In the Garden

[NotPink]

Been radically chopping down climbing roses cos they got too tall to reach easily and have finished their first flush. Looks bare now but they will grow and it always gives them a new life. So meanwhile here's a pic of some vibrant California, self seeding, poppies and Lavender cotton to go on with. Hope everyone is having a warm sunny Saturday.

 

[Jodee]

Love what you are doing with all the container planting @Wirralass

Can't get my cucumber seeds to germinate this year temperature keeps changing. The tomato plants are in flower one with green fruit but not sure how they are coping with the changing weather conditions.

Slugs have chewed the runner beans and kale, at the moment peas and lettuce are doing ok.

Red currents are ripening birds are at them already, I have fleeced one of the bushes but I am thinking the birds will have the rest. Blue berries are developing nicely but I will have to fleece them too as they start to ripen as Mr and Mrs Blackbird love them as well.

 

[Lisa66]

Some more lovely garden pics, looks like everyone’s been busy. Just wish the weather would decide what it’s doing🙄

I have “fashioned” a cage to protect one of our new blueberry bushes , very Blue Peter style. Radishes have been a bit 50/50...some are perfect, the rest look like they’ve been clawed at beneath the soil.

Thank you for the Japanese Anenome tips...although now thinking about how they spread and are difficult to get rid of I may have second thoughts about transplanting...we’ll see.

This year we have Euphorbias popping up all over...I do like those so that's a plus.

Come on sunshine, where are you?

 

[Wirrallass]

Two bees or not two bees!

Haha!!!
WL

 

[Robin]

I just went outside, it’s cold, but very still and the air is slightly damp. Our mock orange is particularly full of blossom this year, and the scent hanging around in the air was heavenly. It also seems a good year for the penstemons and lavender.

 

[Northerner]

I just went outside, it’s cold, but very still and the air is slightly damp. Our mock orange is particularly full of blossom this year, and the scent hanging around in the air was heavenly. It also seems a good year for the penstemons and lavender.
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You have such a beautiful garden @Robin 🙂

 

[Robin]

You have such a beautiful garden @Robin 🙂

I feel a fraud, because our predecessors obviously got a local nursery to plant up the long border, and they knew what they were doing (all the shrubs had the same nursery tags on). So the bare bones of it were already there, with shrubs chosen to flower in succession through the spring and summer, and the geranium and penstemons, which flower for ages, although nothing had been pruned for several years. We just tinker with bits here and there as we go, and I stick to adding stuff that you see in other peoples gardens, so obviously does well round here (and if stuff dies, we just hoik it out, and nobody’s ever the wiser.)
Actually, maybe I’m doing myself a disservice, looking at the photo, I can see quite a lot of the small stuff is what we have planted, and all the clematis on the fence are ours, because we had the fence renewed soon after we moved in. It still helped a lot to have the basic structure there, though.

 

[Northerner]

I feel a fraud, because our predecessors obviously got a local nursery to plant up the long border, and they knew what they were doing (all the shrubs had the same nursery tags on). So the bare bones of it were already there, with shrubs chosen to flower in succession through the spring and summer, and the geranium and penstemons, which flower for ages, although nothing had been pruned for several years. We just tinker with bits here and there as we go, and I stick to adding stuff that you see in other peoples gardens, so obviously does well round here (and if stuff dies, we just hoik it out, and nobody’s ever the wiser.)
Actually, maybe I’m doing myself a disservice, looking at the photo, I can see quite a lot of the small stuff is what we have planted, and all the clematis on the fence are ours, because we had the fence renewed soon after we moved in. It still helped a lot to have the basic structure there, though.

I should probably get someone to give me a bit of a start. There are a few things from the previous occupant, but they do tend to get a bit overwhelmed and scruffy 😱 My problem is that I can't dig things up if they produce a nice flower or two - it's like the plant equivalent of puppy dog's eyes

And whilst you may have inherited some things, you've clearly looked after things well, so no, don't do yourself down! 🙂

 

[Robin]

I should probably get someone to give me a bit of a start. There are a few things from the previous occupant, but they do tend to get a bit overwhelmed and scruffy 😱 My problem is that I can't dig things up if they produce a nice flower or two - it's like the plant equivalent of puppy dog's eyes

And whilst you may have inherited some things, you've clearly looked after things well, so no, don't do yourself down! 🙂

I can never bear to get rid of anything completely, but I do get quite ruthless with pruning. My father was a Yorkshireman. If I have to pay £36 a year for a green waste bin, I’m going to get my money’s worth!

 

[Jodee]

Just love all the garden pictures. So beautiful. A few from me to add 🙂
Anthemis, Pansy, azalea

Happy days in the garden 🙂

 

[Northerner]

I can never bear to get rid of anything completely, but I do get quite ruthless with pruning. My father was a Yorkshireman. If I have to pay £36 a year for a green waste bin, I’m going to get my money’s worth!

Hehe! I subscribed to one a couple of months ago to give me exactly that incentive! £41 here, March-November.

 

[Robin]

Hehe! I subscribed to one a couple of months ago to give me exactly that incentive! £41 here, March-November.

Ours is fortnightly all year round except over Christmas and New Year. What are you meant to do with the winter rose prunings, otherwise?! Ours also takes Christmas trees, cut up into pieces, in the first January collection.(they always have to issue a notice 'Please take the decorations off first!' as if you wouldn’t! But presume some people don't, else they wouldn’t feel the need to comment.)

 

[Northerner]

Ours is fortnightly all year round except over Christmas and New Year. What are you meant to do with the winter rose prunings, otherwise?! Ours also takes Christmas trees, cut up into pieces, in the first January collection.(they always have to issue a notice 'Please take the decorations off first!' as if you wouldn’t! But presume some people don't, else they wouldn’t feel the need to comment.)

Yes, I did think it was a bit of a rip off, not getting a full year - I did in Southampton. There's not a lot to go in it from my garden over the winter, to be fair... 😱 🙂

 

[runner]

I just went outside, it’s cold, but very still and the air is slightly damp. Our mock orange is particularly full of blossom this year, and the scent hanging around in the air was heavenly. It also seems a good year for the penstemons and lavender.
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Hi, lovely. My mock orange has only flowered once! Great crop of asparagus though and since last year I freeze soup made with the ends - great in the winter.

 

[Ditto]

The mock orange I used to have where I lived was desultory until a one armed man came to the door holding pruners asking for work. I was a bit nervous because you just never know with people these days but let him in saying if he could see anything that needed to be done and he quick chopped all over the mock orange, a bit drastic I thought but thanked him anyways. 🙂 It bloomed and bloomed after that, he certainly knew what he was doing. The one I've got at Mum is allowed to grow up tall to try and hid the ugly street light.

I had pictures to post but where they've gone gord knows, I hates new things, this new laptop is driving me bonkers.

edit/
They've gone into OS or something. What the heck, I wanted them to go in documents. Come back Vista or even XP! 🙄

 

[Leadinglights]

There was a huge commotion in the garden last night and when I looked out there were baby longtail tits flying about being supervised by the adults. I have already had the baby nuthatches a week or so ago. I just love to see the young finding their wings.
Sometimes they are stupid enough to fly inside the greenhouse and need rescuing.

 

[NotPink]

I can never bear to get rid of anything completely, but I do get quite ruthless with pruning. My father was a Yorkshireman. If I have to pay £36 a year for a green waste bin, I’m going to get my money’s worth!

I m a ruthless pruner too. After the first flowering I am happy to cut down (depending on variety) especially roses. I also like things at shoulder height-ish as climbing ladders is too precarious now. They thrive on pruning and look better for it once they pick up again.

 

[Ditto]

Euphorbias! Need to get ruthless with these, on Gardener's World last week it said a weed! I didn't know that. I do luv them but they are like humans and very successful at surviving, ie thugs. 🙂

edited to add/
Utterly fascinating plus a picture of a cute mole.

Wednesday Weed – Caper Spurge

Dear Readers, I am always delighted when I find a ‘real’ weed that I haven’t written about before, and here is a doozy – Caper Spurge (Euphorbia Lathyrus) is a statuesque sp…

bugwomanlondon.com

What is this please, does anybody know? I thought it was groundsel, but that's the little weed that's easy to pull up. This is taking over the whole of Mum's garden.

 

[Wirrallass]

My mint hanging basket has taken off! It obviously likes the position I hung it. Does anyone know if mint leaves can be frozen plz?

I found an opened seagulls egg in the lupin trough, dont know how it came to be there. The seagulls here are so darn noisy 24hrs. Two have nested in my neighbours chimney pot and their young never stop squeaking for food even through the night they can be heard.

WL

 

[Ellie Jones]

I've had enough of morons (I'm being very polite) allowing their dogs to poop on my side garden, or dumping their unwanted waste on it, or filling my wheelie bin (and yes when I find your black bag, I will check if they is any address in it, and if I find an address the rubbish is returned to its owner, normally around midnight and spread across their garden) So I've decided enough is enough, and I'm moving my boundary fence out to the boundary line... I

Still can't work out, not just why I have only a wooden fence, when everyone else has a brick boundary wall, but said fence is attached to the house to the back fence, putting about 20ft width of my garden outside the fence! Can only think by the time they got to build mine (one of the last ones) that they were on a money saving exercise.

Only problem is, I've have to clear the border, which so far I've managed to dig out one rambling Rose, various other plants such as iris, fushia's but at the top by my Summer House, a massive Palm thing, that has grown far more than I thought when I brought it!

This year due to doing this, and other commitments, I've not done any of my planters used to do around 40 of them here there and everywhere. So hoping a year sorting, redesigning etc I will weep the rewards next year