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On a recent podcast by Sarah Raven and Arthur Parkinson, Arthur talked about 'climate chaos' and winners and losers in the garden this year. His very sensible attitude is that we must get used to it and be grateful for whatever thrives. He has a nice turn of phrase - Medusa vases of sweet peas. (I wish! Mine were almost a total failure this year.)  I have sown a tray of cornflowers for next year...
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I do still enjoy the podcast of this name.  A couple of wrm days and a huge thuderstorm this morning. Tbe brambles are ripeniing, the meadow areas are cut, the Rose of Sharon is berrying and the Perseid meteor shower may be visible tonight. ..for butterflies.  Perhaps they are all in your gardens?  There's a fine line between wild and completely out of control, and I think I may have crossed that line!  It's been too wet to strim the long grass but I will wait until the cormflowers have gone anyway.  The birds are very happy.  The evening light is lovely and I am on a roll with clearing the 'identity clutter' now that I have got some moomentum going. It's proving to be rather ineresting...
The meadow area in the back garden is grassier than the one at the front and this year has lots of bird's foot trefoil as well as orchids, fox and cubs and some delicate pretty thistles. As the grasses go to seed there is a soft hazy effect that is really beautiful.  This was taken in the evening light.  This seat faces the rising sun when the light on the meadow is particularly lovely.  Sometimes when I open the window a little flock of surprised finches fliy up out of the long grass. So much pleasure and interest by just letting the grass grow.
..beauty sustains me. The rose Timeless Purple is looking amazing just now, and the scent is divine.  Just one warm sunny June day and I fall in love with my garden again.. It's rough around the edges, there is lots undone but it is lush and abundant and full of life and birds and bees and butterflies and today it felt like a little bit of heaven.  Wildly pretty and romantic on a day like today!     Sometmes rose-tinted spectacles are the only thing to wear.
Whyever not if they make you happy? What looks like a little light within the buttercup is actually the reflection of the candle flame on the table, such is the brilliant gloss on the flower petal. Fields of buttercups are one of my favourite sights in the countryside just now. You will have to imagine thick buttercups with some very handsome jet black cows feeding on them as, laden with shopping, I couldn't get off the bus to photograph them..  I hope you are lucky enough to have fields of buttercups mear you or that you can make a trip into the countryside to see them. There are quite a lot in my back garden meadow this year. ..here in uk is your garden growing like crazy? Are you keeping up?      We have had an amazing run of hot sunny days and today the first of my summer border flowers opened. I love the hardy geraniums and grow four main ones - Patricia, Ann Folkard, Roxanne and this one psilostemnon, of which I have about ten plants. Totally trouble free, they make a wonderful show.  Wishing yu some summery weather and back in a week!
. The shed is dripping with deliciously vanilla-scented clematis Elizabeth which thrives on no attention whatsoever.  The lovely warm weather also brings out the wasps and I got stung on the tip of my finger last night. I was told ice cubes on it was the thing to do but I had just used up the last of the ice cubes in a gin and tonic! I spent ten minutes sitting holding a piece of (wrapped) frozen chicken. Still working hard in the garden as the man who usually helps me (he can do in a couple of hours jobs which take me a week) is unwell. A huge loud thunderstorm today after which all the scents in the garden were intensified, and I am going out to pick some lily of the valley to put by my bedside. Another no maintenance plant.. Mid May is a lovely time of year here, and I am very happy in my garden. ..to lie in the hammoock on a hot day.  Half an hour work and half an hour in the hammock. A long day but a productive one, though I have to confess by evening I was almost on my knees!   You may remember I mixed one Sarah Raven collection of tulips with three cheaper Morrisons shades of pink ones. They have been fabulous.  I'be been doing tulips in the big black pots for many years now but inspired by this display in Copenhagen I think I will go for a mixed planting next spring.
There are fritillaria imperialis and persica, tulips and narcissus, wallflowers, ranunculus, violas - stunning for a public display and maybe needs a parks department to achive it! And would I be able to get them all to flower at the same time? Food for thought.. ..in the garden are the Welsh poppies. These ones have seeded themselves in the greenhouse. The cuckoo has arrived, there are a few butterflies around and there are swallows up the glen but not here yet. Hints of summer..  ..to save our treasures!  I was trying to protect the dark parrot tulip which had filled with rain and was bent over, but it was too windy to work so I cut the flower and put it under the lamp in the sitting room where I can watch it develop. Tulips do contintue to gow in the vase as I am sure you have noticed. They also drink lots of water and I will keep an eye on that. There was snow on the tops today.    The tulips are standing up very well to the wind and the rain. They are big flowers on sturdy stems and are also packed close together which may help. I'm very interested in the idea of reilience in people as well as plants. The programme Dan Cruickshank's Warsaw, a History Ressurected is on iPlayer for just a couple more days. It is both a touching memoir and a story of incredible resilience. I thought it was beautifully made and inspiring. Have any of you seen it? ..on the west coast o Scotland can be both rewarding, and challenging. All in the same day.  At last, breakfast ouside. Lovely.  Later that same day! You do wonder how the plants survive.. ..not in the breeze but in a force eight gale! Relenless rain for my visitors, but we spent it browsing plans and gardening books designing the garden for their new house. Most enjoyable.  The force that through the green fuse dribes the flower. Dylan Thomas  (On a more practical note don't forget that a few cubes of cheap smelly soap will stop deer eating your tulips,) I love the line in the film Dr Zhivago when the embittered Pasha, now Strelnikov, asks Zhivago what he is going to do with his wife and child at his dacha and Zhivago answers JUST LLIVE  Narcissus February Gold tends to flower in March here!
..what colour these will be. Isn't it amazing that even severed from its bulb and the earth, the tulip has within it whatever it is that makes it colour?   Vibrant lime green hellebores.  In the glasshouses are lovely old fashioned displays of coleus, hyacinths and petunias, beautifully cared for  and along with the jasmine smell divine.  First the howling gales awoke us Then the rain came down to soak us Then, before the eye could focus Crocus!  Unable to sleep I scrolled through all the photos of the garden under Simply Grow. This was one of many moments of magic.. The little collection of inspiring photographs of the garden are certainly helpful as all the jobs in the garden just now are muddy ones. The paths and steps have been power-hosed, the black pots scrubbed, the greenhouse door washed and the table and four chairs cleaned, some roses pruned, some leaves raked up...and I have put in the first yew of the new hedge. It's nine days since I decided to do a job in the garden every single day. So far so good! Wht I really want is to fall in love with the garden again. Is that possible do you think?  |
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