice.

Sunday we are at a family seventieth, so I have one day. I am spending it bringing things in. The tender plants go under the glass my dad cleaned. The pots come up off the cold wet ground. And the feeders get ready for the birds I have only seen as shapes at dusk.

None of it is growing anything. All of it is about getting everything home before the dark.

Garden To-Do’s

1. Bring the tender plants in while it is still your choice. Pelargoniums, fuchsias, tender salvias, cannas, anything in a pot that you would be sorry to see blackened one morning. A single night just below freezing is enough, and the first one usually arrives in the last week of October or the first fortnight of November, often on a still, clear night after a mild day. Do it now, while it's dry and the plants are dry too. Before anything goes in, check it over. Tip each plant out of its pot if you can and look for the fat white C-shaped grubs of vine weevil in the compost. Pick off any yellowing or mouldy leaves, check under the rims for slugs, and trim back any long soft growth by about a third so the plant isn't carrying more than the winter light can feed. Then stand them on the staging, close to the clean glass. Through the winter, water sparingly and in the morning, just enough to stop the compost drying out completely. Cold and damp together does more damage than cold alone. Open the door on mild days. If you took cuttings back in September, they should have rooted by now; give them the brightest spot of all.

The Lesson: Bringing something in before the frost isn't fussing. It is just choosing your moment, rather than letting the weather choose it for you.

2. Get the pots up off the ground. On clay the ground holds water all winter, and a pot sitting flat on a patio or on wet soil can't drain. The compost stays sodden, roots rot, and when that water freezes and thaws over and over, terracotta flakes and cracks. Pot feet are cheap, but two bits of broken tile or a pair of half-bricks do the same job. All you need is a finger's gap underneath so the water can get out. While you are down there, check each drainage hole is clear, and throw away any saucers that have been sitting underneath; in summer they hold water the plant needs, but in winter they hold water it doesn't. Tip out the summer bedding that has finished and add it to the compost heap; the old compost can go on a border as a mulch. Then group the pots that remain together against the house wall, where the brickwork gives back a little warmth overnight and keeps off the worst of the wind. Pots huddled together survive cold far better than pots on their own.

The Lesson: Sometimes the most useful thing you can do for something struggling is not add anything to it. You just lift it clear of whatever it has been sitting in.

3. Clean the bird feeders and fill them where you will see them. Feeders that have hung out all summer collect old seed, droppings and damp, and that is how diseases pass from one bird to the next, especially among greenfinches and chaffinches. Take everything down and scrub it in hot soapy water, with a bottle brush for the tubes, then rinse it well and let it dry completely before refilling. Do the bird bath and the table while you are at it. Sunflower hearts suit most garden birds and leave no husks on the lawn; fat balls are excellent through the cold months, but always take them out of the mesh nets, which can trap small feet. Then think about where you hang them. Monday's advice was to put something where you will actually see it from inside. Hang the feeders within view of the window you stand at most, but near enough to a hedge or shrub that the birds have cover to dart into, and not so close that a cat can sit in it and wait. Keep them topped up once you start. Birds learn a reliable feeder quickly and come to rely on it as the weather turns.

The Lesson: The birds are already out there, working the hedges at the end of every short day. All we have to do is make them a place to come back to, and keep it ready.

If someone you know is going to be in a garden this weekend, send this to them. The jobs are more fun done badly together.

www.embracegardening.co.uk

Gary Stewart writes twice a week from a small garden on Norfolk clay.

Mondays are for what the garden has already done. Thursdays are shorter, because the weekend is the point and the reading is not.

Written quickly, for once, because Saturday will not wait.