Awful weather - typical Brits talk

goldfinches

Wow, phoebe, beautiful courtyard.
Wort, lovely garden, gorgeous plants.
2p - then shove the swab in the gaps where your tonsils used to be, twiddle and twirl it around, do the same on the other side of your throat and that should do nicely. Say Aaaaah now!

wort

Dave, I've had the weigela for years , my problem is I'm so chop happy i usually cut off all the flower growth. I remember coming home from holiday one year and it being in full flower , and being so surprised! !😂 this year I decided to let it do its thing before I cut.
Spent yesterday getting a standard lilac out of its old pot into a new one (it had finished flowering! ) then weeding. 
I caught up with gardeners world last night, so have a list of jobs that it has inspired me to do !! .
Still no rain  up here, and my water butt is close to empty.
It was cooler yesterday and similar today, though the furry boy has just come in to eat and is laying in the patch of sun .
I have a high spot and no overlooking houses at the back just playing fields which means if there's any wind it's in my garden, over the last 20 years I've managed to get from an empty new garden with just grass to an ever changing garden that has trees and shrubs to shade and protect from the elements.  Not that I don't envy the walled courtyard!😂 I can stand in line though. 

I was given some herb and veg seed for my birthday,  and I've not had luck with either before apart from rosemary and sage. So I don't usually bother , when I've checked the packs a lot are supposed to be sown by now !! Question is do I sow now?? Or will the seeds be viable next year ?
Then where  do sow them I've filled my garden so full of plants I can't find room for a veg patch or spot !!? 😕

phoebe1989seb

Thank you goldfinches 😃

Getting the courtyard done was only the beginning of course - it's going to be a very, very long time before the rest of the garden(s) look as good! However, we enjoy the process of creating a garden and having a blank slate to start with means we're not dealing with someone else's choices which can be a pain, lol!

Beautiful weigela, wort 😍

Davesnave

phoebe1989seb said:

Thank you goldfinches 😃
... having a blank slate to start with means we're not dealing with someone else's choices which can be a pain, lol!

You can say that again! Someone else's choices were so weird here we virtually ended up with a blank slate. In theory you save what you can, but in reality it was only trees that could be saved and the rest were just labels.

....Which brings me to two I found yesterday in some still virgin soil. One said 'Geoff Hamilton,' so I'd guess that was a sweet pea or similar, as large, shrubby things weren't their thing.

The other was, 'Natashas's leg' and dated 1999. I thought, "That can't be right?" and tried again. Maybe 'Natasha's dry?' but that didn't make sense...

Then it hit me. Of course....'Natasha's dog' ! There was a name and exact date in front of the 1999, but illegible.

Oh well, not the first or the last pet buried here. We've two cats and two ferrets in already, but we had the decency to plant big shrubs and trees over them!

wort

Then it hit me. Of course....'Natasha's dog' !  There was a name and exact date in front of the 1999, but illegible

😂😂😂😂😂 leg might have been worse!! Good job you hadn't dug it up! 

Farway

Dull but warm today, up to the volunteer plot watering the large pots, being large they keep a residual dampness in the hearts, assuming I don't leave it too long

The lily beetles have discovered the lilies up there , killed on beggar & remove a couple of the pooing grubs, should be fine now I know they are there I can be extra vigilant

The border is looking very cottage garden style, and plenty of bees among the self sown forget me nots

In my own patch I think it's close to covering over the cherries, colouring up now and I expect my beaky chums have hungry eyes on them

Apart from that it's more watering

Self sown love in mist + bee sorting out next year's flowers

Davesnave

wort said:

Then it hit me. Of course....'Natasha's dog' !  There was a name and exact date in front of the 1999, but illegible

😂😂😂😂😂 leg might have been worse!! Good job you hadn't dug it up! 

10 years later, Natasha showed us around on our first viewing and she definitely had both legs then!

It's not the first dog burial I've uncovered. About 10 years ago I found the tag of one when we used a digger to pull out the stump of a cherry. As the owners still lived nearby, I returned the tag. The dog had been buried in the shade of the tree which then marked the end of the garden.The plot has grown by well over 100' since then!

Don't get me started on the horse burials......

twopenny

I love Love in the Mist. Mine are tiny this year as it's so very dry they didn't get a chance to grow much.

I do have Jacobs Ladder which the bees love and so do I. It's so easy to grow too.

Too hot to do anything outside today.

Was just watching old recordings and on a Rick Stein one he was talking to an old west country gardener who'd studied working the land back through ancient civilisation and he had some pearls of wisdom which I used to follow sucessfully but seem to have fallen by the wayside over the years

"Companion planting

Planting Brassicas where they'll live off of residue peas and beans (I still do that)

If you feed the soil the soil feeds you.

Root veg go down to feed on the minerals which we eat.

Plant in a new moon - tides and rivers rise - all the seeds that crop below the ground (affects moisture content of the soil which is known to wine growers)

Pick in a full moon when there's moisture in the plants more taste

Worked for  our ancestors

I knew the bit about planting seed at the New Moon. That certainly works. If you plant later they don't come up until the next New Moon I've observed. Didn't know the bit about picking at a full moon though.

Davesnave

twopenny said:

I do have Jacobs Ladder which the bees love and so do I. It's so easy to grow too.

Too hot to do anything outside today.

If you like Polemoniums try to get hold of 'Lambrook Mauve,' though being in Somerset you may well have it already.

https://www.ballyrobertgardens.com/products/polemonium-lambrook-mauve

We've just come in, having gardened till dark! We still have far too many plants on the old nursery, so we're sticking cheap prices on them and they're flying off at the gate sales.

greenbee

I love Margery Fish’s garden, I sometimes stop off on the way to/from Devon. One plant or another usually finds itself coming home with me. I seem to remember she was the person who said ‘if in doubt, plant a geranium’ which turns out to have been very good advice in this garden!