Blooming....all over the Garden

 

I promise not to bore you too much with my fixation on my apple trees, but the other two decided that they too wanted to burst into flower as well.

 

 

These apple trees grow along a fence which makes them ideal for smaller gardens.  The ones shown here are the cooking apple trees and has grown nearly along the whole of the fence!  looking gorgeous.

I am hoping for a bumper crop this year so that I can do a swap with a friend for some of her tomatoes in the weeks to come.

 

There, promise, no more blossom pictures until the apples are starting to grow but I have nurtured these trees for about 5 years and you do get sort of motherly about them.

What do you grow in your garden?  Really would love a veg patch, just a small one as there si only 3 of us.  What do you find quite easy to grow?

 

Have a good week!

Take care.

xx



Summer is coming............blossom is opening.

The better weather has encouraged the apple blossom to start to open up.

We need a new fence panel and post just where this fence hugging apple tree is and I have asked Hubby to put off adding it until after the blossom has done its job.

I am now on weather watch because if harsh rain or wind is on the horizon I do go outside and put up an extra large umbrella to help keep those flowers ON the trees!  Mad....I know but for the past two years it has worked!

I have three apple tress which grow along fence panels and I have always had lovely apples from them.  I am not expert and I have had to learn about this and it has been the quirky ideas that seem to have worked the best.

Watch this space for lovely apple pictures and I will watch the blossom!

Have a lovely Sunday.

xx

Summer Fruits

The lovely weather that we have been having these past few weeks has suddenly worked wonders for our strawberries.

We normally have an on-going battle with the local slug population as to who will get to them first but this year the dryer weather has worked in our favour and slugs are not to be seen!

We have been very encouraged by the number that are waiting to turn rosy red, so many more than we usually get.

As they are ripening, we are picking them and popping them in the fridge.

Best get some cream in the house!

All of the flowers are also doing well and my apple trees are growing teeney tiny apples at the moment.  One of best years for our garden ever!

xx

PS Hubby bought me a manicure pressie for Valentines and guess what.......i have finally booked an appointment this Saturday morning!  Can not wait, it will make a welcome change.

xx

Happy Easter Everyone! Spring is nearly here..........

Happy Easter everyone!
As usual it has decided to start raining but for the past two days we have been giving the garden a little TLC as we have not really done much to it over the past couple of years due to personal events going on.

My herb garden has been fending for itself since last summer and seems to have better green fingers than I do and is "blooming" so to speak!  Added some Basil to the box which we use a lot of.

A very healthy borage plant which is growing very well......but not where I planted it!

The bees and butterflies like it as well.

The Bees absolutely loves this japonica and it has flowered at just the right time.

The rest of this plant is still firmly in bud with little sign of any flowers just yet and then suddenly the above flower burst open!  It is still the only one to bloom but is it gorgeous.

More colour in the flower beds.

For-get-me-nots growing everywhere.  I know that some people see these as weeds but I love their little blue flowers.

The sun on the petals.

My apples trees which grow flat along the back fence, are also starting to bloom as well so hopefully the rain will not be too hard and knock them all off.

These were purchased yesterday and will all live in a patio pot over the summer.

We are hoping to have a summer where we can enjoy the garden and make it an extension of the house and spend much more time in it.

Last year was so much better than in previous years..........can we possibly hope for a repeat or even better?  At the moment I will just settle for dry.

Hope you all have a great Easter.

XX

Summer Daisy Gift

Last May I blogged about my struggle to find any Ox-eye Daisies in any of the garden centres.

Carol at "Smile at the flowers" did just that and sent me some live plants in the post!

I was delighted when a few brave daisy heads managed to bloom considering their arrival in a box and then being put in the ground I was not really expecting them to do anything.

As for this year.....well they have been fabulous!  The plants have multiplied 4 fold and there are so many blooms on them I am astonished.

I can see them from my kitchen window and they have made such an impact on the whole garden. Due to an on-going struggle with slugs I have decided to give up with our veg patch and stick to berry fruits (of which I have good success rates) and flowers to help the bee population.  So our garden is going for the country cottage garden look without the veg bit.

The apples have made an excellent start.  They loved all of the rain that we had and here was no wind this year to knock the blossom off too soon.

The hydrangea's have gone mad with flower heads as big as Sophie's head which she could hardly believe when she saw them.  Now these flowers love water and our excessive rain has been their cause for success.

We have also tried other plants to find out what the slugs will avoid and stocks are one of them.  Not as fragrant as I was hoping but they smell more in the evening.

The hanging baskets are looking brilliant although the sudden hot weather has meant some late evening watering to make sure they stay this way.

We have even had success with seeds which is virtually unknown in our house!

The honeysuckle is out, the pinks we planted are in bloom but not when I took these pictures and even my roses out in the front garden have had more blooms this year that in all of the previous years put together.  So we may have dreaded the rain and many people had a dreadful time you can see why it is needed by our planet, it just needs to be in manageable quantities but we can not really control it can we?

Does anyone have any other plant suggestions that I could try over the coming year?

Carol very kindly sent many other plants of which several have also bloomed including holly hocks and foxgloves.

Unfortunately last November we had to have our garden dug up by the electricity board due a line fault in someone else's house which ran under our garden.  This is actually the morning after as the fault was found at 9pm and they were digging all night!

We even had a mini JCB in the what s a very small garden.  Sophie's playhouse was moved lock stock and barrel to the other corner and several of Carol's plants were lost that day.

The garden was re-turfed, twice in fact due to a large section having died off.

The hole that they dug was over 10 foot deep and went into next doors garden as well.

I shall try and take some current pictures from our bedroom window but there is yet again someone in the next garden burning green garden waste on a lovely day with windows open and people's washing out!  Thick white billowing smoke everywhere.

"Billy Bonfire" hubby calls him. He has done this every day since last Saturday.  His garden looks like Beirut and there seems to be no end to it.  Very anti-social really.  He must have seen us looking over the fence as he has moved his burning dustbin further down the garden.  If the wind blows the wrong way it is straight in through my french windows.

He did this during the world cup a few years ago, we were in the garden and our eyes ran and we had to go indoors and leave everything outside.  We stank so much we had to change our clothes and have showers.

However......we shall continue with our flower garden and see what we end up with next year. What about those daisies though.......lets have another look.......

I think you can sense how happy I am with these very happy looking flowers.

Have a good day.

xx
PS Just rang the council about Billy Bonfire and apparently he is within his legal rights to burn in his garden!  What about my legal rights to sit in mine without being gassed out and needing a shower!  We are breathing it all in as well!  What is the difference between this and noise pollution?
House is sweltering, all doors and windows are shut dare not look at temperature, Sophie is not happy.  Great day ahead I think.

A very thoughtful gift

I came home from work to find a postcard from the Royal Mail saying that there was a parcel waiting for me at the depot.
The note saying"Live Plants" made all of the staff laugh and I thought that I ought to say they were garden plants, daises in fact.

Inside was this lovely card. Inside is a detailed list of what was in the parcel.

They were all very carefully packed inside, a work of art really and due to this all of the plants survived their trip from Yorkshire.

Carol very kindly offer to send some Ox- eyed daisies when I mentioned in a recent post that I have been looking for some. Little did I know that they would need travelling companions which included:

London Pride

Iceland Poppies

Perennial Poppies - Red

Perennial Foxglove

Black Hollyhock

Ballota

Hellebores

Very much a generous gift which I am putting in pots to establish and then into the garden. Everything has grown really well in the garden over the past 12 months, so hopefully this time next year I will, at last , be on my way to having the little cottage garden that I would very much like to look after.

Thank you soooo much Carol. I still think that it is gestures like this from a lovely person who I have never actually met sets blogger users and visitors apart from other social network sites.

My hubby and I are very grateful.

xx

A sunny day in the Garden

Due to yet another lovely sunny day, it was off to the garden centre again. I have been looking for a borage plant for over a year. I had pretty much given up too but one last look at Duchy Nurseries prove fruitful and I found my plant. Yippeeeee, in fact I found two plants! So hopefully my Pimms will be just that little bit more special.
I also bought this daisy plant. I have also been looking for some Ox-eye daisy's. Lovely large headed daisies. My search continuous.

We saw the above plant when we went to the garden centre last week.
It is called Senetti. It is a purple/blue and is gorgeous and within a minute of planting it I had bees on it. We are trying to attract more bees to the garden for the apple trees and fruit plants. Plan going well then.

The above plant is Cherry Red Argyranthemum which is a lovely plant with great shaped leaves. I think that I may be going back for another one of these.

The plant is called Blue and it is much more blue than it picture looks. I even managed to catch a bee with my camera. When we went to pay for this plant there was a bee on it and we had to carefully move it on to another plant. Sophie has offered to help look after these so we have read the tickets on how to care for them and this is now here job. She is really interested in gardening and getting involved. Hubby and I are not experts by any means but most things survive too.

Tip of the day?

How do you stop your plants from falling over in the boot? Put them in some boots. This is how the borage made it home, Hubby's idea!

You had to be there really but it was very funny and you know what?.....it worked.

I also planted a courgette plant and a butter nut squash which I swapped for cabbages.

What is your favourite plant?

Take care this week and see you tomorrow.

xx

Hello little butterfly......

On Monday Sophie and I spent most of the day outside enjoying the lovely warm weather. Makes marking much more enjoyable too. All of a sudden Sophie said "Look Mummy!"

The tiniest little blue butterfly had landed on the grass and then quite happily walked onto Sophie's fingers. It has stripy legs and little dots on its wings. I have not seen this little butterfly before and it was in no hurry to leave.
When I was at primary school we did a lot on butterflies and I did use to know lots of their names etc. I had a good book too, which I could not find quickly enough.
Grandad has been given the task of finding out what it is as we are away at the moment and I am typing this from a Little Chief in Ely Cambridgeshire.
It is excellent weather and I shall try and blog whilst I am here. We hope to get a WIFI signal in the car park!

Can anyone suggest what this little butterfly might be, we are in Cornwall, UK.
xx

April in Bloom - Sunday

The Easter Holidays have now started and the weather has so far been very good to us. I have been sitting in the garden finishing off some work for the day job. Whilst pausing I noticed just how much the garden has changed over the past two weeks, Hubby asked next door if we could have a good prune at the hedge, it is getting out of control and our veggie patch is not getting any light. It is their boundary and you have to be so careful what you do. They said yes, so on Sunday he was up a ladder pruning a good couple of feet off the top of it and we now have much more light on that section of the garden. He took down a bit of the fir trees while he was at it. There are loads of Camellia bushes which have now developed into a rather attractive hedge and Sophie and I salvaged some for the vase. I bought this Rhododendron about 12 years ago and it bloomed once and that was it. I decided that this year was make or break, threatened to bin it and look!!! Lovely blooms everywhere. It now needs a much bigger pot, so I am now on the look out for one.

It has bloomed even more since these pictures were taken.

A very delicate pink. Huge flower heads. There were loads of these in the grounds of the hotel we got married in which is one of the reasons why we bought it on the first place. A memory of the day.

The Azalea is not being outdone, also quite an old plant and a bit of an odd shape, but looking great none the less.

The Japonica, of which I have three and these need little attention apart from a prune, have also been doing really well. There seems to be a bit of a pink theme going on, not deliberate but lovely all the same.

What is blooming in your garden?

I began this post but got side tracked so it is a few days late.

Many thanks for the recipe suggestions and hopefully this week I shall be able to look at these further. I simple must make my batch of marmalade which has been on the cards for months!!

xx