Well hello

I have been lax, in this interim period, between the old life and the new. I started my new job today, and I can tell you now, I am very happy. But my apologies for letting the side down - not in the garden, I can tell you, but in letting you know what I'm doing.

I had a weekend, and two days off. The weather gods have been most kind. SUN! I cut the grass on Monday, I planted some of the things I purchased on Saturday ...

Back up. My local council has a "People's Day" every year, in the local park which is five minutes down the road from us. The best thing about this for me, is the herb stall.

I bought plants. Oh yes. I can tell you that pretty much all of the plants in my madly growing herb border came from this stall last year (and here's my plug for them, as they grow some gorgeous stuff - www.herbalhaven.com). Now, all I really wanted, which I didn't have much success with seed-wise, was a Lovage. Beautiful plant, with a celery like flavour and smell, and which I use liberally in making my home-made chicken stock. That was my want, and of course it was there. (check those cat feet too!).


But no, I didn't stop there. I bought another parsley, a Myrtle, an Amaranth (more on that later), and found a "semi-hardy, perennial" basil which is gorgeous.




I love the Amaranth for it's purple leaves, and apparently it gets quite tall and wide, too (5 feet tall?). So as the herb border is absolutely mad, I'm not sure where to put the beautiful thing now.




I'm having a think.

The other thing I did was, mix up the soil on the left, with some gritty sand. Yes, I've finally tried to improve the left soil problem. I pulled out the Choisya and the Blueberry and put them to one side whilst I dug the sand in, also digging in some Ericaceous compost for the Blueberry, and then planted them back in. They seem happy enough, although there are no berries on the Blueberry yet this year. It wanted much more well-drained soil, and I hope it will thrive now.

I also moved the new red Verbena from where it was, amongst the spreading Euphorbia, (which if you remember I was going to see how that panned out, having self-seeded all around itself), to in front of the Choisya. I think the eye-watering red of the Verbena will be gorgeous against the bright yellow of the Choisya leaves. I'm very excited about this positioning, and I hope this red Verbena does the same mad growing thing as the purple one on the other side. It's actually looking much better than this already! There is some beautiful red coming through!

I shall update you on the vegetable patch next - oh, my, we have some tomatoes coming.

Lots of green tomatoes coming through, on every single tomato plant. Oh joy, joy, joy!