Gardening

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I just read a really sad post on Facebook. A woman had friends round in her garden and someone said her garden was ugly. It was full of flower borders and a neatly cut lawn. There were pots on the lawn and it looked like a proper cottage garden with ox eye daisies.

Unbelievable how unkind people can be. I replied to her post:

“Looks amazing, if you have birds and small mammals you are doing the right thing. I’d rather your garden that something covered in decking! Ours is full of trees, squirrels, hedgehogs, the occasional fox. Loads of birds. Don’t let them get to you.”

I thought about it. We need to make more space for wildlife not less. Somehow patios and outdoor rooms have become the norm. How much money is spent on concrete? Lease think about making a small place in your garden for wildlife.

My own flowers

Last year, painting of morning glory flowers and some poppies. I haven’t grown much from seeds this year. We do have some lettuce plants, but they have probably been drowned by the amount of torrential rain we’ve been having over the past few days. Some places have had a months rain in a day! That compared with six weeks of sunshine in April and May. As usual our weather is topsy-turvy. Basically because of where the United Kingdom is positioned. We get weather from every direction, the Atlantic, the Arctic, Siberia, even dust dragged up from the Sahara. We are a weather magnet!

I want to go and get some seeds and see if I can grow some nasturtiums for late summer bedding, and the butterfly caterpillars love them. They are a nice, spicy, bitter and peppery orange flavour when added to salads and cold soups.

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Sisters photo of poppies.

I saw these today on my sisters timeline. FB_IMG_1592521493915

I love Himilayan poppies. I’ve tried to grow them on many occasions. One year I bought a plant and for a glorious few days it flowered, but that was it, it withered and died. Too much water? Too little? Too shady? I should have read the instructions. Mecanopsis. Beautiful.

The delicate blues like washed sky after a rainstorm, edged with the shade as the sky starts to darken at nightfall….

Drive into the countryside.

DSC_2718six weeks ago I ordered our hanging baskets from a little nursery in the countryside. It’s actually based at a small farm near Silverdale in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It’s set back off a country road and is basically a little parking area surrounded by greenhouses and shaded concrete platforms, each of which is covered in garden plants. Most of the normal plants seem to have been sold but we took some clematis, begonia, a rose and other plants as well as the hanging baskets. We have been going there for about six years, and each year we get what we need for the garden. Now it’s a case of rearranging plants and hanging the baskets up. You can see we’ve gone a bit mad. But as we haven’t been spending much lately it did mean we could afford it.

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There was too much to fit in the boot, so some of it had to go on the back seat. Be warned. With all hthe plants and soil in them they are not very easy to lift.

Will post photos when they are up.

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Friends garden colours

Six years ago.

I took these in a friends garden because they were so colourful and interesting. I think some of the plants are Swiss chard, nasturtium, marigold, sweet peas and poppies. Most of the day the sun shone in it except later on when the sun webt behind the hill. Some lovely colour combinations.

Dorothy Clive Garden.

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This was my drawing of the Dorothy Clive Garden on 6.5.18. It’s recently reopened but with a booking system so you have to book morning or afternoon slots to visit. There is a self service system at the cafe. I hope we can go one day next week if the weather improves, after a month or more of sunshine we have been having rain for the last few days. Good for all gardens including the Dorothy Clive.

It will be lovely to see different landscapes, beautiful flowers, and peaceful water features.

When you draw a place you are interpreting the world in a different way to simple photographs. That’s why I enjoy it. Trying to tame nature and describe it.

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Flowers

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A few flowers from the garden today. The flowers are starting to develop, the big summer plants are a bit swamped with ivy and scrubby bushes and so we have cut back branches and peeled ivy off trees a bit today. Only what you can do with a pair of secateurs and a small pruning saw.

We need to lay some pathways, and where a spring has erupted in the garden we are going to put a few pebbles to simulate a stream flowing down under the hedge. We live on a hill which is a very old Volcanic plug. The water percolates out further up the hill and we think because that was built on a few years ago it might have got diverted down towards our house. I don’t know….

Steps holding the pear tree up.

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We have to put a piece of wood under one bough of the pear tree but in the strong winds last week we had to put step ladders under the other limb. Surprisingly there are lots of pears setting on it. It may be that it’s because it’s more horizontal and fruit does tend to set (develop) on horizontal branches. Thats why some fruit trees are tied onto walls. Is it called espalies?

The cherry tree behind it is also covered in fruit. Looks like it might be a bumper crop! The bush/tree cut in step shapes is an old evergreen we have had for years. It grows slowly and I practice topiary on it. The rest of the garden is very leafy. I’m going to have to get someone in in the autumn or winter, to cut things back slightly and let a bit more light in.

Russian vine

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I don’t have a photo, but this afternoon we removed what feels like miles of Russian vine from our hedge. I think it’s also called mile a minute. It’s also growing at the back of our garden, and bits of it have grown up the telephone wires and even into our shed!

It was hot outside, so we worked in the late afternoon as it started to cool down. The Russian vine is wraping itself round a couple of leylandii, up an old willow tree, into our walnut tree, and around the Holly tree. It’s tough stuff. We should dig out the roots, but it’s too entangled. So we are cutting through the largest vines, then you pull at it, and strands of vine twenty foot long come out of the hedge. Each vine splits into branching thinner pieces. The leaves are green and heart shaped. It looks like a nice plant when you get it. With small white bunches of flowers in the summer. The bees like it, but our privet hedge flowers and that is more pleasant than the vine.

Unless you have a massive garden don’t grow it!

Today’s challenge was ‘busy’

Today’s drawing session, these are for my Urban Sketchers Stoke-on-Trent daily challenge. I thought I would share them, I was planting up pots and trying to tidy up, plus attacking the ivy that’s taken over the garden. Finally had a beer with my hubby and then came round onto the back yard to listen to the blackbird singing on the chimney tops. That was wonderful. So melodious

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