I had three gardening jobs on my list for today & I've done them all. I've taken up the black plastic from the strip of bed near the greenhouse & dug it over ready for my outdoor tomatoes, I've planted out two trays of pot marigolds & I've taken another bucket of duckweed out of the pond. This took longer than I'd planned because of having to rescue tadpoles as I went along. Our taddies are colossal this year......I don't think I've ever seen such humongous ones. Goodness knows what they're eating......certainly not duck weed! Nobody wants to look at buckets of pond-clearings, so I'm sharing some photos of my flower borders instead This is a lovely time for late Spring colour. The many aquilegias are coming to an end but other stuff is starting to do its thing:
Sweet rocket, centaurea, sweet pea obelisk & a self-seeded foxglove right in the front.
Sweet rocket was grown from a packet of free seeds. The insects are enjoying it & it's quite tall, so it' a good one for the back of the border.....& very easy.
I had several blue aquilegias, but this is the only one left. They're very promiscuous plants & cross-breed all over the place. I quite like this, actually, as it means I never really know what colour the flowers will be until the buds open.
More aquilegias with alchemilla mollis just beginning to flower.
Not sure what this geum is, but it's one Mum gave me years ago which I brought with me from my previous little garden. It's easy to grow, can be easily divided up to make new plants & looks nice with pretty much anything.
Geranium ibericum jubatum in full flower......I couldn't get the colour right as the sunshine was so strong. It's actually a much more vivid mauve than this. Another easy grower & divides easily to make new free plants (my favourite gardening word again!)
And punctuating the borders, the alliums are just getting going. These are bog standard 'Purple Sensation', but they are well worth growing because I find with these, the fancier the variety, the less reliable they are. These come up without fail every year & we'll still be enjoying the amazing 3-D star shaped seed-heads long after the flowers have finished.
So I know I ramble on about the veg garden, but there's plenty going on in the flower borders too. Everything's woken up & now just needs to get into its prime.
Something else that's just woken up is Albert Whiskers.........
.........and true to form, he's managed to stagger indoors (from my deckchair) to suck some more jelly off his meat before refusing to touch it at all & deciding it's biscuits only.......which is business as usual where he's concerned at the moment. When you think he was living rough on the streets of Eastwood & most likely eating out of bins, he's turned into a very naughty picky eater. Whatever pouches of food are bought for him, the first one that's opened is officially the Best Food in the World. For the remaining 11 pouches, he will only eat the jelly. The chunks are left to turn into leather, while he mopes around giving us the sad-eye, nibbling our jeans & trying to blag a bit of whatever's going into somebody's sandwiches. NOT GOOD ENOUGH, Albert Whiskers!!
Hope you've all seen at least a bit of sunshine today.
C x
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