POOR SUNFLOWERS

I think we planted the sunflowers a little too late in the season in our garden. We waited all summer for them to make an appearance and we'd nearly given up when suddenly in September they popped out to say hello. Unfortunately, the last week has seen some rain and gales that they don't seem to be coping with. Weighed down under the constant deluge, they've simply given up the will to live and have gone to sleep, resting their weary heads on our lawn, looking pretty much like the rest of us are feeling. I feel almost like I should rush out and wrap them up in scarves and hats to cheer them up! I must remember to bring out the seeds earlier next year.

TROPICAL PASSION?

Thomas planted a passion fruit tree in our garden over a year ago. At first I thought he was mad - this is Scotland after all. I was more than surprised it survived the frost last winter and gobsmacked when he found it had actually grown its first fruit this year. He googled it to see when we should eat it and found out it wasn't just a passion fruit, which would be purple, but in fact a tropical passion fruit! How absurd is that?

CORNFLOWERS

Aren't cornflowers the most beautiful blue colour?

ROSE

I love the smell of roses - roses with a smell that is! I planted a beautiful white rose in my garden and found out, disappointingly, that it had no smell at all :-( This beautiful lilac one Thomas bought me, on the other hand, is deliciously wonderful. It is time someone discovered a way to upload smells along with photos. Isn't my photo of it just beautiful?

NETTLE NUMPTY

stinging nettles
Originally uploaded by urtica

It's been a bad week for nettles. As Léon mentioned in his blog the other day, he was already suffering all sorts of itches, so the last thing he needed this week was to learn the hard way what jaggy nettles are.

Thomas and I were sitting on a log by the canal having a picnic when Léon decided to join us without warning. He had been at our feet watching the ducks. He crawled up beside us on the log and sat down in floods of tears muttering about nasty plants. He raised the legs of his shorts to expose two legs covered in scores of white sores all the way from his knee to his shin. We concluded he had crawled through a stinging nettle to get to us. Poor wee man, nasty jaggy nettles.

Today we were gardening - I noticed a very large nettle in our garden and remembered poor Leon's pain. Thoughtfully, I took a spade and dug it out from the root. I brought over the organic waste bin. I made sure not to touch the leaves and picked it up by the stalk in the middle. I remembered from childhood that the stalk is ok, it is only the leaves that sting, and given this was a huge plant with a central stem about 2cm wide, I wasn't taking any chances. The bloody thing instantly burned my thumb badly... hmmm was it actually thistles you are meant to hold by the stalk? I am no longer sure - but it sure isn't jaggy nettles - my thumb has been throbbing all day, worse than my last wasp sting, and that was a queen! :-( I guess that makes me a nettle numpty.

THOMAS'S DALEK

Invasion of the daleks
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I'm beginning to wonder how Thomas ever managed to live in a flat - he's such a garden person. First he bought a chainsaw to attack some old trees, then he bought some fruit trees and over the last few days a cultivator, hedge trimmer and some bulbs and seeds. He spends hours at the local nursery too. Yesterday afternoon Marcel went out to the shops, he was back less than 5 minutes when Charlotte decided to go too - but when she went out she came face to face with a dalek, about as big as herself - he'd obviously come up the path in the interim 5 minutes.
Thomas was thrilled with his new toy. Dad will no doubt have some comments on it, I am sure!

HAMAMELIS X INTERMEDIA DIANE?

The garden in our new house is little more than a worn lawn surrounded by various muddy patches and some boring grey stone-filled borders - quite a contrast to the flowers and terracotta-tiled patio I lovingly tended in my last house. Fortunately Thomas is proving to be a keen gardener, planting new fruit trees and bushes every week. I have a few favourites I am trying to track down for here, but not being much of a gardener I know what they look like but not the names, unfortunately. Last week my description of a 'droopy tree with fluffy pink balls' drew looks of derision in Mclaren's garden centre, but I did end up with an ornamental Japanese flowering cherry tree - eventually. This week they looked even more puzzled when we tried to describe my favourite autumn tree. I knew it was small - 4 feet or so, had brilliant colours in autumn and fluffy balls in spring - this one stumped them completely so I gave up and spent an hour wandering around till I finally found a Hamamelis x intermedia 'Diane' just as I was on the verge of giving up. That was it - my favourite tree! So now I am set to trawl the internet for somewhere selling it at an affordable price.

A BIGGER JOB THAN I THOUGHT

Goodbye to the scabby old trees
Originally uploaded by PhylB

When we moved into the house we decided this row of scabby old trees had to go. They were so tall they blocked all light in the garden, they were so thin at the bottom that Léon could easily walk out the garden on to a main road and they were plain ugly evergreens whose roots would eventually up-end the house.
Our tree cowboy friend happened to be passing this morning and given the weather was nice, asked if I wanted him to fell the trees I had asked him to come back and fell in the spring. Why not?
As I watched them for the next 3 or 4 hours, I suddenly realized quite how big a job it was and was glad Thomas and I had not attempted it with our chainsaw and my car as we had originally planned. Surprisingly, it wasn't the felling that was the big job - that took them about 15 minutes a tree, it was the cutting up and disposing of the trees that took hours, as they chopped and heaved bits of them into their van and disappeared off to the dump twice for every tree.
Now we have a scabby, bare, open back garden, so we need to get the planned fence asap. Then Pudge will be safe and Thomas can finally start planting his shrubs and bushes as planned.