More spring cleaning, transplanting and stuff

Martyn was in radical mood yesterday, and cast a critical eye on the overflowing shelves in the bigger garage.  Various dried out cans and tubs of paint, grout and the like are no longer there.  Some other materials, though still viable, date from days when we were more agile, and capable of DIY rather than our now preferred GSI.  Others still were left by the previous owners, eg some unopened cans of melamine paint.  Well, since the oiky builders have been at intermittent work over the road for a good six months, I decided to pass on the useable stuff to them, saving us a trip to the tip or a posting on Freegle and the email that it would generate.

Our iris sibirica are doing pretty well.  It’s a pity their flowering season is so short, but the various generations seem to be flowering in sequence, and so the various clumps extend the flowering.  I’ve lifted polyanthus plants today from the bed at the front door, and replaced them with almost the last of the rudbeckia seedlings (from seed saved last back end).  The polys are now in a bed at the back where we can see them next spring, inshallah.  

The second sowing of runner and dwarf French beans has done better than the first, so they’re hardening off, and just about ready to plant out.  The sweet olive tomatoes are putting out side shoots that I’ll harvest in a day or two to propagate.  Haven’t tried that before, so will do some in water and others in gritty compost, and see how the differing pundits’ advice compares.  Chives, dill and basil are germinating well, and Martyn’s sowing of salad leaves looks like feeding the snails pretty well before long.

One nice surprise is a pale pink oriental poppy.  We had the front garden largely grubbed up and membraned a couple of years ago, and that process included the poppy.  They say, though, that if you leave just a bit of oriental poppy root in the soil, you’ll have it forever, and it has popped (sorry...) up again this year after a year off.  Membraned and altogether, and with rather too little in the way of slate chips on top, the front needs weekly weeding.  Mañana.  Talvez.