Magazine style - all inclusive

[alp]

Very nice, Zenj! Those orchids grown wild or you could buy them? Amazing! The poppy is like real!

Just come back from shopping in Lidl so that son could get free parking and avoid catalytic converter being stolen whilst having his first jab. Very worrying as some people developed doggy incurable Guillain-Barré syndrome. Horrible time we live in and we're borrowing trillions and some idiot suggest building a yacht to be named after a certain dead person.

Time to feed the chickens - pork pies and alfalfa as my son doesn't like the latter or the former. No, porkies are 4 for 20p and I grabbed 6 to please my carnivores.

 

[alp]

Yesterday, I trimmed the lowest leaves of nearly all my bamboos - they thought they were the giant moso bamboos and now as high as the house roofliine.

It was very hot

Was predicted to rain on Friday of which I am not so sure. Unless they come from France, rains have no energy to travel to our far flung corner.

Yesterday, I found YET ANOTHER egg buried in the middle big pot. It was a bit exposed. No wonder I'm short of eggs. Usually, I get 5, but now I am lucky if I get 3. Now I know where they have gone! I left it there and hopefully, it will fertilise the big pot.

Guinea Gold Martagon Lily

Shop bought Delphinium - they do need a lot of energy and heat to develop such closely packed florets

Thalictrum Black Stocking lovely colour

Very big trumpets and beautifully scented

Black and bloom

Adobe Orange

Martagon Lily Claude Shride

Sunny Morning

Helenium Margi Gras

Thalictrum Flavum Glaucum

Hians

Penstemon Hewel Pink

Sunny morning

Claude Shride

Sunny morning

Alstroemerias taking over in a nice way.

 

[alp]

So UK ship got fired at and bombed and the Crimean PM didn't want to engage with Germany and France for fear of annoying someone This reminds me of my neighbour annexing the public walkway 5' by 130'. I wish i were there when this happened as this wouldn't go quietly. The gentlemen (my neighbours) said they would never report neighbours to the police saw it and didn't do a thing. Well, the rest is history. When I went into his garden, I understood my the renter loved the space. Huge garden and there were 7 of them. (at least)

********************************************

And I thought there were going to be thunderstorm and lightning.

*******************************************

Was clearing out my alstroemerias at the back. They had taken over and they had roots about 1 foot thick. What a nightmare! The most invasive ones were the striking yellow ones.

Lately, I have been looking at grafting as I need to REDUCE the number of plants. Far too many dotting around. I need to buy a sharp knife to do the trick. I would like to have peach trees grafted with plum and cherries and apple trees with pear trees.

Yesterday, I had the last of my cherries, Sunburst, as the birds had been there before me. Once I heard the word RAIN, I dashed out to devour the very few left before another avian assault.

Blue Note

La Mancha?

Salvia microphylla 'Blue Monrovia'! Had it not been for the labels, they would have been all Blue Notes to me.

Icelandic poppies

Pallida

Gillian Blades

Penstemon electric Blue

Lovely day to clear the garden of yet more alstroemerias! Whilst clearing them out, I found out that the plant that I thought was from Perki looked like another Martagon lily, with leaves coming out of the centre of the stem. Then, the cleared area revealed and refreshed my memory that I had planted a Salvia and some Crinums there. The poor Salvia barely had had light and could only show 3 tiny green stubs. Also, I realised that I might not have agapanthus flowering there again. I removed the blue centaureas the Snow in the Summer as I need the space. Another thing that is tempting fate is the Glutinosa - several huge bushes, BUT NOT ONE FLOWER OR BUD!

 

[alp]

This is a very good video. Anybody knows where this man hails from? I reckon he's a Canadian! Lovely English. I love watching Australian Gardening, but the accent always drives me mad!

 

[alp]

Around 6.30pm, I came in, very disappointed that there hadn't been a drop of rain. I watched Met Office forecast and now Aiden was talking about persistent rain in Manchester. Very let down by him. Then suddenly, 7pm, things were being thrown in the glass roof of the lean to - it was sleeting small milky pebbles being chucked in all directions, followed by an almighty thunderclap. In the next 3 hours, the top part of the garden was flooded as i forgot to close one tap. Liquid Silver were gushing down down pipes. The roads outside were flooded. So happy that I don't need to water the garden or the allotment for the next 4 days at least.

The front garden is full of flowers and yet the back garden is on its back foot: flowers are few and far between as the dahlias and the salvias are still snapping. Just a sea of leaves.

It's a bit breezy and the plant just wouldn't stand still. Thalictrum Flavum Glaucum

Thalictrum Nimbus Pink

This rose was given to me by the lady who paid £75 for cuttings from Kenya. I'm going to graft on 3 roses, just to clear the pots.

Gaillardia from last year

Buggy Franz Kafka

Black Dragon has its last roar!

I might cross pollinate these two.

Teesbrooke Audrey - a perfectly peaceful collarette!

Lily which attracted a lot of comments by passers-by.

This year, I have been feeling very happy with my plants so far. A few hot days are followed by much-welcomed rain! So much better than watering just the surface. Last night's GW featured some very pale irises .. A feast for the eyes!

Another feast for the eyes

You can watch this clip at about 45 minutes onward here!

 

[Zenj]

Rained here too all day yesterday and still raining this morning yes alp I enjoyed gardeners world last night lovely meconopsis and I like Adam Frost.

 

[alp]

I was trying to remove the floods in my garden and came into for a breather and it is HOT!

Zenj I love that crinkled long petalled meconopsis and I still think yours is the best with all those lovely stripes. Adam Frost doesn't watch GW, apparently, he's repeating what Monty has done! I just had to laugh with his beer in amongst the houseleeks. Genius! I'd love to visit that Kevock garden, but it's so far away. When we went to Yorkshire, I thought it was far enough.

Still too much to do in the house with all the floodings sounding alarms and little emperor doesn't have a lot of holidays.

 

[Perki]

Afternoon. I do like the thalictrums and the flavum variety.
I am not up to much just sat in the garden on my phone watching the bees whiz past and the sparrows and blackbirds go to the feeders and eating my choc ice.
I am going to have plenty of time lounging around the garden it better than being confined to my bedroom, ive been stuck down with covid, marvolous. I am fine you wouldn't know I got it really but them rapid flow test light up like a Christmas tree in seconds. Had a bad headache and were really tired on Wednesday, Thursday to today is a bit like having a cold feeling a slight runny nose and a bit of a cough and I had a fever/sweaty moments like last night when it woke me up I were dropping wet, got body aches back ribs mainly but don't know if that's cause I've been lying down to long.

Bit more tiring messing around in the garden, I've been planting out some cleome - ammi visnaga - antrinhium - petunia red velour and one of the large salvia. Bit of cutting back of the aquilegia before I have a billion more and I've moved a salvia carradonna. Think I'll mow the lawn later and trim the hedge but I may leave that for another day.

 

[alp]

Oh, dear! Son, I hope you'll get over it soon. Yes, get out of the garden instead of lying in bed. For how long have you had it? Helper told me that he was very ill, like having a nasty flu, when he had it. I'm sure you will get over it.

Had a busy day. Went to all the nurseries until the last one did I spend some money. A yellow tubular bell type penstemon, an iris and some Ogen melons x 2 and cabbages x 12. The last bit went to the allotment and we were there for 2 hours and just came back. With a cup of cold tea and hopefully little emperor is going to cook his noodles. We had the giant £7.99 Godfather rump steak last night. Huge!

Going to plant out the melons and a collarette which I like very much called Becky. I hope to get some seeds from them.

 

[alp]

Yesterday morning, I did my laundry and was wondering how on earth I could have those clothes dried as the air was damp, garden flooded and no sun insight. Before you knew, it was hot like. a pressure cooker and then we went out. On the way back, there was a road accident and the sky was overcast. I was anxious as I really didn't want to have rain on my clothes which must have dried by then. Stuck in the traffic as everybody seemed to know there was an accident on the other road. After much deliberation, we decided to go to the allotment and we spent 2 hours there. Went to buy some 5 bags of 50p materials for some patio project.

My friend told me that it's funny that I was talking about water butt when her friend was talking about counting 13 water butts in Sussex. When you garden in the south or south east, especially the south east, water is a very sensitive and treasured resources. There were times when the soil just screamed for water. The allotment wasn't very wet, but Dagenham reported tornado and a whole brick wall fell and shattered to bricks and damaged cars.

Allotment: Clematises were ravaged by SS and this was the only perfect one in amongst the dozens of blue flowers.

Some penstemons

Diorama

3 years ago, I bought the plant and the flowers are still teasing me! Very cruel and fussy plant!

Red stem Vim I think

In amongst the pots of Veronicas, there was this spike of orchids

Fascinating that someone put a glass lantern on the top of their house.

A new lily this yellow - yellow

Every year, it was orange and this year, I have an extra plant

Catching up with 2020 Garden Rescue. The brothers had flashes of genius and Charlie was always spot on with the brief. It's her quirkiness which put me off sometimes. Have to admit her designs could be very good.

 

[alp]

Wimbledom must be on its way as it's going to rain! I don't mind the rain, but the cancellations will disappoint many and sundries, probably including Zenj!

Obviously, it's the time for the lilies

Still some more to come which have never flowered before. Shame they are not scented. I used to have oriental ones which were beautifully scented. Shame they all died off.

A tale of 2 forecasts

Met Office

Weather.com

Going to be a busy day - bin day and the rest. Have a nice week and hope we can progress in the football so that both Perki (better?) and Zenj can have something to be happy about. My prediction: tomorrow final day for England and Djo to win again. Zzzzzz!

 

[alp]

Who is she? Amazing! She just turned to look at me and then flew away!

 

[alp]

Whitty, a scientist who advised on lockdowns, was harassed by people and the process was filmed - I think all this uploading to the media of public figure being harassed or attacked should be banned. Two days ago, a female threw something onto a MacDonald guard and the whole thing was filmed. The guard was so mad that he kicked her until someone shouted STOP. But why come attacking a person on duty whilst being filmed? It could be acid. People are low and low in intellect!

*******************************

Another story is the former Health Secretary and his former aide are leaving both their spouses AND CHILDREN and starting afresh! Duh! There are children and one leaving them is bad enough, not to say TWO!

*******************************

Yet another story is that Priti Patel is helpless and hopeless. UK govert has been paying French to stop illegal migrants coming here! Yet all the times, the Border Force was told by the French that there were afflicted illegal boats with children on board, Our Border Force politely asked the French if they could go to their waters to take in the migrants. If the French have been paid to stop this, surely if the migrants were in their waters, it's their problem. Someone must be taking a cut! You can't make it up! What do we pay the French for? Also, when one of these migrants came ashore, he whisked out an iphone and phoned mum. Just earlier, the government was sued for bad housing conditions for these migrants and who was to pay? Taxpayers, not the politicians.

*******************************

I just love this weather - no sunshine, but 18c

Wonderful! Wonder if Wimbledom is going ahead today.

Due to my appalling labelling, I had to stick this mass of seedlings when the weather turned clement and voila - Salvia Pink Jewel

Hians

Stunning clematis Jackmanii

 

[Perki]

It's just another day sat in the garden nice sunny day.

I wrote this yesterday just didn't post it.
I am fine still got a bit of a cough and I've lost my sense of taste but other than that they nothing wrong with me. The rapid covid test still come back positive.

I am sat in the back garden again on tge bench most use its ever had.

 

[alp]

Here, we are drizzly and grey. Perki: we are lucky that we have test results so quickly. Look at what has happened in India - a country with nuclear capability

Dead bodies floating around. What has China unleashed? And why has rich India's corruption brought about such an appalling scene?

Neighbour's daughter was offering me RHS magazines which I have already got. We talked about the birds, and so I came in to check what I had got.

Very blurred, but I could only use the Panny recorder.

This is the baby which has been flapping its wings on the washing line earlier.

Not bad for such a long distance. I love birds ..

By the way, one of my hens died yesterday. RIP Baldie! The end was quick and it was sad. She didn't feed for a day and the following day, she just faced the wall and then turned her head and fell when she gave up the ghost. Gave my heart a knot!

***********************

I'm going out again to see what I can do. Have a good rest, Perki!