homegrown

Six on Saturday 7th January 2023

greengirlgardener9 Comments

Well this is novel! I haven’t posted anything on my blog since the end of August! I’d forgotten how to compress my photos and how to connect my keyboard to my iPad. I kind of fell out of love with blogging and that combined with much less time due to general life duties and the end of summer and, hence, lack of prettiness in the garden meant I just haven’t posted for ages. I’m not sure if I’m, in the words of Take That, back for good, but I’m here for now, and we’ll see if I rediscover my blogging enthusiasm.

I think what has drawn me to write, is that I saw from the kitchen window that my newest hellebore has flowers and it prompted me to venture into the garden to check the damage done by the recent cold snap (not as extensive as I’d feared) and I was inspired by the signs of life, and, dare I say it, spring coming!

Hellebores will be my first point.

I should know what variety these are, but alas, I don’t! I think the white one is Christmas but the other two, nope, no idea! The pinky-white one is the newest and it’s the first time I’ve seen it flower – isn’t it pretty? The middle one hasn’t opened it’s pretty flowers yet, but once it does, it flowers for ages, well into summer.

Next up are these erysimum in a pot.

I got these in the sale at some point last summer. There were only five in the carton instead of six, hence the sale price, but the five that were left were perfectly fine so I snapped them up. They look quite happy in this pot. I’m looking forward to seeing what colour flowers they produce.

I couldn’t resist including a photo of my unidentified success. Those who’ve followed me for a while (if you’re still there after such an extended absence!) will know that this cost me pennies a couple of years ago and it had no label, and that it’s gone from strength to strength. I’d have been really upset if the cold had killed it, but it (unlike its owner) is obviously quite happy with arctic conditions. As it’s unidentified, maybe I should give it a name – Elsa seems apt (Frozen, anyone?)

My final three points are full of hope and new beginnings. First up my pink damask is pushing through new shoots. Before I know it, she’ll be a couple of feet tall and threatening to burst forth with her dusky blooms.

In front of Ms. Damask under the watchful eye of Monsieur Red Breast are, joy of joys, the beginnings of daffs! Daffs mean spring, and spring means warmth, light and holidays are just around the corner – what’s not to love?

Finally, lots of miniature sedum cabbages! Aren’t they cute?

I’m so glad nature’s done its thing completely unaided by yours truly. It’s just been too cold to go out there for so long, and now it’s too wet to do anything! There’s a mouldy pepper plant in the green house, a collapsed honeysuckle trellis, a couple of coprosmas that may or may not be dead (I hope not, but it doesn’t look hopeful) and the weeds and sopping wet debris are everywhere, but after pottering around out there today, I’m confident that if the rain ever stops, I’ll be able to get things back in order.

That’s all for now – enjoy the rest of the weekend folks!

Six on Saturday 16th July

greengirlgardener10 Comments

Has anyone seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? It starts in the summer holidays with Harry sat on a swing in suburban Little Whinging, Surrey with normal summer activities going on around him in the park, and a radio somewhere is discussing it being the hottest day of the year. Well it feels like that today! I’m sat on my egg chair in the garden and I can hear normal family life going on in one neighbour’s garden – the kids on the trampoline, the dog wanting to jump over and kill me and the parents discussing what to have for dinner. On the other side our solitary neighbour is whistling to the birds, and someone somewhere is playing summer tunes. Back to Little Whinging, and soon Harry’s cousin Dudley turns up and starts taunting him, but then the sky turns black and the calm is shattered as the pair are forced to run for their lives when the dementors of Azkaban swoop in. It seems to me that the forecasted heatwave for the next three days is the real life version of the dementors waiting to swoop in and end the current summer happiness on my street!

Anyway, at least it’s only three days till normal British summertime is resumed, and in the meantime, here’s some pictures of pretty garden regalia to occupy our time until the heatwave sucks all the joy out of us.

First up, here’s one of the few inhabitants of the garden that might actually thrive in the heat, my olive tree. It’s covered in flowers, but I’m not holding my breath because although it’s had flowers before, it’s never produced any fruit.

My hebe Purple Pixie is flowering nicely. It looks bluey-purple in the photo but is a deeper purple in reality. This was my first ever hebe which I rescued from the sale table at Notcutts several years ago. It’s doing well even though I’ve moved it a couple of times and it’s in complete shade.

I’m glad I nipped out on my lunch break earlier in the week and took photos of my pink damask flowers which emerged all of a sudden, because, as I’ve lamented before, they’re beautiful but barely last more than a couple of days. They’ve pretty much done their thing already for this year. The remaining ones are certainly not going to survive 40° on Monday.

I found half a packet of nigella seeds in the greenhouse earlier in the year and decided to sow them without really expecting much success, but now I have a pot of them! This was the first one that opened. I really love their layered petals and the delicate blue hue.

This gerbera has unexpectedly survived two winters. I didn’t even notice a bud this year but one day this week I went outside and found this flower. Lovely surprise!

Finally another discovery this week. I pulled out some dreaded herb Robert that had managed to find its way into my hanging basket that houses my nigrescens and found that said nigrescens is flowering. This is the first time it’s done that, so now I have high hopes that I may get some berries on it in the autumn. How exciting!

So there we are for another week. I’m off to think happy thoughts to summon my patronus (which, by the way, I’m pretty sure would be a cat, but I can’t be sure because I didn’t get my Hogwarts letter) to banish the heatwave and save my pots from death by dementor’s kiss! For anyone who doesn’t obsess about Harry Potter like me, apologies because that will make zero sense to you, but hopefully you’ll have enjoyed the flowers. Why not pop over to the Propagator to check out some more?

Six on Saturday – 30th April

greengirlgardener7 Comments

I’m typing whilst sitting on my new egg swing chair (must feature it one week, perhaps when there’s a dearth of prettiness left to feature) and I’m being entertained by music from next door’s youngest’s fourth birthday party. There’s a bouncy castle for the little ones but the parents are enjoying an 80s playlist which suits me down to the ground. That’s my era!

This is the closest I’m going to get to gardening beyond a bit of watering this weekend. We’ve just got back from a lovely week in Lanzarote, during which I managed to go flying off an e-scooter landing (heavily) mainly on my palms and left knee so kneeling is out for a while and dirt in grazed palms I’m guessing wouldn’t be a good idea. We stayed in a lovely hotel which, informatively, named a lot of the plants in its grounds.

I presume most people would know even without the label that this is a geranium (or maybe not?) but there were lots of succulents and other plants and shrubs which I was interested to identify. I thought it was a nice touch.

I’d sowed some seeds in the greenhouse before we went and gave them a good soaking on our morning of departure hoping they’d make it through the week.

I checked yesterday and the cosmos in the little terracotta pots had sprouted but nothing else. I gave everything a good watering and left it up to the lap of the gods. This morning I checked and a few nigella have appeared and one petit pois. I really hope I get some more petit pois. I may sow a few more when my hands are healed.

It seems the garden didn’t mind us being away because it’s got on with the business of the season admirably on its own. A couple of the pots were looking a bit sorry for themselves, but a swift watering and they’ve survived. The rhododendron was looking like it was about to explode with colour before we left and I was worried that we’d miss it completely …

… but it waited for us. A couple of the flowers are out but most are still getting ready. Such a beautiful bloom, this one. I’m so glad I rescued it from the sale table when garden centres reopened in the first relaxation of covid measures.

This Welsh poppy self seeded itself this year in one of my pots and before we left it had lots of foliage but no buds. Yesterday I noticed a bud, and this morning it had opened!

Similarly, my clematis Montana had some leaves but no buds just over a week ago, but now she has lots of flowers. More than ever before, in fact. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember that she didn’t flower at all for a couple of years, then I got one or two flowers a year, but now there are quite a few. Lovely delicate linen coloured petals.

I’ll finish with geum Totally Tangerine. I thought I may have lost it this year, because an awful lot of the leaves were dead when I did some weeding and maintenance recently, but it’s just about hung on in there and now it has a flower. It’s definitely somewhat depleted from previous years, but let’s hope it picks up and gains strength through the summer.

That’s your lot for this week. It’s got to that time of year where I have to prioritise what to feature, rather than scrub around trying to find anything of interest. I imagine others are the same, so I’ll pop over to the Propagator to see what others have prioritised. I hope everyone has a great bank holiday weekend.