Walking Around the Garden after the Rain!

It poured with rain first thing and woke me up but after that the day improved and we even had some sun. But what was more important was that it was considerably warmer and although still breezy not as strong as it has been. I took the camera and did a little tour to see what is coming on and what has been rain or wind damaged. My garden is so tiny that none of this takes long! Fortunately there was very little damage that I could see which was a relief as I’d have felt guilty for not staking more of the taller plants.

The purple radishes I planted a few days ago have germinated and are looking healthy. The beetroot is looking good and ready to pull. I am not good at thinning out. I hate to pull up plants and so always leave things a tad on the close side but it doesn’t seem to have harmed the beetroot. The lettuces are getting away from me as we can’t eat them fast enough. I’ve been giving them to friends but I think I’ll have to make some soup as I have more coming on.

On the flower front the dahlias are almost ready to fully open. And the Japanese anemones are in bud. They don’t usually flower until the end of the month. My Floribunda rose ‘Retirement’ is flowering nicely and I dead headed several flowers which had gone past it. I noticed too that I have Campanula creeping up the fence. This is another flower that self-seeds at the rate of knots.

The courgettes are coming on well after their dodgy start. I am tying them up sticks so that they don’t sprawl so much. It seems to be working. As they grow up I will tie them in with old stockings as they are soft. I have sunk a few bottles in next to the plants with the bottom cut off and I’m watering them through the bottles so the water gets straight to the roots. They seem to be thriving on it. We have had several pickings already.

I am growing a yellow courgette which is just showing some small yellow courgettes at the bottom of the stem.

The herbs are doing well. The bronze fennel is in flower and I shall dry the seed heads when they are ready as fennel seeds are so useful in the winter. The caraway is also starting to flower and I will do the same with this plant.

All in all things have made a big leap forward and it is now a question of what to sow in the spaces left by the lettuce. I am contemplating spring cabbages. I have never grown them before but that is no reason for not having a go.

And last but not least the lavender is making a strong statement next to the kitchen door. I’m hoping it is keeping the flies at bay! It smells glorious anyway!

Under the Weather!

Rain, wind, more rain, even more and gustier wind, followed by . . . yes, you’ve guessed, even more rain! And to cap it all I’ve got a stiff neck which is making me most miserable. I think I got it crawling around under the blackcurrant bush, Baldwin, picking the last few blackcurrants. The paucity of the currants has to be seen to be believed. I have actually managed over the last two weeks to get the magnificent weight of 5.5 ounces! Well I suppose I can just about make a plate tart, especially if I augment the blackcurrants with some blueberries. All this from one bush! Wow! There is still one bush to go. The Ben Alder is later than the Baldwin and is only just beginning to colour up! It has more strings of berries on it so I am hopeful for at least 7 ounces!

But I certainly won’t be crawling around picking them until my neck stops being stiff and I feel less like a wooden puppet! With the weather as it is I don’t see them ripening for at least ten days or even longer!

Evergreen Clematis

I have an evergreen Clematis which is quite rampant. It has spiky dark green leaves and flowers in the middle of winter. The flowers look as if they are made of paper and are very fragile and white. The inside of the petals are streaked with purple. I have been growing this plant for the last five years at least and have only ever seen the flowers in full bloom. Probably because it is winter and cold and I’m not wandering around the garden in the same way as I do in the summer. However today I saw a bud, a full flower and a rather wind battered flower, that, having been caught on a stem was showing it’s inside colouring quite blatantly.

It would be quite easy to miss this bud it is so tiny and fairly nondescript!

The petals truly are like paper, very thin and fragile but with the gorgeous inner colouring. The second picture doesn’t really do it justice having been mutilated in the wind and caught on the stem, but you can see what I mean! And how strange that it should flower now. Well out of season.

I have no idea what this plant is called. I have several clematis and I don’t think I know the names of any of them. One is like apple blossom; one has large pink flowers and the third one has lacy frilly leaves but has never flowered! I rather think people have given them to me and that is why they are nameless! But they all ramble and climb well! Too well!

Queen Mary Gardens, Gyllyngvase, Falmouth.

These gardens are right by the beach at Gyllyngvase and were opened in 1912 to commemorate the coronation of Queen Mary who was the wife of George V. There are lots of tropical plants and masses of Gunnera (hope I’ve got the spelling right). Click on all pictures to enlarge!

I can remember playing in the gardens as a child and running and hiding in the Gunnera was the best thing ever! The gardens are laid out quite formally with beds and sweeps of lawn. Some of the plants are quite spectacular. I have to admit right now that I am bad on the names of plants! So I will just insert the pictures and leave you to guess! Well some things I know!

I love these red hot pokers.

I think these are Proteas but I could be wrong!

The Agapanthas weren’t quite out yet but when they are they will make a magnificent statement as there were masses of them.

These Monterey Pines at the edge of the car park were planted by the Victorians and there are lots of them in this part of Cornwall. Sadly being over a hundred years old a lot of them are rotten and are being cut down. What was once a familiar sight is now being lost and none have been planted in the past to take their place.

This is looking across the end of the gardens to the beach and the sea. There are often large ships in the bay as the entrance to Falmouth harbour is to the left of this picture. When I was a child there were beach huts on the beach in semi-circles along the back of the sand. There were five circles in all but now it is just bare sand.

Why? The Imponderables of Gardening!

Why after blazing sun and then torrential rain do we have to have wind! Cold wind! I spent this morning tying up and staking most of the tall plants, especially the Bronze Fennel and the Cucumbers. Some of the plants were flat on the ground and looking very sorry for themselves!  The combination of sun and rain brought the cucumbers on rapidly leaf and height wise. The fruits are still minute!

Why when watering do I always end up with wet feet? I am careful, I don’t overfill the watering can and yet by the end of a watering session my feet are soaking!

Why when I’m dead heading are the spent flowers on Petunias and Gazanias so sticky? So very sticky in fact that I have to really scrub my hands to get rid of the stick!

Why are bought in plants more likely to get rot, blight, weevils,and anything else you care to name?  Whereas the plants I’ve grown myself which haven’t cost me an arm and a leg will soldier on getting very little in the way of disease and pest infections.

Why is it that I only notice the bindweed that is intrinsically wrapped around a thorny rose when it gets to the very top and is out of reach?

Why do I plant the wrong things in the wrong place? I planted my self-blanching celery near to my courgettes and now it is buried under the umbrella like leaves of the courgette. Didn’t I think about this at the time? Obviously not!

Why do the birds peck off the unripe fruit on one bush but leave the ripe fruit on another bush alone? Mad!

Why,why,why,why,why?  Too many imponderables!

On a more positive note my cherry tomatoes, I should say Martin’s cherry tomatoes as he does all the work associated with them, are growing a treat! Soon we’ll be picking a complete salad!

Rain! I wanted rain but . . .

The garden was desperate for some rain because even though I was watering daily that wasn’t as good as rain water or probably not nearly enough!  However when it did rain it didn’t do things by halves. Starting at midnight we had thunder and torrential rain which continued on and off until lunchtime.

  It was bouncing off the paving slabs and battering the more delicate plants so that they flattened where they grew. I had watered thoroughly the night before and I was glad I had as the rain soaked into the dampened soil rather than running off it as it would if it had been dry. There were several small floods in the vicinity as the drains gave up trying to cope with so much rain all at one go.

The Cosmos has gone from this to this with ragged and battered blooms.

Just a bit of sun and some warmth and it will all be blooming lovely again!

 

Why do I garden?

I was complaining to a friend that with all this hot and dry weather we have been having that I’m having to water every day. To which they replied ‘Why do you garden then if it’s such a chore’. That made me think! Why do I garden? I garden because the thrill of watching things grow, the excitement of sowing seeds and seeing them germinate, the joy of picking food from the garden to eat that night, the calm of walking round the garden observing the changes and listening to the birds make my life complete. I have always been a nature lover right from childhood when at the age of seven my favourite lesson was the nature walk to observe at first hand the falling leaves in the autumn, the first snowdrops, the berries on the trees and the frost in the winter on the puddles. I was ever the eager child bringing found items to put on the nature table and as I grew older and became involved with our garden at home I began to love the gardening cycle of sowing, planting and harvesting. Because my father was such a gardening guru when it came to vegetables, they have always been my first choice of plants to grow. We grew so many vegetables that on our yearly trek to Cornwall in the summer to visit the grandparents, there would be no room for us kids as the back of the car would be filled with sacks of potatoes, bags of peas, loads of apples and much more. We did the three hundred mile journey perched on top of these delectables, albeit on cushions! No wonder I was always car sick as a child! :-) But being back in Cornwall was fun, and we were there for two or three months, so it was worth it!

I garden so that I can have visions such as these,

and also to have the doubtful pleasures of watering daily in hot weather! Mainly so that my garden doesn’t turn into the Sahara as it is trying to do at the moment! This was the dark, dank and very wet spot in the corner!

So why do you garden?