One day of sun (a not-at-all wordless Wednesday)

Yesterday was lovely. It was mild, it was still and – shhhhh – the sun shone. To celebrate I took a quick turn round the garden, and I was surprised by how much is still in flower. Oh, there are the hangers on: the now-tatty cosmos still with a few white flowers, the dahlia still…

Allium addicts unite…

we have nothing to lose but our marbles. Especially if, like me, your garden may not feel the same way about alliums. My London garden, my first proper garden, ended up stuffed with plants. As time went on there was less and less of it devoted to grass as I extended existing beds into the lawn or…

Please last till the weekend!

It’s the garden club spring show at the weekend, and I’ve been neurotically monitoring progress of several things, especially this, which I was given just after Christmas. It had actually been a gift to a friend, but she claims not have green fingers so much as brown fingers with yellowy bits and added rust spots….

Excitement!

I got in yesterday to find a complete absence of a note I’d tucked in the door frame before I went out. That could only mean one thing – a delivery driver had picked it up – and I hurried round to the greenhouse, my drop-things-off-when-I’m-not-in place of choice: My Bulb Order Has Arrived. And…

The story of a tulip bed

My tulip bed is just starting to go over, and I will really miss it. Actually, tulip ‘bed’ is a bit of a misnomer; it was really a sort of tulip dump, or so it was intended. There were tulips scattered around the garden following their usual springtime role in pots, some doing better than…

White-daffodil Wednesday…

and it won’t be wordless. Of course. Every year my daffodils – broadly; this tends to be weather-dependent – follow a sort of succession plan. First come the big yellows; next are the smaller double yellows, then the frothier yellows (I haven’t many of those due to the fact that their heads and stems don’t…

Almost-wordless wowzer…

Spring is here: because the birches are finally putting on leaves; because there are fat flower buds on the Cirsium rivulare and only two of them were blackened by frost; because even the dragon’s digging has failed to prevent the artichoke from coming beautifully back; because you can keep tulips going from year to year,…

Spring hits the meadow – at last!

It’s finally happened. I know it’s going to get colder at the weekend – yipee – but the meadow couldn’t wait any longer. There have been daffodils blooming away for a few weeks now (I’ve already picked or deadheaded 510), but the rest? Nah. Too cold. But then things warmed up a little… It began…

Just a spot of frostbite…

One day, and such an alteration. Yesterday, the meadow was going mad; the anemones and scillas were out, the fritillaries were unfolding, the primroses were bulking up, the daffodils were really motoring. Then the weather changed. The temperature dropped like a particularly hefty stone, but it wasn’t just that; it was the bitter, howling, perishing,…

Just a spot of sunshine

We have had a lovely few days, with a quite remarkable absence of rain and an equally remarkable presence of sun. It’s all right now, normal service is resumed and we have a grey, drizzly day – but everything enjoyed spring while it was here. Me included, and I even managed to sit outside with…