All sorts.

 

I heard Luke exclaim this morning and he came out of the front bedroom to tell me that a heron had flown right past the bedroom window. What a wake up call!

I had some evidence of another visitor when I cleaned out the shed today. It is the same one as we had in our old garden and I'm holding Luke responsible. He's done the same thing as he did before when we first encountered this problem. Remember a few weeks ago he bought 20kg of wild bird seed? Well we couldn't fit it all in the container that Luke normally puts it in so he plonked the bag in the shed and two weeks later we have three bite sized holes and a pool of spent seed husks! Who can blame the mice when there is a free lunch to be had? I've had to clean out the shed,  put all the seed in a metal container and weigh it down to stop those pesky mice getting into it.Still, it meant I had to do a proper tidy in the shed which was good. I had to shoo the chickens away from the few seeds that escaped when I swept them up as there was a chance that the mice had urinated over them and I'd only just read about this problem in Practical Poultry (my bedtime reading - no wonder I don't sleep well)

First thing this morning, I took a few photos of the plants in the morning light and then the lure of the garden centre grew too strong. It seemed to me that all of Cardiff was there which confused me as it was only midweek but when I arrived home, having spent £32 on plants (many of which were reduced or on offer) I discovered my garden centre vouchers had arrived that morning in the post. Sigh!

There's something very therapeutic for me going around a garden centre. Purchasing plants is to me what shoe buying is to most girls.They haven't been planted yet and now it is dark I can't see what I have bought but I'll post it tomorrow morning, when I can read the labels! Here are my bargain fritillaries -  75% off.

This is what they should look like when they flower. Striking in an unusual way, not what you expect from a flower but I hope they will look great grouped together in the black and white border.

Having woken at 5am I came downstairs to check on my work email so I can have the day off today just to garden. I have a lot of planting and preparation work to do. If I'm lucky I may get to finish painting the front wall Luke did such a good job rendering last year but that's being rather hopeful.
By 6.20am, work over with, I realised it was light outside so I nipped out to find out what I had purchased yesterday. I can now tell you that I have bought:
1 Alcea (aka Hollyhocks) double white, 
2 Alcea double yellow (All images below have been taken from the internet)

1 Verbena flush of white,

1 Digitalis (aka Foxglove) Camelot White, to go with two others I planted last year, which has lovely faint splodges, almost like freckles on it's flower

 and 1 Delphinium summer skies.