New paintings and regular art updates.
A rosy dawn this morning foretold rough weather later. We have had cold strong winds and hail showers! I feel sorry for the baby tomato and other plants we have outside. They should be hardened off by now but cold weather keeps coming back. We have also not had much rain over the last month. When we do get it we have heavy showers. Cloud bursts and bolts of lightning. Pink dawns ar harbingers of rough weather.
Walking round a garden centre a couple of weeks ago. This huge statue was for sale. Far outside my price bracket it’s cost was far lower than some of the garden buildings being sold there. Some of them cost more than my house in fact you might have to take out a mortgage to afford to pay for them.
The photo is courtesy of my friend who was with us on the day.
I’ve not had much time in the garden recently and missed most of the daffodils and tulips so here are some tulips from last year. Things have also got a bit squashed by some building and gardening work, I want to get back out there and tidy things up.
There are a few patterns created by duplicating the photos using the layout app on my phone. I hope you like these.
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I shared this a few days ago as part of a group of photos but I came back to it because I loved the vibrant colours. It goes with my mood today. Gold wallflowers and pink dianthus I think are the types of flowers.
An artist at Spode planted and looks after this area just outside the spode studios. They always cheer me up when I go in. To see them in the middle of industrial delapidation lifts my spirits.
On the road that passes the site there was a project called greening Stoke where various shop fronts and bits of derelict land were planted up with wild flowers. They are still growing. Good to see green in the urban landscape.
It’s been quite a dry and cold April so far so the cherry blossom in the garden has been a bit late coming out but as the weather is due to warm up over the next few days hopefully it will be ok. We are also clearing some of the ivy off the house. We are being careful but the tendrils had got under the weather boarding round the roof and was starting to pull it away.
Meanwhile there is blossom on a couple of self seeded plum trees. We need to cut back an old willow that is snagging on the roof of a neighbours garage and I’d like a limb cutting off from a laurel bush which is overshadowing the garden. The other straighter limb will stay and leave it as a dense tree because all the lower branches were cut off a few years ago.
The tomato and courgette seedlings are still inside because of the cold nights. I want to get them planted outside soon. Also we have a few sweet pea seedlings and morning glory plants.
I will post photos once plants are in
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I’m excited! One of the little citrus plants my partner bought a few weeks ago has produced flowers. We knew it could generate fruit as it has already got some. But I wasn’t expecting it to flower. As soon as I can I want to put it outside in the sun, we are getting a summerhouse so it can go in there and stay walm. At the moment it’s next to a sunny windowledge but I want the flowers to be pollenated.
Does anyone have any knowledge about keeping citrus? We did grow a plant from a pip once. It grew to 2 foot high but only ever had leaves and eventually died. Thanks in advance for any info.
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These are from our garden. The reason why they are not still in the garden? We had to have a tree cut down and they were likely to be squashed underneath its limbs. And so they are now in a vase in the kitchen.
In fact we have had a lot of work done over the last couple of months so plants have been squished a bit. We also need rain to bring the perennials that are still dormant underground into leaf and flower. Hopefully we will have some more significant rain in the next couple of weeks.
I particularly love the tulip flowers. I go for dark rich colours….. If we ever get the garden done I will post some photos.
These plants are growing outside in a box and my husband bought them in to show me as my cold is no better and I haven’t been outside because I feel too poorly.
What are they? They look like bluebells but they are not curved over like British ones. They might be Spanish bluebells which grow upright, with thicker stems. But bluebells don’t normally flower till April or May? Also the flowers are sticking out sideways. I guess they are actually a form of hyacinth? They don’t have many bells on them but they do smell like hyacinths. On the other hand they are not like the ones we had on the windowsill and are nothing like grape hyacinths that we sometimes grow in the spring.
So my question is to any gardeners out there…. What are they?
Gallanthus, the Latin name for Snowdrops. They are out in force at Rode Hall gardens near Scholar Green, on the North Staffordshire/ Cheshire border. It’s off the A34 between Stoke-on-Trent and Congleton. The snowdrops are in flower right now and you can buy little bags of them (in the green) wjuch means you get bulbs with the leaves and flowers and you plant them directly into the ground under trees so they can spread out. They have many different sorts of the flowers that brighten the grounds of the hall. The snowdrop walks are on till March 3rd? And open till 4pm.
We walked through the grounds and gardens of the hall. Winding paths lead through bushes and trees, up and down little hills and slopes, past pools and woven willow sculptures down to the lake at the end of the longest path. There you can see a wooded island where Herons are starting to nest. I got blurry shots of four herons flying around the tree tops.
Back up past the hall we had a meal and coffee at the cafe and then on to an old barn to see an Exhibition by three local art groups that is on till the start of March.
It’s great to get out into the world and see it changing. The snowdrops were in such great clumps on the ground that it truly did look like they were patches of snow under the bare trees. It’s a great place to explore.
A couple of weeks after our small crop of apples the pears have almost all fallen off the tree following a strong breeze. There are two left up on the tree.
As with all windfalls they are a bit battered and bruised. We had a few earlier and I think birds have been trying to eat them too, but pears stay hard for ages then suddenly ripen so they are not soft enough for the blackbirds and robins in the garden.
What to do with them? I’m going to chop off the bad bits then poach them in white wine when they are a bit riper . I dont think they will be beautiful pears standing up right in their bowls, but a bit more of a chopped up chunky pudding, with added custard. I might take photos!
Why is the tree at an angle? I don’t know, we put it in and it grew this way. This year we put an old shelf upright underneath it to support it as it was tipping further. As it grows large fruit, they seem to pull on the top half. Hopefully it won’t snap. It was bought as a sapling from an old Woolworth store. It must have been planted 20 years ago and since its matured it’s always borne fruit.
Hooray for the old pear tree. Faithfull fruiter!
Mallaband-Brown