ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
June already, there's not enough hours in the day or days in the week, to say nothing of energy in my body. The cottage garden look of flouncy self sown stuff continues, though the Aquilegias seem to have gone over quickly this year. The effect is briefly colourful and pretty but never tidy and it…
There's not a lot of point going to a rare plant fair and not coming away with something rare. The annual fair at Tregrehan garden is a form of torture for me, so many plants I would love to buy and so little room for them in my already overcrowded garden. Anything that grows big…
Our first opening of the summer is on 24th June, which is not very far away, and if I was looking for a single word to describe the state of the place at the moment it would be 'messy'. It never is a tightly controlled and manicured garden, but the informality level peaks around now…
When I did my last post on ferns in 2019 I hadn't covered all the ferns I grow and intended to return to the subject soon. It didn't happen. I recently updated my ferns list and realised that I'd in fact mentioned less than half of those I have now, not all of which are…
Saturday morning and this blog post only half done. I came in from the garden at 9pm yesterday, did a bit, then went out slug foraging around 10pm when it was dark. I have Dahlias in the ground, trying to grow, and slugs trying to stop them. With my help, I hope the Dahlias will…
May is the month where it can all run away from you if you take your eye off the ball for a second. So much happening, so much needing doing. A lot of what needs doing is weeding and watering, which eats into the time you need for planting and preening. Quite a bit of…
Five years and one day ago, I responded to a suggestion by someone blogging under the tag 'The Propagator', to post about six things happening there and then in my garden. I went and had a look; sure enough, there were things happening, I took pictures of six of them and put my foot on…
Yesterday I noticed my second Dahlia emerging, and I'm talking of plants that were left in the ground for the winter. I'm not even freaking out about slugs as it's been so dry there are very few about. I'll still be doing night time forays to check but they'll be targeted five minute forays rather…
I'm off to Rosemoor garden again today, to the spring show. It kind of marks the end of the camellia season, so I've put a couple of mine in here. Spring bulbs are over their peak too and to an extent flower is being overtaken by greenery as the build up to summer begins. I'm…
I’m in the middle of reading James Rebanks’ ‘English Pastoral'. A chapter back he was expressing a concept which struck me as particularly insightful. “the field” he says, “is the base layer on which our entire civilisation is built”. It is not a natural thing, it has been created by land clearance, perhaps thousands of…
garden ruminations 