Monday 26th May, 2014
Good news on the lawn mowing front. Google found an internet company called Mower Magic for me. I checked and found that they stocked the lawnmower that I wanted and they delivered to the Island. I ordered the machine on Monday and it arrived - all the way from Lincoln to our front door - by Friday. All I had to do was type in a few things on the computer. I prefer to support local business by shopping locally whenever possible but not everything is available in Ramsey . . . and internet shopping really is rather like magic.
The azaleas and rhododendrons are continuing to come into bloom. There are two old rhododendrons down by the gate that have had difficult lives .
The crimson one was growing in a very dry spot near a large Lawson's cypress up by the house when we moved here. After we got permission to cut down another cypress near the road, we moved the rhododenron to its new home - with great difficulty! It was too heavy to carry but we managed to drag it down on a tarpaulin and drop it in the hole. It is much happier in the damper position but the old leaves are looking a bit anaemic and spotty after the wet winter. Luckily the new leaf shoots look healthy and the flowers are as lovely as ever.
Nearby is another old rhododendron. It was rather straggly and top heavy and blew over during the winter gales - pulling some of its roots out of the wet ground. It also has lovely flowers so we did our best to save it. I sawed off all the heavy branches and just left some lighter growth near the base of the trunks. Then we pushed it back into an upright position, tied it up to a stake and weighed down the roots with some heavy stones. It has survived (so far . . . fingers crossed) and has even flowered.
This little azalea is new. The label just said Azalea japonica pink. We bought it at the end of last summer - to plant on Leo's grave.
The wisteria is looking better every week. My only regret is that it gets rather leafy before the flowers are at their very best. I try to cut back the leaf shoots that really do "shoot" out - but they grow so fast that it is hard to keep up.
I hope we get out on some short walks soon because it is going to become increasingly difficult to find new flowers to photograph in the garden as we move into summer. But there will still be plenty of work to do. The foliage has already died back on the early bulbs like the snowdrops and daffodils - so I need to weed the beds now that I can walk on them without crushing the leaves.
I still haven't finished trimming the hedge down by the road. I have been "pruning" it with secateurs because the road is narrow and the hedge has grown out rather far and needs to be cut back fairly severely. The hedge trimmer is quick but works best when the hedge doesn't need a very close shave.
And, of course, there is the never-ending mowing and edging of the lawns. I was going to try out the new mower this morning but it was raining hard at about six o'clock. Perhaps the grass will dry out enough by this afternoon.
I have seen more signs of activity in the bird box. Yesterday - while the parents were out foraging for caterpillars - I caught a glimpse of a little baby face looking out of the hole and this morning I saw a tail. I am watching carefully - partly because Tim has twice seen one of the neighbours' cats tightrope walking along the top of our wooden fence in the direction of the nestbox. And partly because I would love to see the babies leave the box. In all the years that they have used the box, we have only once seen the great tit babies take their first flight into the unknown.
I love white flowers and always used to marvel at the way a patch of perennial candytuft lit up the front garden on a dull morning. I nearly lost the plant - due to neglect. I didn't clip it back after it flowered for years and finally it got so choked up that it lost the will to live. When I cleared the bed, I found that a few sprigs had survived. I mulched around them with leafmould and now the candytuft is beginning to spread again.
But it is upstaged by the white saxifrage on either side of the steps which is spreading rather aggressively. It looks rather like mossy saxifrage "Saxifrage hypnoides", a wild flower, but is probably a garden hybrid. I dug out a huge patch last year and gave some to friends but it hasn't been deterred.
I waded through some wet plants to take a photo of yet another azalea down on the bottom terrace of the garden (often referred to rather pretentiously as "the shrubbery") . . .
. . . and stopped to take a photo of the rain drops on the new foliage of the lady's mantle "alchemilla mollis" below the retaining wall. The RHS site says that these plants are "Prone to self-seeding" and they are not kidding.
Lady's mantle is a wild flower which has been adopted as a garden plant. The centranthus ruber (commonly known as red valerian even though it is not a valerian) has moved in the other direction from our gardens into the wild. It grows wild in the Mediterranean countries and was brought to Britain as a garden plant but has escaped. It is also prone to self-seeding and can be a nuisance - but the butterlies love the nectar so I keep more than I need. The first flowers are just starting to open. There are three colours . . . pink, white and this one which is almost red.
Two of Tim's favourite plants in the garden are ones which he bought. One is a skimmia japonica "rubella". It has panicles of red buds which open into small starry white flowers in April and attracts a lot of bees. The other was a present for me. It came home from the garden centre in Tynwald Mills in a little pot. We thought it was a shrub but now it is as tall as the double storey house next door! It is a Crinodendron hookerianum - a Chilean lantern tree.
This photo was taken from the patio above the garage . . .
. . . and this is a close-up of the flowers.
While I was up on the patio I noticed yet another azalea in flower at the side of the house. It is deciduous and may be a type of azalea mollis. The bush used to be a combination of two plants - half yellow and half orange but the orange half died.
The oriental poppies have been knocked about by the wind and weighed down by their wet petals - and have turned into the usual mess of poppies.
And finally, proof that procrastination pays off in the end! I wanted to screen the wheelie bins down by the gate but couldn't decide how to do it. The ground is very hard under the trees, full of roots and not ideal for planting a short hedge or digging holes for fence posts. But a few years ago some seedlings came up. They look rather like wild broom but may be seed from a garden variety that has reverted to an earlier form. They are rather straggly and not dense enough to be a really effective screen but I am happy - and they should be happier now that one of the beeches has been cut down and they are getting some morning sun.
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