There's an area at one end of my allotment which has got away from me; it is just a patch of nettles, perhaps 20 x 10 feet in extent. I console myself with the thought that nettles are the food of choice for some of our more prominent butterflies. Sadly there are no caterpillars; there…
Six on Saturday – 15/6/2024
The first of our garden open days is now behind us, the second is today. The less said about the first the better. Could have been worse in that it could have been Thursday, when it rained all day. Our first visitors turned up 90 minutes before we were due to open and 90 minutes…
Six on Saturday – 8/6/2024
Another Saturday, another six. There's loads happening, finding six things should be a breeze, but we have the garden open next Friday and Saturday so everything is seen half as it looks now and half as I hope or fear it will look in a week's time. I need to geta grip, live in the…
Six on Saturday – 1/6/2024
The weather man said earlier that June 1st is the beginning of meteorological summer and just for once the weather itself is in agreement. What the weather man also said was to make the best of it because it's only going to last two or three days then go back to below average temperatures. I…
Peak Cactus?
Every year there is a day that stands out as the pinnacle of the Cactus display in Sue's glasshouse. Some cacti have flowers that last only 24 hours, opening in the evening to be pollinated by moths, then fading through the following day. They tend to be very large and showy flowers, usually faintly but…
Six on Saturday – 25/5/2024
I've spent another week almost entirely in the garden or on my allotment. What do I have to show for it? Not as much as I'd like but I do have the sense that it's moving in the right direction. It needs to, our first garden opening is in three weeks time and I reckon…
Six on Saturday – 18/5/2024
How can I spend day after day working on this garden and it's as big of a mess now as it was a week ago or a month ago? I can't make the chaos recede. A lot of it is the inevitable consequence of sowing seeds or allowing seeds to sow themselves. One way or…
Six on Saturday – 11/5/2024
The last few days of fine weather have almost entirely gone into getting my allotment licked into shape, a task delayed by the endless rain. I have never seen, or killed, so many slugs in my life. For the last ten years I've had two plots and I've decided that this year will be the…
Six on Saturday – 4/5/2024
Episode 364, seven years chalked up. My opening six on 6th May 2017 were Camellias 'Annette Carol' and 'Nightrider', Maianthemum racemosum, 'Plympton Pippin' (apple) graft, Schefflera taiwaniana and Libertia x butleri. The last two are long dead and gone, the Camellias are over this year and the Maianthemum is behind where it was then. 'Plympton…
Six on Saturday – 27/4/2024
It rained most of today, somewhat dampening my enthusiasm for searching the garden for the six nuggets required for a six on saturday post. I pulled on my coat, tucked my camera under it, and sallied forth. Five shutter clicks and less than five minutes later I was back inside. I bagged a final shot…
garden ruminations 