Typical Holiday Weekend: Planting Flowers Between the Showers

We had beautiful scorching weather recently, into the high 20s Celsius. After hb had forced his creaking knees to comply with a tidy up of the garden, revealing lots of spaces where the forgetmenots and bulbs had died off, we bought some plants. This is typical Bank Holiday behaviour in the UK, oh and decorating and DIY, all of which we planned for the weekend. Then -also typically – the weather forecast was weekend storms. The plants took refuge under the garden table. We waited for the downpour and the winds. All we got, however, was a freshening breeze, drop in temperature and a few light showers!

Not complaining, we needed some rain and it certainly made it more comfortable at night.

So here are some photos of the gardens after hb’s hard work and also of the irises in the front garden which are in full bloom now, they make me smile every year – oh and some avian visitors and the feline neighbour who not only scares them off but also usurps my place!

We had our first dinner of the year outside, too. For those of you of a curious nature, I had spiralised carrot, cucumber and courgette tossed in a lemon, avocado and pine nut dressing on a bed of watercress, rocket and babyleaf spinach with baby plum tomatoes. All vegan and organic. The photo looks sharper on Instagram, in fact all of them do, not sure why.

The green smoothie in the photo of the irises I’m afraid I didn’t record, but from memory I think it was banana, blueberries, moringa powder, coconut water, chia seeds, live plain soya yogurt. There might have been some romaine in there too.

Now, a question for all you green-fingers out there: we foolishly allowed one wild aqualegia to take root at the back of the garden under the acer 2 years ago and now they are everywhere! They are growing in amongst the rocks, all over the patch to the left of the acer, in the cracks between the crazy paving up there at the back of the garden and under the forsythia near the house. They have made a lovely display at the top of the drive where nothing else will grow because the it’s choked by ground elder coming from our neighbour’s garden, but we don’t want our entire garden full of it. The roots are too hard to pull up from the stone once established and we don’t like using chemicals. Any ideas?

Here’s a better photo of the robin, this time paying an evening visit. I took it through the window with my iPhone after I’d written this post, but it’s sharper than the earlier one:

Copyright: Chris McGowan