Lilies are beautiful flowers, but when I grow them I put them at the back of the border away from where the cats go. That is because they contain toxins that are dangerous to cats and dogs.
The Internet says :
Both calla lilies and peace lilies contain insoluble crystals of calcium oxalates (insoluble means the crystals don’t dissolve in water). When a cat or dog chews on or bites the plant, the crystals are released and directly irritate the mouth, tongue, throat, and esophagus.16 Sept 2021
So be careful what plants you grow, and try and be aware of what can be dangerous to your pets.
Very leafy, I need to pot some small flowering plants on but not while my arm is shaking and sore. I’ll try and use some pain killers to stop it hurting so much. Hubby has dumped a big bag of compost in the way and I need to get it moved so I can get further up the yard. Some of these plants survived the winter, they are very leafy, to be honest I could move them into the main garden but I don’t have the energy and there are some dodgy steps as you walk round the back. I must get hubby to get some sand and cement to replace some loose bricks.
Wild flowers sewn at a local car wash a few years ago are a riot of colours and shapes now. They haven’t been cut back and each year the crop gets more varied and colourful. I hadn’t seen the yellow spikes of flowers until this year. Unusually we have had a lot of rain recently and I think that has encouraged a spurt of growth.
But they don’t last long. The huge clusters of blooms soon brown and fade. They are great at the right time of the year, but then they are just big green bushes and they need underplanting to make them look more interesting. Here there are wild buttercups and ferns which were just growing below the rhododendrons. Mostly they shade out other plants and in some places they are cut back and removed because they are not native to the UK and they can spread and can be invasive. The shade they cast stops native saplings growing.
What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?
If I had to give up something it might be one of my trees at the bottom of the garden. Why? Because the neighbours don’t like it, it is a huge laurel bush/tree. It shades our garden and their garden too. I won’t be cutting any others back though. I like our little nature reserve. Laurel bushes are evergreen so they give shade and shelter to birds and squirrels all year round. But they do block out the sun. The trouble is ours is about forty feet high and thirty or so wide. It’s also right next to our fence line and about six feet away from theirs.
I know there have been huge legal battles over hedges and trees, and I don’t want to fall out completely with my neighbour, but I also cannot afford to have it pollarded or pruned. We will have to see what happens in the future. I hope it doesn’t get to legal action!
It’s a struggle to dry my washing in the back yard at the moment. The washing line snapped and I’ve tied it back up but it’s a bit saggy. It is also surrounded with hanging baskets which are a riot of colour and lovely scents which I hope will infuse into the drying clothes (although it’s already rained this morning!). I can’t fit a dryer in the kitchen even if I could afford one, or afford to run it. Just hoping the day stays dry now.
A few weeks late because I couldn’t afford them earlier. Some of the trailing plants got damaged in their transport in the back of our car. I would like to get a few small colourful plants to dot around the yard and make it more colourful. I will see what cheap plants I can get locally.
These cheer me up. I know they will last well into autumn, and looking out the window on a cold damp day brings up my mood. X
Trees, that’s our garden, and leaves in the summer. We planted most of this about thirty years ago. There is an Irish yew tree, an old goat willow, holly trees, a sycamore, a walnut tree that must be 60 foot high, cherry trees, apple trees, ash trees, mountain ash, an elderberry tree, eucalyptus tree, two oaks, and a huge laurel bush at one end that is now tree sized.
Why? We were regularly pruning the trees and we plant perennials beneath them like poppies and geraniums and roses, plus a fig tree and wisteria and ivy everywhere. But for several years we didn’t actually own the garden, we rented it. Then the owner wanted to build on it, but we objected because we would have looked out onto a new house and the garden had become a natural place, with a pond and frogs, hedgehogs and the occasional fox. We have bluetits nesting every year and it’s home to house sparrows and other birds too.
Then we were in dispute and the owner would not let us tend the garden for about three years, so it grew wild and wooly. Eventually though, we bought the land, but by then the growth had got a bit out of hand. The land is where two houses used to stand. But we made it green. This is our way of lessening our carbon footprint…. I’m proud of what we grew!
Mallaband-Brown 