April Showers

The gorgeous cross-hatched fritillaries have now gone over - is this seed? I rather like the way they have gone from low hanging heads to reaching for the skies, perhaps to get a wider range to seed. If this were humans that would be yuck but for plants it's okay.

Update from the front garden which is more work in progress than actual garden. As you can see the clematis over the front wall is doing beautifully and twining around itself to reach for the skies. I think it's liking the wet weather and maybe the mulch from a few weeks ago. Despite the sweet peas being planted out around 6 weeks early they are doing fine - next year they'll be more on time and I might fashion a cold frame. The middle patch of soul has been gratefully utilised by the local cats - need to get ground cover plants and fill that space. Still waiting for signs of life from the crocosmias and iris though.

Any idea what this is? These seedlings appeared in the tray that I sowed my own Delphinium seed in - only 3 and they look nothing like my adult Ds. Mystery! Let's see what becomes of them!

Isn't this perfect? I can't understand how I have lived without Anenome de Caen for this long. I can even forgive that rogue red flower in my white, blue and purple colour scheme. The flowers are so shy, looking downwards coyly to hide their beauty from the rapacious. Next year my whole garden will be Anenomes.

So here is the lesson why boring plants are good. The sensible Hebe that I bought to give structure and winter interest is actually impressing me - tiny white flowers and small leaves mean it fits in with my aesthetic and it mimics box. And look how good it looks with that new thyme.
The garden is bittersweet this week. Having had a personal disappointment I am re-evaluating what my priorities are and contemplating a new direction. I think a lot of this process would have been easier with good weather and soil between my fingers but the weather he say - Stay inside this is my time.

Stop Press - Cats like Catmint

I don't think I'm going to be covering myself in glory here and this is not a good demonstration of my intelligence. On the packet of seeds for cat mint, it says that cats lose it when they smell it and of course I knew they love the toys. I should also have been alerted when Amos started nosing in the container where I had put the not required cat mint seedlings. Anyway, I just noticed that he has eaten around half of the thinned seedlings. A morning's work wasted and seedlings wasted but hey, he seems happy enough.

Garden Centre was temporarily the centre of my world

This morning I pootled around the garden while Jamie slumbered; My time was split between some sitting with coffee and a book and also seed maintenance. I potted on some more Cosmos and pricked out and Darwinised (my new term) my Poppy seedlings. I also potted on the cat mint and sowed new seeds for the propagator - purple salvias and kale.

So I was having a pretty good morning in the garden and then it got better - Jamie suggested he drive me to Dobbies. Oh my.

So here I was, like a hick in the big city, wandering around the garden centre with a beautific smile on my face. I was sensible this time though, sticking to plants that I need and not getting sidetracked. So I bought 2 reduced Silver Queen Thymes, a Hebe (sensible), an aqualegia that will have cream buds tipped with rpse-pink, an Anenome de Caen with lilac and while petals, a crazy bright pink thing and a tray of little Chards.

All resulting in a fabulous afternoon covered in mud and compost everywhere. All the plants were soaked and planted out and I spent a lot of time at the front sweeping up crap, preparing the soil and planting beetroot seeds all over the place. We'll probably have a frost tonight. Also I have now dug compost into the front bed so no doubt all the cats, especially mine will be pooping there. I placed the cat statued Janice gave me right in the middle of the bed and am kidding myself it might deter them! But the front is only 80% unloved now and I have started the veg aspect of the potager so one step further.

One thing that's worrying me is my attempt to take a basal cutting from my darling Geranium Orion. According to dear Carol, I was able to chop off what looked like a separating clump and had to do it now. Lacking a sharp spade I used a kitchen knife and a trowel and planted it straight into the bed as the roots were too big for most pots. Both plants now look wilted and at death's door. Oh dear.

Poor Unloved Eucalyptus

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I am besotted with my Eucalyptus tree and consider it a real thing of beauty. So I was crushed when a moment of clarity hit me while watching the Beechgrove Garden (who would have thought?) - I do not care for this beautiful tree at all. Aside from lopping off branches that are too high and an occasional water and liquid feed.

So today I did. I scraped back the top layer of soil in the pot and threw away all the moss and the odd weed that was living in it. I then mixed bagged compost with some from my own dodgy compost heap in a bucket and top-dressed the pot. While I was at it I mixed another bucket and mulched the sweet peas, roses and the clematis. It won't do them any harm anyway. Afterwards I gave everything a drink to help the compost start to soak into the soil. So my Eucalyptus duty is complete for me.

Yesterday I trudged home from work and before unlocking the door had a quick squint at the flower beds to see if there was any sign of emerging irises and crocosmia (where are you my pretties?).There was none, however I did spot several sweet peas that has been dug up. Sacrilege! This is highly likely to be cats digging in my flower bed while relieving themselves, specifically my own cat. I always thought cats were meant to go for other peoples gardens but Amos clearly didn't get that memo. As part of my plan to rejuvenate my unloved front garden I am going to try and choose some spreading ground cover plants and then maybe Amos will find a more amenable location for his lavatory trips.Or not, which is more likely.

Edinburgh Spring

Everybody in Britain likes to think they have the  most ornery weather. But I live in Scotland and that means I win this contest hands down. Edinburgh is not a big city but has great variations in climate. Someone can be sitting in sun in Leith and in Morningside there will be snow. And so on. The reason I mention this is that yesterday was a text-book spring day, Leaving the house just before 7am I decided that wellies were an appropriate footwear choice for my journey to work. Around 8am the other side of town sleety snow had begun (continuing for most of the day) but at the same time my husband was in a hailstorm in Fountainbridge on his bike (oh dear) and another friend was astonished by snow on her trip to West Linton. As I left work at 530 I walked through bright sunshine but big surprise - overshadowed by inky grey clouds. Which burst that evening when I was inappropriately attired without coat or umbrella (given the circumstances you wonder why I could make that mistake).

The reason why I have progressed along this tangent is that I am in a permanent state of worry about what has died, but so far the plants are holding their own. Maybe they are strong enough to cope with the short spells of nastiness and maybe the adversity is making them stronger. Who can tell. Well, probably some gardening Yoda somewhere has the answer but that's not me so I am reduced to asking rhetorical questions.

Before work today I took my usual coffee cup tour to see what is coming and going. The fritillaries are becoming frailer and I think they are on the way out. I've been really impressed by these and am definitely planting more in autumn because they are stunners. The bedraggled crone otherwise known as my Acer is giving me the usual spring shock (I always say I'll bin it and then it gives itself a reprieve). Currently it is looking very Japanese with tiny new delicate leaves appearing at regular spacing along the downward facing branches. As is my wont I suddenly decide to re-do the whole garden in an Oriental style - this is short-lived as I know myself too well to aspire to minimalism. Another tree that is looking great is my Eucalyptus. This was in a large pot in the back corner of the garden when we moved in and never really got much attention. After trying to coddle 2 other trees  (pear and olive) to be a centre to my garden I moved the Eucalyptus to the centre and it has thrived. I adore its metallic bark and silvery leaves and if I had a huge garden I'd fill it with millions of them.

Foliage is the big winner at the moment as a gaggle of plants seek to put the barren emptiness of winter behind them. Hostas poke up through the soil, rose leaves are red tipped and glossy and the buddleia's slightly hairy leaves are softly shining with fresh green. Also the forget-me-nots are little stunners, moved from a black plastic pot by the front door where you never noticed them; they are now worthy of notice but still very demure and exquisite.

I am getting excited about lilies and clematis. My family has a great pedigree of appreciation and skill with lilies which I am hoping that I have interited. There is a large pot of big bulbs that I got as a freebie, white lilies at the back and yellow, orange and peach lilies at the front. They are all starting to poke through the ground so let's see what summer brings. Conversely I have never been a major clematis fan and the specimens in my gardens have never really prospered, but this may be about the change. This weird spring seems to really suit them and they are both going great guns to twine them selves about. The one at the back is also promising flowers - tiny greenish-white buds with pink tips are looking to the light and readying themselves for their moment. Aren't we all?

Beautiful Rain

At the end of my lovely holiday I have spent a relaxed day today (running, long breakfast, Headhunters at the cinema, French sandwich and macaroons then a slow walk home). I thought I might potter around the garden for a few hours but then the rain came. I felt quite disappointed and then looked out of the bedroom window. The view is along our neighbours' back garden. The day has been fairly lacklustre, overcast and grey but in the moment of soft rain suddenly the vividness and colour came back - vital grass, stained yellow paving and energy in the air. Lovely.

Garden therapy results in more questions than answers

So as you know I have been reading a lot of books about garden design and am beginning to open my mind to the wider concepts that I am finding. I was interested by but reacted negatively to the opinionated rigour of The Bad-Tempered Gardener, because while her ethos (less plants and more design) is something I can appreciate I find her desire to find fault with most people about misanthropy rather than intellectual and aesthetic strictness. I do however want to acquaint myself with broader ideas before I fill in the gaps.

Anyway, I hoped our holiday visit to the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh would give me perspective and ideas but actually it didn't help. I should have known better - the Botanics are like a calming plant zoo. One of the points I have been coming to terms with is that the English equate great gardening with plantsmanship (one thing I agree with the BTG on) but while knowing that might be one thing, I also know that I love plants and quite frankly the more different types I can cram in the better. So a restrained planting scheme ain't ever going to happen for me. And it would be at odds with my exuberant and messy personality (ha ha).

Wandering about the turf and hills of Inverleith did give me some ideas though. I was thinking through the competing ideas for my back garden and realised that while there were multiple possibilities for design and ideas there I was viewing the front as an area just to be dealt with and a colour scheme is not a unifying theme. So this evening while reading Monty Don's Around the Garden in 80 days I came up with some thoughts which I will list as follows:

1) a potager is a classic device which I am going to investigate

2) I'd like to use some of the inspiration I got from reading about Cuban vegetable gardens

3) Piet Oudolf plants his annuals and perennials in rows. Interesting for someone who struggles with plant placement and maybe about the only one of his ideas I can implement

4) How about a sedum roof for the coal bunker?

Jamie took many beautiful pictures of our trip which are much better than the previous ones I have posted. Predictably however they are not ready for posting yet because of an IT issue. Sigh. But once this has been resolved you can see some of them plus my shallow musings about what I saw.

Terror of them elements

The sleet seems to be over but I'm waiting for the damage to make itself known. All the young shoots look okay just now but it'll take a day or too before I can see what actually survived. That's the joy and pain of gardening I suppose. Wish I had Monty's cold frames for these moments! Anyway according to the news it is more common to have snow at Easter than at Xmas so that tells me it's own tale. Hoping for a trip to the Botanics tomorrow for some garden therapy...

What do you envy?

I have been thinking today about envy. It's an emotion I was very prone to in my youth when I thought everyone else's life was better than mine and yet I hated feeling like that, particularly about my friends. Nowadays I feel so lucky that I wonder if anyone is envious of me - I hope not because generally there is no need. At the heart of my happiness is love of husband and friends but I  also try and focus on the joy of every moment. This is sounding cheesy but if you focus on every minute as it happens rather than recording for later or wanting to be somewhere else then most things in life can be a joy. So many people are using photos and social media when experiencing something that they cannot really enjoy it. Maybe they are scared it'll be gone and have to hang onto it. In that case don't worry - there's always tomorrow.

On a note of what makes me envious, I'll say right now that Monty Don's potting shed and greenhouses do make me go a bit ooh! I have a small garden and the thought of having a greenhouse, a potting shed with heated propagation bench and a cold-frame is unimaginable luxury. I often look at tips for small gardens and think that those that write them clearly don't have one. They either imagine so much more space that you would have or make you feel like a third world gardener by suggesting you confine yourself to one or 2 plants to avoid overcrowding.

Well my little patch will be crammed to over-crowding and I'll get everything I want in, if it'll grow (the key factor probably). It helps that the basic structure is good - the long beds and the long shape of the garden add a pleasing calmness of shape which roughly echo the monastic compounds that broadly inspire me. Completely ruined by the jumble of pots. Still learning my craft....