Happy 2017

Happy New Year! Oh joy - no New Year's Resolutions for me in 2017. I am simply going to follow my nose. Not that there's anything unpleasantly fragrant in my garden. I am going to trust myself to know what needs doing. I am going to listen to what my garden asks of me...

 In the Allotment Garden.
Weedy Verbascum

Famous first words...

Famous last words? Or famous first words. Let's hope 2017 and its gardener both behave accordingly. Now today needs to be a Snappy New Year. The temperature is supposed to reach thirty degrees Celsius, and that's pretty hot for my garden and me. There's no time to even write a list. See y'all soon!

I'm back!

Right. I am back, after two hot, wind-gusty sessions. For four hours I've been weeding in the Allotment Garden and poking around with the hoses. Just think if I did this every single day of 2017! What a grand state my garden would be in.

The Allotment Garden is rather delicious. Perhaps a lot of the plantings are a bit weedy, but I don't care. I've planted some new perennials - some terracotta coloured Heuchera, foxgloves which won't flower now until next spring, a variegated perennial wallflower (Erysimum), and a forest green perennial with thin red stripes in its leaves. A newcomer, to me, and it looks gorgeous!

Roses which were transplanted here a week ago from the Cottage garden are not so happy. I've been bucketing water on them every day. OK, perhaps mid-summer is not quite THE time to shift things. So, if I have killed Munstead Wood (a David Austin with super-drooper flower-heads), I will just purchase a replacement in autumn.

I've been pulling out annual yellow daisies and blue pansies, and cutting them up for mulch. The roses Crepuscule and Cornelia which grow along the rope swags are finished blooming for now. Can I be bothered dead-heading them? Maybe not.

 And guess what Winnie has in her mouth? A tennis ball! Aargh!
Allotment Garden and Fathen Paddock

And here's my first worry for 2017. Wow - that didn't take long! Next-door's front paddock (too near my Allotment Garden for comfort) is thriving with a weed called fat hen. It can grow as high as two meters. Beloved of hens, it is now seeding happily, and I do not want fathen seeds blowing into my garden. As they will. You see, my own weedy flowers are perfectly acceptable. But not anyone else's!