Discounted Plants and Bargains

Gentle Reader, I am indoors this very sunny summer afternoon, for sitting in a room with the curtains drawn across the window to keep the heat out is one way to keep cool.

As the country basks in long overdue heat and sunshine, it is getting too hot in the middle of the day to work in the garden other than necessary jobs, such as watering and weeding.  Work is now done depending on how warm it is, and I am moving according to the shelter given by the cottage from the baking sun.  Temperatures are around a delightful and warm mid 70's most days now, but the sun reflects off all the stone and this exacerbates the heat, and with little or no wind to temper the heat I quickly start to melt.  Little bits and often while wearing a good, wide brimmed sun hat is the order of most days now, with frequent breaks taken sitting in the deck chair with a cooling drink, or indoors to get away from the parching rays of the sun.

Look how bright the sun does shine in a clear and cloudless sky~

The main work of the last few days is making sure the plants are watered.  I am working my way slowly through them now, weeding out the dandelion and other unwanted seedlings that are sprouting in the pots, and topping up the compost where it has settled in the pots to cover up bare stems and encourage sturdier roots.  I am also giving everything an extra feed this week because all the plants are going into overdrive with the sudden burst of heat and I know there will be masses of new flowers very soon.

The lily buds are, mostly, enormous now and one has even started to burst open!  I am so excited.  I bought my lily bulbs as an end of season job lot at a bargain price.  They were already starting to shoot when they arrived so I had to hurry along and get them planted up.  Here is one of the big, fat buds~

Here is a pot full.  Each pot has an assortment, and are all sizes.  The buds are all in different arrangements too on the stems.  Some clustered at the top, while others are individually placed at intervals along the stems~

I have tended them well and am about to reap the rewards.  I have no idea what colours they are, so I am eager for them to open up and show me.  I am moving the pots around to maximise their impact when they do open and sweeping around and behind all the pots too, so everything is spick and span and looking very neat and tidy.  I love how the pink patio rose (above and below) sits happily amongst the pots of lilies~

I do not know the name, for again this was a bargain plant as the nursery had lost the label.  I have quite a few such plants, for nurseries either discount or compost plants that have no labels.  It does not matter that I do not know their name, I am well rewarded for rescuing them and giving them a good home by their beauty and fragrance.

Here is a little splash of colour in a mixed pot; I love the bright purple and pink of the pansy next to the petunia~

I don't often have petunias, but again, they were a bargain buy and I bought the tray of pot bound plants for half price.  Now, a few weeks on, the plants are establishing and flowering forth.  Again, these could have ended up thrown on the compost heap if they had not sold, yet here the are bringing lovely colour and variety to my garden~

This is how I bought them, crammed jammed into an all too tiny tray they were quickly outgrowing~
 

Here they are, planted out, well spaced into a tray~

And here they are now!  They are growing really well and flowering so prettily too~

 A fine reward in just a few short weeks with a little effort and care~

At last the geraniums that give such a lovely green backdrop to the pansy and petunia is developing flower buds.  I was very worried, for last year they produced prolific greenery and very few flowers, and this year looks the same.  I will know very shortly what has happened.

Gentle Reader~ I have had my first breakfast pick of soft fruit, and here is a picture of the very fruit~

It is a mixture of three different types of raspberries and loganberry.  They were delicious, if a little tart because of the loganberry.  I have four different raspberries, which are supposed to give me a five month picking season as they fruit at different times, but this year again all four seem to be fruiting together.  I think it must be the variations in our weather affecting the production of flowers.  It would be so lovely to have them starting in June and picking all the way through until the end of September into October as they are meant to do.  Still, I am grateful to have such bounty only a few steps away from my door.  What better summer breakfast than a bowl full of fresh picked, sun warmed fruits served with home made organic yogurt?  Are you hungry yet?

Until the next time~

~~~A Gardener's Work Is Never Done~~~

Rain Stopped Play

As so often happens, the weather comes along and interrupts all gardening.  This is the rain I woke up to on the Spring Bank Holiday Monday morning, the day that is supposed to be the BIG start to summer gardening.  Bad weather and Ben Hur on television are two things you can guarantee on a Bank Holiday! Would you want to go out gardening in this?

I didn't think so.  Did you see the driving rain falling at quite an angle?  Did you hear the wind blowing, and the rain beating against the window?  The winds were about twenty mph, not very pleasant weather for anything really other than ducks and staying indoors.

This kind of weather makes me think about my forebears who didn't have a choice in the matter.  If they were lucky enough to have a small garden they relied on it for food having to go out in all conditions just to survive.  In the winter months, this might mean a very basic diet of potatoes, parsnips, carrots, leeks, onions, and cabbage supplemented with maybe a pig and chickens kept in the same garden, and what they could forage from the land. No luxury of a pretty flower garden and neatly manicured lawns for them, or a supermarket with wide choices of fruit and vegetables from all over the world for them.  I like to grow my own fruit and vegetables because I like to know what I am eating, the provenance of my food, and that is a luxury by the standards of bygone days.

Did you see the yew tree?  I used it as my backdrop to the raindrops.  It arrived in my garden unannounced, a gift from a bird that dropped a seed that liked where it was and so it grew.  The only thing is, it is now getting a bit on the big side for my garden.  I have already cut out the central growing tip, a few years back, but it is starting to get wider and wider with each growing season . . see all the new season's growth, the little tips of dark orange?  Those are the new growth.  I think that very soon I must pick a shape and topiarise it.  I am not a huge fan of topiary, but there is little else I feel I can do with this gift from the birds, other than let it take over!  I think a free form 'gum drop' like those at Powis Castle might work the best.  If you look at the link you should see their gum drops lined up in front of the castle.  They aren't too formal but the trees are kept in check just enough to stop them from taking over.  I have special affection for Powis Castle because my Dad was a gamekeeper there, in the days before the National Trust acquired the property.

Rain or no rain, I could not resist (when the rain did stop mid~afternoon) getting out to take some photographs.  After the rain, everything looks so clean and refreshed, cobwebs blown, and dust washed, away.  Colours look brighter and sharper, so out I went and took these.

Gentle Reader, I am so happy to tell you that the apple blossom did not suffer anywhere as near as badly as I feared. I fuss and worry like a mother hen over her chicks!  Here is a short video of how the ground looks under the tree.  It is very pretty, I think, like a fluffy blanket of big snowflakes!

 

Then, I gave a shriek of delight to see the raspberry canes full of tiny clusters of flower buds, and future berries.  Raspberries are one of my favourite summer fruits, and I have four varieties with staggered fruiting times to prolong the fruiting season.  Few things are better than going out in the early morning to pick a small handful of fresh, sun~ripened berries from your own garden to put on top of your granola and home~made organic yogurt for breakfast.  Later there will be jam bubbling in the preserving pan for a memory of summery deliciousness in the depth of winter too.

In the days of the great garden landscape architects, like Lancelot "Capability" Brown it was common practice to make the outlying countryside appear as if part of the garden, bringing wild nature in with the tamed landscapes by use of such techniques as a "ha ha".  In a similar way I borrow my neighbour's overhanging trees, bringing a lovely, bright, acid green to my garden, lifting the colours along the boundary wall, making my garden look bigger and lighter than it is.  This is one of those plants, a beautiful tree indeed.

One tree I would rather not have anywhere near my property is the seemingly omnipresent native sycamore tree which overhangs my drive, dropping leaves in Autumn, and so many days are spent raking and bagging them up to become rich and useful leaf mould, and prevent the leaves ruining the surface of the drive.  The other thing are the sycamore 'helicopters' or ripe seed heads, that twirl their way on the wind.  This year alone, I have dug up no fewer than eight established saplings of around two foot high that somehow escaped earlier detection (they lurked in amongst my blackcurrants) and countless hundreds of tiny, freshly germinated seedlings.  I know there will be countless many more, just look at the seeds on this small branch . . and there are three or four fully grown trees full of them!

However, it is all worth it in the end.  Even at this early stage in the season, while the battle against the weather goes on, I am very happy indeed with how these simple pots are looking.  The greenery is fresh and pretty, and the few splashes of colour brighten the front of my cottage.  I am so looking forward to seeing them grow and develop into a riot of colour as the patio roses, Oriental lilies, precious pansies, fragrant dianthus, and other plants bloom and open before our very eyes.  See my red dragon, sleeping in their midst?

I will leave you on this note.  It is only a day or two since I potted up those healthy foxglove plants, do you recall?  Well, is it my imagination, or are they already looking very much happier and quite a bit bigger than they did two days ago? 

Herbs and Rose Cuttings

Gentle Reader, there is no such thing as doing a 'bit' of gardening.  The addiction of pulling "just one more weed" takes hold, and before you know it you have worked long past the hour you planned to spend in the garden before tea, and the hour of tea is upon you and nothing is prepared.  The garden, however, will be looking better for your time, even though only a few adjustments are achieved, and your flagging spirits will be revived.

Today, I did not feel up to doing too much, there is a keen wind blowing right into my potting corner and my back is not happy if I am standing in the cold for too long, but when the sun suddenly put in an appearance late in the afternoon, I could not resist the opportunity to do a few small jobs outside.

A couple of weeks ago, I was given an amazing bouquet of hot orange and red flowers.  They looked stunning against the green foliage that arrived with them, and for two weeks now they delighted me sitting happily in my living room.  Today, sadly, they are jaded and past their best so I decided to dispatch them to the compost.  When I removed the stems, three of the deep red roses have leaf shoots springing from all along the stems!  I cannot resist the challenge, so I donned my heavy fleece, put on my brimmed gardening hat with ties (quite the fashion statement) and out I went.

I have trimmed the bottoms of two stems and dipped them into organic rooting compound before plunging them in to a pot of compost.  The other stem I cut into three sections and did the same thing.  Time will tell.  I suppose they have two chances, and if I am lucky then they will take and I will have some free rose plants for my garden.  They do not look like much, but I really have nothing to lose and everything to gain with this experiment.  I will keep you updated.

As I said, there is no such thing as doing a 'bit' of gardening, so while I was out there at the potting bench (which is really a very solid, old wooden work bench that belonged to my father) I found two four inch pots with tiny cuttings taken last year of Moroccan Mint.  Last year, the ants greedily devoured the mint, and this is what I managed to salvage . . some tiny cuttings that have rooted over the winter, but not put on any noticable growth.

Moroccan mint makes one of my favourite teas, just a few leaves torn up and infused in boiling water for about five minutes, strained and sweetened with honey if liked, is superior beyond words to any bought teabag.    I also like it steeped in water and chilled for a cooling summer drink, and it is such a bright green it is perfect for sitting on top of fresh fruit salad or berries as a quick garnish.  I hope there will be plenty to dry for the winter months too.

I love terracotta, it has a warmth that you don't get with plastic pots of the same colour, and I love how it weathers with spots of lichen giving it character and depth.

A small pot holding a couple of thyme cuttings and a clump of chives was next, so they too are now in their own little pots and already looking much happier than when all crammed jammed into one small pot.

I love to sprinkle thyme into potatoes and onions as they fry in my heavy, cast iron pan, or over vegetables roasting in the oven . . just a few minutes before the cooking time is up so you get the full flavour and the herb does not burn to a cinder.  I will nibble on chives when I'm gardening, and the purple flowers are pretty in salads.  I dead head chives regularly to ensure a prolonged growing season.

It was but a few minutes out there today, but even these few small and simple jobs have lifted my spirits and there will be herbs to harvest for the kitchen, mint for tea, and a few more things rescued and tidied up.