Zen Attitude Towards the Weather

I decided to adopt a Zen attitude towards the weather - on my watch of various websites over the week, either it was going to rain, rain, rain all weekend, or we were going to at least have a bit of nice weather today. Even as late as Friday, again it was going to rain all weekend. So I thought, hey, I will be able to plant, when I can plant. I wish they could get the weather report right someday, but I live in hope.

Result! Today was beautiful, hovering around 15 degrees all day (that's nearly 60F) and in the sun, well, it was lovely.


Today I planted more in the left border - I mentioned I had been shopping? The shops are so chokka at the moment with plants I just can't help myself, mostly places like Poundstretcher where, if I remember last year, by the time I wanted to shop, everything was gone! Not to neglect my local garden centre, I do find that either I could buy a plant in a pot for perhaps £3 or £5, or I can buy a nascent bulb or root, for 99p. Bargain! Sure it may take longer, but then gardening is all about patience ...!


I was impatient today. The sun was shining and even though the left border is still not getting full sun, and it was very, very moist over there, I went ahead and put in


1 Phlox

5 Crocosmia Lucifer

2 Lupins (I love Lupins)

1 Dahlia Bishop of Llandaff

3 Lilium pink/white

2 Poppies



Yum. I am trying to mix up the colours. My favourite colours being blues and purples, I tend to gravitate towards those plants by label, or in a pot in the garden centre, but perhaps my most favourite gardener is Christopher Lloyd, who loves to mix. We should all mix!




Apart from the Crocosmias (which if you remember were a present), and the lovely red Penstemon at the very back, there is a lot of blue (the geraniums will be, when they flower this year), pink and purple here. There is of course the gorgeous red Lobelia which I did add later to this border, but given that this only gets sun during the spring and summer (it is finally getting the sun now!) this border needed some heat. But goodness, when I look at this picture again, oh my I can't wait for everything to get big again, or even bigger that this! It's all coming along nicely but my, weren't they lovely last year?





So this is how it will pan out - oh, fingers crossed! I didn't have an opportunity to add any summer flowering bulbs or plants last year, as I only had a chance to plant the whole thing up in June in the first place. I am so excited to see these things come up, and will most definitely keep you all posted! Ah, patience, the key to gardening.

Down towards the front, where there is the existing Phlox, two red Poppies and the beautiful Lillies (replacing one dead lavender).

In the middle, next to the gorgeous rose and the Delphinium, behind the geranium and the euphorbia, this truly beautiful Dahlia, the Lupins in front, and more Crocosmia to the right so there will be a whole patch of them.

Next to the red Sedum, in front of the yellow climbing rose (that's the only yellow in there?), in between the stunning new Hellobore and next to the green of the bamboo, just behind the Pinks, this new Phlox.

Ah yes, and I did at least plant the Raspberries, in the fruit and vegetable patch. A bit too wet to dig again, and then dig again, but soon.

If I can, I shall concentrate on this patch next weekend!

Wintry Weekend Progress

Well, amongst the frequent hailstorms over the last couple of days





I am fairly pleased with the progress made thus far. I wanted to end the weekend sore but happy, but I will settle for sore, but content!


What I did manage to do was dig over the planned vegetable and fruit plot. I haven't really introduced you to the right border, approximately a third of which is made up of the herb garden. This section is made up primarily of herbs, apart from the jasmine up the fence, and the verbena in the foreground. In it we have the usual suspects: lavender, rosemary, bay, sage, orgeno, tarragon, chive, thyme (two kinds), plus the (new to me) hyssop and bergamot. This picture was taken last autumn and you will see that everything has grown up quite nicely over the winter season! Herbs are wonderful, and quite easy care in my experience. I wouldn't attempt to grow basil in the ground here, but I do very nicely with a big pot of it on my windowsill over the summer months. Oh, for a heated greenhouse, when I could grow it year round! I am missing two things, which I have now bought seeds for (in my dining table mini greenhouse currently): Lovage, and Borage. Lovage is wonderful with a celery like flavour, which I have grown very successfully (and very large!) in the past. Borage is an annual, but will be a very welcome addition to the patch, just to the left of the jasmine where you see a bare spot. I intend to sow it directly into the ground in a month or so, as per the seed packet instructions.

A few weeks ago when I was at the garden centre (not specifically plant shopping), I couldn't resist buying a few early plants, one for the right border (a beautiful hellebore, to replace the dead skimmia) and a nice parsley for this herb patch, which is coming along fine.

There are bulbs in this border as well, as I wasn't sure how full everything would be by the spring, so we will hopefully have some gorgeous Alliums, and another sweet thing which I didn't save the label for (always save plant labels!) which has white bell-like fowers. I was looking for snakes head fritillaries last autumn but strangely couldn't find them. Well, you take what you can get, from your local garden centre or elsewhere!

Friday dawned fairly decent. The first thing was to take up the weed control fabric I had placed on the patch to keep the weeds down over the winter. This tactic was I believe something of a success, but of course the dreaded comfrey was rearing it's head. I think perhaps next winter when everything is harvested, I may try the wet newspaper trick, which should break down by the spring when I'm ready to dig over again. I thought the best thing was to get down into the dirt and just dig up those weeds that did survive, by hand. This wasn't too onerous, although time-consuming, as the sun was shining very nicely and with my several layers I felt quite warm!

That job done, I was going to get the fork out, but remembered my new tool

a hand cultivator. And here we go - the great garden work-out begins! What with the turfing last year, I lost weight AND toned up quite nicely! This took some time, as it turns out the border is 21 feet long and 4-1/2 feet across, but it was a very satisfying tool. It has a similar action to the rotovator, in that every time I found a stone (or more likely, a large chunk of cement) the implement would "buck", although of course not being mechanised it wasn't so much of a bronco! It also had a superb levelling effect, as this border slopes a bit worringly. But what had been this

became this


in the Friday sunshine. I felt satisfied with that for the day, and narrowly missed the first hailstorm of the weekend!

A note on the back corner: our initial plans for the garden, in consultation with the lovely people upstairs, was that in the right corner (which gets some lovely sun in the summer) we would put a patio - nothing fancy, something along the lines of the shed base we constructed on the right (as you will see soon). However, that didn't happen last year, and to be honest, I'm not sure if it will happen this year. So, in anticipation, I am taking over the ground for the time being to have a rather unexpectedly larger vegetable patch than I imagined!

So I have to say, this patch in the corner, since rotovation, has not really been touched. In fact, it spent most of the summer looking like this on the near right. That means it had not been "de-rocked" at all!

At lot of hard, satisfying work for a Good Friday, with one little shower in between. One word of warning: do not dig with whatever tool you are using, in rubber gloves. It was so warm in the sunshine that I was sweating profusely, including my hands in the rubber gloves (which I had been using to hand-pick the weeds). There is a good reason garden gloves are cotton - to absorb all that hard-working sweat and save your hands from - ouch - blisters!

Yes that was progress, but I would also have liked to, over Saturday and Sunday, dug over with the fork (getting out many more of those rocks), then with the spade (digging in some organic matter), then over the plot with the rake (adding in some fertilizer). Then, only then, would I have been ready to plant!

Today I woke up to snow. One more day tomorrow - it would be nice to get something else done, in order to plant these next weekend! The sun and blue sky appeared late afternoon at 5pm - hope for tomorrow?

Weekend Weather Watch

At last, Easter is here, a four day weekend. Time to dig over! Get those borders ready for the vegetable plot! Yes?

This was the headline that greeted me Monday morning on Yahoo:

"Snow, sleet and wind forecast for Easter"

Oh joy.

This morning on the radio they said we might have snow this weekend. Yes, in London. Snow??

Sky News puts it in a nutshell:

"Britain will have to wrap up for a chilly Easter as snow showers and strong winds are forecast for the bank holiday weekend. Much of the country is expected to experience raw wintry conditions."

Yippee.

Perhaps I'll just have to stay indoors and work on my seed trays.

My dining table has turned into a mini greenhouse. In this tray, I have some aubretia going, which I intend to put along the front bit here while I figure out what to do with it. What I would really like is to dig this back, and construct a brick wall, all along the length of it. That may take some doing! Although I am certainly keen to try (how hard can it be to construct a brick wall?).

However, at the moment that is a project too far - I really do badly want to get that vegetable border ready, not least because I have been shopping lately (it being March, the shops are stocking up nicely with all sorts) and have a bag of onions, a bag of shallots and some garlic. Not to mention the two blackberry plants, a gooseberry and a raspberry. What a wonderful thing it will be to wander into my garden and pick my own fresh fruit!

It if isn't precipitating I shall be out there, cold or no. If it is too horrible, well, at least I can tell you more about what I've done, and what we intend to do. Stay tuned!

Oh and by the way, as it is officially the first day of it, Happy Spring!