Yellow Peril

 I don't usually plant many yellow plants apart from tulips and fritallarias but this year I have a rouge sunflower plant smack bang in the middle of the veg patch, an unknown flower in my wild flower patch, the giant Scabiosa by the greenhouse as well as the fennel and a lovely yellow courgette flower this year I seem to have exceeded my quota.

Dad's legacy

When my father died I bought some roses to dedicate to him. Here they are, in bud and full bloom. I love them.

Poppy stays up late.

 Whilst all the other chicks had gone to bed - or to their perch to be precise - Poppy decided to have a last race around the garden.

Starting off with some good quality compost and a bit of hard work I am to transform the dingy corner by the conservatory into a cheery space.

It doesn't look too exciting but with a couple of week's growth and a little less chicken interaction this should look quite pretty - that's the plan anyhow.

Flower power.

Tulips. alliums, delphiniums. They are all so different but all make me smile.

Tonight's the night.

 Just as the sun dropped below the horizon I tool a few shots of the flowers in the garden. See how the white ones glow, often white flowers are highly scented to encourage insects to visit them.

In the twilight hour

Those dratted hens have scratched my plants up more times that I can remember so I've had to put chicken wire over the top of these newly planted alpines and other plants. Only when the girls have gone off to bed is it safe to uncover it and by then it is almost dark.

Fritallaria

Isn't it amazing how a different view produces such a different look? This shy, nodding head plant is quite spectacular if you are a snail!

A walk in the park

This morning, Luke and I walked around Waterloo gardens. I believe it's a Victorian park (or parc, as they spell it in Wales) and it certainly has a very orderly feel to it. The trees are heavy with blossom and the magnolias are at their best right now. Spring is certainly in the air.

Tulip fever 2013

Money well spent?

Because the little bed I spent so much money on when I made it last year looks so meagre I decided to give it an injection of colour. So I bought some alpines and some annuals to brighten it for now.
Ten minutes to plant them, Thirty seconds to water it in - and four minutes for the hens to get right in the middle of it all. Typical.

Alien life force.

I love these large spidery roots. Just one or two in a fake spider's web should scare the most persistent of trick or treaters away. In fact they are Eremurus bulbs.

Tulips, but not from Amsterdam.

Luke had the chance to go to Amsterdam last weekend for work but we have a fortnight off so he passed on that opportunity. Last year he came back from there telling me how great the tulip bulb selection was and I liked the idea of actually having tulips direct from Amsterdam. However I did spend my loyalty reward vouchers on buying 70 new tulip bulbs. As they cost me nothing I didn't mind buying them at full price. I have potted most o f them up now and the tubs are hidden from view behind the greenhouse. I just hope they don't get dug up by any visiting wildlife.
I bought ten of each: Black parrot, Blue parrot, Flaming parrot (a super vivid yellow and red striped fancy flower), Monte Carlo (the nearest we are getting to a holiday this year), Exotic Emperor (don't they have wildly grand names?), Sorbet ( pink and white which is new for me) and Rems Favourite.
This will give me flowers from April till end of May and should offer me the chance to enjoy not only patriotic red, white and blue but also splashes and stripes of purple, yellow and red. Chaotic but after what may be a long wet winter we will be crying out for furious riots of colour and these chaps should fit the bill.

Red hot!

So I'm obviously not talking about our temperatures this summer, having been the wettest one in one hundred years, but there have still been splashes of racy red in the garden. Not so many on the raspberry canes as the new chickens have developed their jumping skills to attain the giddy heights of the juiciest berries. I'll get a video clip of them jumping later this week for you.

Next year's flowers.

We have strayed into next Spring already. The sacks of daffodils and bags of tulip bulbs have arrived at the garden centre already.



I have washed the pots ready for planting up but the cheap side of me is waiting for late deals in tulips. The bulbs can be planted from now till as late as Christmas by which time the garden centres should have reduced the price significantly. If your bulbs are going into the beds and borders (or those sweet little crocus bulbs, into the lawn) then it makes sense to plant them up before the stiff cold winds and freezing temperatures make planting into the ground a chore. Nothing wants to have to start it's journey from bulb to flower in a cold, unyielding soil. But if you are planting bulbs into compost then it will be perfectly acceptable to plant much later than normal. The good thing about pots, as I've said before, is that you can place them wherever you need the colour and that's not always apparent when planting bulbs. A couple of cheery pots framing the front door is always a welcome sight after a long winter and I love to plant two different colours (black and white or purple and orange sound as if they will jar but in fact work well together) or the same shade but different shapes (fringed and fluted or neatly shaped petals alongside the flamboyance of parrot tulips make for an interesting display). So, with a spare few bob, there's a world of possibilities at your fingertips.

I shall be waiting for the sales, I calculated that I have spent almost £400 this summer alone on the garden. I shan't consider myself a proper gardener until I am penny pinching and growing things from seed in my own compost and leaf mould. All things Nature readily gives us for free and it seems silly to pay so much once the garden is established (but so easy to do when seduced by a colourful beauty you feel you have to have - I wanted this plant in my garden but resisted - blimey, what's come over me?)



Like turf over grass seed, it is lovely to be able to occasionally overspend in order to get instant results but gardening is a patience game; to every thing there is a season. To truly enjoy the garden I would love to be able to work with it and it teaches me valuable lessons in life. Lessons like accepting failure when my lovingly clipped box topiary, just forming a beautiful border around the herbs, developed box blight. Ingenuity when something obviously ailing in one spot can be transferred to delight again in the right conditions. Lessons such as you get out what you put in, that nothing lasts forever and that each small kindness (a drop of water on a hot day) will probably be repaid by a cheerful flower head later on. But I'm running away with myself, whatever you get out of gardening, whether it's a lone pot on a windowsill or an expanse of lawn to play ball with the children on you will usually get much more pleasure out of it than the effort it took in the first place. That's my theory anyway.

The first cut.

It feels like the end of summer (all two weeks of it if you count the sunny days we have enjoyed) when the lavender is cut. I've now filled the muslin bags with the buds. The house smells divine.

Colours in the garden.

 The lily, just before the slugs got to it.

 Vivid lime gladioli.

 Pink and white pretties.

 The agapanthus about to burst open.Gysophilia in the background.

 Leggy pink Japanese Anemone.

 Bright red geum that I'm certain was orange last year. I'm confused.

 Showy purple gladioli.

Scarlet gladioli. My Mum isn't a fan of gladioli, remember it was the flower used by Dame Edna Everage? It's good value though, a burst of colour at a cheap cost.