Monday 12th May 2014.
If you have read the previous two posts you will know that this is not a "how to create a perfect garden like mine" blog. I cannot understand people who write self-help books. How can anyone be so arrogant that they think they are qualified to tell everyone else how to live their lives? Maybe I am wrong. Perhaps they not arrogant . . . just greedy and the books are a cynical way of ripping off the gullible.
Anyway, back to my "how not to create a perfect garden" blog. I do have some advice - about what not to do.
1. Don't waste valuable gardening time trying to photograph wood pigeons with a nest in a neighbouring garden.
The parent birds kept landing near the top of the dense conifer in the centre of the photo and disappearing into the heart of the tree - obviously feeding babies.
I kept grabbing my camera but never managed to focus and press the shutter in time. I tried leaning out of the window with the camera, ready focused and pointed at the right spot, until my arms ached but the birds never appeared until I had given up. I haven't seen them for a couple of days now so the babies must have left the nest already.
2. Don't waste even more valuable gardening time searching for wellies that are not lost.
There used to be three pairs of wellies that lived in the conservatory, two pairs of mine and one of Tim's. On Friday there were only two pairs. We assumed (wrongly) that the green pair belonged to Tim and my green ones had been mislaid. I spent hours searching for the missing wellies before the penny dropped and I realised that both pairs were mine. I vaguely remembered Tim complaining last autumn that his wellies leaked. We decided that he must have put them out with the rubbish, intending to buy a new pair, and then forgotten. Of course, the day after we stopped looking for them he found his wellies in the boot of the blue Golf.
3. Don't get side-tracked by clearing a path around a fallen tree in a neighbouring plantation.
A huge dead sycamore, on the boundary between the plantation and our neighbour's garden, fell during the winter gales and blocked our favourite path up to the track to the top of Skyhill. It fell across the bed of a little stream which is dry for most of the year but can come gushing down after a heavy rainfall in winter. Tim likes to keep the stream clear of fallen branches and leaves because it became blocked once in the past and the water was diverted down our bank behind the summerhouse.
In March some men from the forestry department came to work on the tree. They sliced up two of the main trunks and all the smaller branches and most of the ivy but must have decided that it would be impossible to cut up the last trunk without dropping the huge stump into the stream. So our path was still blocked.
We couldn't get under or over the remaining trunk so I spent a whole afternoon moving all the debris which was piled up around the end of the trunk and cleared a path so that we could walk up that way again.
I haven't trimmed the side of the hedge by the road yet, but I did manage to complete my "Project number 2". The dog path is no more.
When I removed the paving slabs, I felt some slightly absurd pangs of guilt about destroying a memory of our dearly departed little Schipperke family but comforted myself by thoughts that the whole garden is full of memories.
For instance, there is the kniphofia (red hot poker) that I bought as a joke Mothers Day present for Alice from her sons. Tim's sister had sent us a beautiful calendar with photos of South African flowers and one month featured a picture of kniphofia with a caption explaining that they were often planted around the traditional homes in Lesotho because the local people thought they would protect their houses from lightning. Alice was terrified of thunderstorms. She tried to dig a hole in the carpet under a chair in our bedroom in a vain attempt to hide whenever there was even the slightest rumble of thunder. Unfortunately her fears didn't diminish after we bought the plant.
So far this year the plant has only managed to produce that one flower. I had a close look because I remembered seeing a second flower shoot. It was lying on the ground - probably chewed off by a slug. There were other stems that looked as though they had suffered the same fate. I don't think our damp, slug-infested garden is suitable for these heat loving African plants.
Maybe I should just grow weeds. I was weeding out most of the Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum) until I noticed its name on the RHS perfect for pollinators wildflower list. Now it has been given a reprieve. The tiny pink flowers are pretty but the leaves have an unpleasant odour when crushed. In some areas it is called Stinking Bob.
A relative of Herb-Robert is the perennial geranium "Johnson's Blue". I bought a plant a few years ago mainly because it looked rather like a more colourful version of the wild meadow crane's-bill. It flowers in summer but the first bud has just opened.
I also bought a packet of Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs (Ornithogalum umbellatum) ages ago and planted them under the beech tree near the house. Only one survived and I didn't see it last year so I was delighted when I found it yesterday. I was trying to get in a good position to photograph a white bluebell and nearly trod on the little plant.
I have been trying to get a good photo of the pignut flowers (Conopodium majus). They are the daintiest of the white umbellifers and in my opinion the prettiest. This is my best effort so far.
I was reading about the common names of the aquilegea vulgaris while preparing the last post on the blog and found out the significance of the name columbine (columba = dove). The spurs above the drooping petals are said to look rather like five doves sitting around a feeder.
The clematis montana rubens is looking good still - above a bed filled with a froth of London Pride mixed with oriental poppy buds waiting to burst open.
The first bud to show colour.
The earlier azaleas and rhododendrons are providing a lot of colour. I don't know their names. Some were here when we bought the property and this one was an impulse item when we were filling the car with petrol years ago. We just refer to it as the "Laxey Garage rhododendron". The buds are pink but turn cream when the flowers open.
And finally, you can't overlook this little azalea. If there was an award for brightness it would win.
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