A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot

This my birthday present from Martyn: it replaces one of the cold frames.  It is rather overshadowed by a row of Leylandii, but their days are numbered!  The old cold frame had largely rotted away so didn’t put up much resistance when I took it apart and binned it.  The mini greenhouse came part-assembled, and needed quite a lot of remedial work before it could be finished.  The instructions (yes, I actually read them!) prompted one to check the tightness of the screws in the panels.  Most needed tightening, and a few were not gripping and had to be replaced with longer ones.  The hinges fitted to the lid both had to be moved to allow them to work.  This sounds very much like looking a gift horse in the mouth, but now it’s up, I’m really pleased with it: such a thoughtful present.  It now stands on some of the bricks left over from the sitooterie, and will come into its own for overwintering, and more so when it comes to sowing in the spring.

Compassion, planted in memory of Margaret

 Another birthday present was a bunch of garden vouchers from Sandra and Michael.  We’ve been looking to replace the rather weedy A Shropshire Lad supplied and badly planted by the landscapers.  It is now out, trimmed and in a pot pending its move to new lodgings somewhere else in the garden.  I dug out a big bucket of our dreadful clay, and heaved in a load of fresh soil and muck.  Following research of exposure, disease resistance, repeat flowering and so on, we finally found one of my shortlisted plants, Compassion, in the garden shop down the road.  We have one of that variety already, and know it to be robust and free flowering.  The one I found had been raised by Fryers Roses, whose The Justice of the Peace is such a champion.  So a gift from two in-laws is transformed in memory of another.

The garden is doing really well at the moment.  Though most of the roses are between flushes, some long dead-heading has stimulated them to start a fresh lot of buds.  We’re getting quite a good range of different colours on this year’s rudbeckia seedlings, and the antirrhinums are doing far better than those we grew (from the same packet of seed!) last year.  Around this time last year, we were in Avignon waiting for our train home.  As the temperature was in the low 40s, we stayed in our hotel room as long as we could, and then found a hypermarket in which also to benefit from the air conditioning and to pick up some little gifts to take home.  On an impulse, I also picked up some eschscholzia and cosmos seeds.  The cosmos have shot up and are starting to flower (provided we remember to water them) and this morning we have the first flowers on one of the eschscholzia seedlings: a good strong yellow.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the others do.

In the produce department, we’re now getting a few runner beans, and are about half way through the spuds.  The tomatoes are ripening apace, so I think it’s bruschette for lunch!  As reflected in this blog’s title, we are mightily grateful for the garden and the decent weather.  The obverse of the good weather is, of course, that two out of the three water butts are now empty, but that’s at least provided the opportunity to tip out the accumulated sludge and give them a good hosing out.  And tomorrow promises to be WET!

The colours of the garden go some way to compensate for the cancellation of the two cruises we’d planned for this year.  It’s hard to see how the cruise industry can recover.  Many countries are not allowing cruise vessels to dock, and those that do are limiting access to their own nationals, some, like Norway, allowing selected neighbours to join in.  In any case, we have both managed to get colds or gut bugs when we’ve been on cruises.  We have one more booked, plus a bit of credit from the surplus and the deposit on the other cancelled one, so probably ought not to wait too long before Saying ‘Come on! Assez rigolé: lets have our money back’.