We are having a very patchy summer so far with more cold winds and dreary days than sunny ones. But despite that my beautiful Abraham Derby rose is in bloom and looking perfect with its huge pink and apricot flowers and fresh tea rose fragrance. I have a pot of pelargonium Apple Blossom nestled next to it which is the perfect complement with its pale pink and white flower heads. Lovely!
My garden is looking quite lush now (thanks to my daughter's hard work clearing up) so I've been spending some time repotting plants and sowing seed for dwarf French beans and foxgloves. This corner is mainly herbs and bee fodder: lavender, sweet peas, apple mint, rosemary, violas, oregano and buddleia, with climbing rose Spirit of Freedom and a particularly graceful little clump forming bamboo at the back.
At the other side is the glorious Ispahan scrambling over my new garden arch. I love to go out there on a still afternoon, stand underneath it and be enveloped in its swoon-worthy scent. It is an old damask and so non-repeating but the few weeks of spectacular flowering are well worth the anticipation! Filling in the background are a Boston ivy and the instant sunshine of yellow leaved jasmine which needs a good summer to flower here but is also quite intoxicating when it does. As you may have guessed by now, scent in the garden is vital and I try to have as much of it going on as possible!
So here we are: the first rose of summer. This is Ispahan, an old Persian damask which is always the first to bloom in my garden. Every year it astonishes me with its beauty and overwhelming perfume and really kick-starts my summer garden.
And now it's being joined by more early blooming lovelies. This is a little perennial viola called Etain, purchased at my local market and adding a big shot of sunshine on those grey days we always get in summer here.
Remember the tags I was working on in the post below? Well, inspired by my wee garden I made a bunch of blooms to decorate one of them and this is what I ended up with!
I don't usually try to grow veggies in my garden because it's so tiny that finding somewhere suitable to plant things can be difficult. I used to have an allotment some years ago which produced loads of lovely food but for various reasons I had to give it up, and veg growing along with it. However, inspired by the BBC's Dig In, I thought I'd have another go this year, albeit on a small scale.
They're very kindly giving away free packets of seed, as you can see in the photo, so I applied for some and today, it being the warmest one we've had so far, I was outside inhaling the scent of my daffodils and sowing French beans, courgettes, basil, carrots and cut-and-come-again salad greens. I made some newspaper pots and filled them with our homemade compost, of which we have an abundant supply. This is V's baby really. He tends and turns the heap to produce the most wonderful dark loam which is like the best three course meal for the plants and fine enough to use for potting up and seed sowing. Wonderful!
Now all I have to do is wait for germination and dream of the succulent organic goodies to come!
I have been looking out my kitchen window every day for about a week now, waiting for this beauty to open. Last October I planted a large pot up with a mixed bag of scented narcissus bulbs and today the first one came into full bloom. After such a long and, for us in this neck of the woods, hard winter this little bit of sunshine is more than welcome; it feels like a miracle.
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~ Winnie the Pooh
Thanks to Kitty for reminding me of this great Pooh quote!
Vincent came back from the supermarket the other day with a couple of pots of house leeks, which I absolutely love. They grow in the most dry and inhospitable places, even on the roofs of houses, hence the name. Their Latin name, sempervivum, also gives a strong hint towards their tenaciousness, meaning as it does ever-living.
My tiny garden has become rather swamped by black bamboo this year. Slow growing, they said at the garden centre. Yeah, right. It runs like Usain Bolt and has grown to about 10 feet tall in the past eighteen months. V has broken all my gardening tools trying to dig it up and reduce it to a more manageable sized clump. Anyway, I need tough plants for my garden as it gets very hot in there in summer, which brings us back to the house leeks. These and herbs are what I plan to concentrate on growing next year, along with some tomatoes perhaps. In the meantime there's a lot of clearing up to do, so I'd better get back to it!
