To have a feeling of satisfaction and achievement in the face of the huge challenge of Strachur House garden, we made a point each day of tackling something that could be started and finished in a few hours. One of my favourite start and finish jobs was to choose one specimen shrub or tree and clear the space under and aroound it. For example there was a lovely mature Amelanchier whose lower branches were tangled up in long grass . We strimmed the grass and  discretely pruned all the branches which were touching the ground. Lifting the skirts and in the words of my Swedish professor Par Gustavsson 'honouring it with its own space'.
It had never looked so beautiful.

In the early 2000's my daughter and I gardened for Sir Charles and Lady Maclean at Strachur House. Several acres, both formal and informal clse to the house - the kind of garden which probably once had a team of gardeners.

It was  a challenging task! Lady Veronica (her book Past Forgetting is a very interesting read. I see it is available from Amazon from £3.47 to £64.94! ) and her husband Sir Fitzroy Maclean had created the garden ocer about 40 years. It had many wonderful plants and trees.

We were part time, so we had to be strategic about the work, deciding where our efforts produced the best results and this was when we devised the four categories of tasks for each day. The ongoing task was edging - theere was a lot of it but keeping it really neat lifted the whole garden and made it look cared for.
I picked up this tip from an old National Trust gardener who said that if you kkep the toes shiny people won't notice the heels!

..has always beem an inspiration for my work and in 1999 I first painted fritillarea meleagris, an astonishingly beautiful flower.I have a few growing in a pot on the doorstep and photographed this one this morning early.

In 1999 I was preparing for an exhibitiom and when I took this to the framer Mark Azzarpadi (an artist heimself) he propmptly bought it! Which was very encouraging, but then I had to paint more, but as I was just learning to use Chinese brushes and my all-time favourite brush  - the Isabey Traceur - I was very happy to do more and to keep learning.

Literally back down to earth. I have  been away a lot and it has rained a lot, but today, sunny though cold I raked off a lot of winter debris, edged all the beds and had all the grass cut both back and front - what a difference! Tomorrow the paths and the furniture will be power hosed.

When it seems a bit overwhelming I use  an approach which breaks it down into manageable tasks. One ongoing, one sttart and finish job, one thing I want to do and one rescue job. Today that was grass cutting, weeding and feeding and tidying a pieris in a large pot, sowing some seeds and topping up the tray of miniature daffodils
 which were in barely any soil.

Now for a hot soak.

I gave a lot of thought to the exact conbunation of delicate pastel colours I wanted in my tulip pots this year and grew forget me nots from seed to go with the palest pinks and pretties lemon and peach shades....

So frustrating, and as I got the bulbs from two different sources I don't even know who to blame!

They are very cheerful if a bit 'municipal roundaboutl'  looking.

Anxiety doesn't actually contribute to peace in the world.

The forget me nots have survived the winter really well. They will hopefully flower at the same time as the tulips.

 

The sweet peas are sown and last years miniature daffodils are giving me little arrangements for every room in the house.

It is helpful to do hopeful things.

..sunny day in the garden....

..Algae inside and out,  not to mention the load of junk! How did that happen?

Mving on..

My fancy arrangement  didn't quite work out as planned.

I think perhaps the room is too warm for them. And the bowl was not deep enough to use twigs to prop them up.

So I cut the flowers and put them in three vases, which meant I could scent three different rooms with them. Gorgeous.

..when I want to get every little bit of sunshine that is going! Rain was forecast from lunchtime..

so I lit the fire and laid out breakfast

and went out to plant up the second of the three big pots.

Tulips - a mix of supermarket and one Sarah Raven collection, topped with forget me nots sown in May.

By the time I came in the fire was burning cheerfully and I switched on my friendly lamp,

thawed my hands on the coffee pot and enjoyed my breakfastt.

I felt so energised by the experience I went back out and planted the third and final pot. Sure enough it rained all afternoon. I felt ridiculously virtuous.

..where you are at. Do you find a phrase sometimes comes along which 'speaks to your condition' as the Quakers put it? I came across 'meeting yourself wheree you are at' today and stopped fretting about all the things which went awry, and about catching up and tying up loose ends. The sky will not fall in if I just let a lot of it go (all these metaphors). So please forgive me if I don't respond to all you recent kind and interesting comments.

So, where I am at is pretty tired and when I actually listed what I have done in the last few weeks I am not surprised. Emptying the compost bin was not the best idea perhaps but it was very satisfying seeing how all that vegetable waste has turned into lovely soil.

So, where are you at? And are you going to meet yourself there?

I picked 67 mushrooms from the meadow area in the front garden! There are usually two or three.

This little beauty popped up by the door of the greenhouse.

..and, unusually for me,I feel ready for it. Perhaps because we have had a lot of lovely weather this year..

 A surprise last flourish of this rose.

.A distinct change of colours

My sweet peas are very late.

And I am getting ready to light fires in the evenings.

The plants at RHS Harlow Carr are supersize and spectacular and in 29 degrees it felt quite tropical in parts.

But my favourite area by far was a huge bed of annuals - ammi, cosmos, echium and candytuft - ethereal and so delicate and cool. My photograph does not do it justice.

 
Isn't this a lovely combination? Japanese anemone and campanula lactiflora Anna Lodden look so perfect together that I plan to copy this in another part of the garden. I gave the campanula the 'Chelsea chop' (cutting it back by about a third at the end of May) which delayed the flowering somewhat and it happened to coincide with the amemone. Love it.

Maybe this is more about appreciating the human. My daughter and I were trying to identify a new wild flower that had appeared in the gaarden and of course we very quickly found it with Google. But I wanted to know a bit more and fetched the old, well-used Observer Book Of Wild Flowers. As she read it out to me I was struck by how lovely it was and I wondered  why. I think it was because I got  a sense of the person who wrote it.  It was someone who was interested, knowl edgeable,  observant and articulate  and I knew I could trust their description completely.

It was fist published in 1937 and revised and reprinted four times since then. Compiled by   W J Stokoe, the contributors and illustrators remain anonymous, and I find myself wondering what they were like...

Even after the petals fall from rose 'Timeless Purple' they still smell wonderful, so I keep them in a bowl to scent the room.

I have had no luck with seeds this year (am I losing my touch?) but I took eight cuttings of fuchsia 'Genii' and was delighted to see the healthy roots after just a few weeks. Seven for my back steps and one for a friend.

I have also got twenty new erigeron karvinskianus, and hopefully twenty yew.

I grew this dainty geranium robertianum 'Celtic White' from seed many years ago and it sprinkles itself prettily around in gravelly places.

.. two passing strangers stopped to look at the garden. It was hot and sunny with a gentle breeze, the meadows at their peak with butterflies flitting and bees buzzing, and one of the women said 'It's like a fairytale.'

And do you know, in that moment it was.

..to make a summer arrangement from the garden at this time of year. My philadelphus aureus never flowers for some reason, but the lime green foliage is lovely in a vase.

The weather is very strange with sudden gusts of hot winds..

..and I am having a little blog break.

A foxglove decided to make emptying the bin a nicer experience. Thank you foxglove and bees.

Have a lovely weekend

..appeared today. One of the joys of the wild garden is that different things happen each year. Orchids arrive in different numbers and in different places.

It was the wild orchids which encouraged us to just let some of the grass grow and mow paths through it.

(My best tip if you do this is to mow the edges. This way it looks intentionl and not just like neglect!)

..in the garden.

Breakfast in warm sunshine.

Prettying up the greenhouse.

A handsne new planter.

I love these colours in it.

dinner outside,

with my sweet robin for company.