Garden

An encouraging time of year, as old favourites come back to life, and we find spaces for new ones.  This pink rose is Geoff Hamilton: we planted it almost 17 years ago in memory of Martyn’s mother shortly after she died.  It’s a bit sentimental, I suppose, but it’s better than sending cut flowers.  We planted a Compassion in memory of my sister-in-law Margaret, and it is growing strongly on a trellis at the side of the house.  Elsewhere in the garden we have creamy white Diamond Days Forever (for brother-in-law Michael), Phab Gold (for nephew Tim) and Ingrid Bergman (for neighbour Rowena).  They all help to bring back the good memories. 

We went looking today for a replacement climber for the one that the fencing people killed when they added a spur to our neighbours’ fence, but couldn’t find one that would tolerate the predominantly shady position it’ll occupy.  I’ll do a spot of research before we go looking again.

At the second attempt I’ve got some tomato seed to germinate.  It means that the crop will be late and smaller, but we hope to have a supply of delicious Sweet Olive tomatoes in the summer.  We have lots of potatoes coming on in the larger raised bed, and also in the bed where we grew spuds last year.  Not part of the plan: I’d intended it to be a herb bed, right at the kitchen door.  We obviously didn’t do a very good job of cropping last year’s spuds!  I have few hopes for them, though: the tomatoes we grew there later last year got blight.

The bulbs have finished flowering in the borders and containers, and the polyanthus are past their best.  We’ve started moving the latter to nursery beds for a bit of nurture before we plant them out again in the autumn.  In their place are petunias, nicotianas and trailing lobelias for summer colour.  The oriental poppies are coming into flower again, much to our delight - and that of the bees.  Unfortunately they have a short flowering season, but they are spectacular.  We have a pale pink one at the front of the house: it took a year or two off after we had the front garden laid to green slate clippings, but they are notoriously difficult to kill, I’m glad to say.  

Another short-life beauty is the iris sibirica.  We have a lot of the lighter blue kind, descended from my mother’s plants, but only one of this richer blue, given to us by my art teacher Pat.  

Another gift from her is a very vigorous sedum, but that’s a month or two off its rather longer flowering season.  That’s another subject that attracts dozens of honey bees in summer, so that’s something else to look forward to.  Unfortunately, the bees are as attractive  to the hornets as the sedum is to the bees, so we get to watch nature at its harshest as well as its most beautiful.

The grass is cut, the laundry is up to date, so we can take some time off.  Today we have taken a trip down to Rye Harbour for lunch at a favourite pub, the William the Conqueror.  Martyn can seldom resist fish and chips: I went for a rather good halloumi burger.  It came piled up with aubergine, tomato, red pepper and a big field mushroom, and was rather delicious.  Back to work tomorrow, I think:  there are lots more containers to plant up for summer colour.