GOINGS AND COMINGS

First of all, on request, R's recipe for flapjack/nutty flip.

Recipe for flapjack/nutty flip

(one ounce is about 30G)

Butter 6oz

Golden syrup 6oz, more if you like it sweeter,

Muscovado sugar 4oz

14oz porridge oats

Optional zest half lemon

Pinch ground ginger

Preheat oven 150C

Melt sugar, syrup, butter, add oats, lemon, ginger, mix, put in 8" square tin lined with grease proof paper, bake 40 min. Cool 15 min before cutting.

Right - 

Gardener S came and removed the water lily, well most of it from the pond, then dug a ditch for the new spring and had a go at the brambles. Next day I trudged 5 barrows full of the lily up the garden to be disposed of. Since two requests for a chunk, both collected.
 

The fence is done and I have patched over a few gaps low down as the lambs had got into the garden - no damage done.

The house martins are messing about as usual, shall we build here, no there, no somewhere else. There are now swallows about but not at the house.

Sunday - the mole man is booked for tomorrow afternoon. Normally I am anti catching anything (especially Corvid) but the molehills are becoming mountains. In the end he caught three but says they do not make waistcoats from the skins any more.

Yesterday we walked to Ford Park to buy some herbs and stuff but all we came home with were 5 1/2 parsnip seedlings and an iris. R hopes it is their spectacular white one but it might be purple.
Today we went to a garden centre outside Dalton but bought nothing. We are not really pro bedding plants (apart from the odd cosmos and ammi.)

One feature of our garden are the wildflowers - 

red (and white) campion and ragged robin,

 Sweet woodruff, forget-me-nots and buttercups,

Watercress and even the dandelion.

This, of course is but a few and most are ok but some have to be controlled - wild garlic, bramble, ivy, bindweed, the creeping buttercup, and even the campion has decided to appear in the flower beds now.

I have just sown some more cauliflower as nil came up, we do have broccoli seedlings and broad beans. Half the lettuce seedlings G and L gave us are out, the rest in the shed as back up when the pests devour them.

Let us have some colour - euphorbia, an ornamental strawberry and good old, in-your-face, oriental poppy. 

It is funny how I forget what I put where. In one of the beds I thought I did not plant red hot pokers there and then realised I had planted eremurus, fox-tail lily. The danger is, of course, one sticks in a new plant and digs up a treasure. 

One good thing about the blog is other bloggers, Chelsea Flower Show standard unlike like me, a gardener fighting nature, pests and the sheer cussedness of plants to not do what you want.
Try https://verbalcompost.blogspot.com/?m=1 .

So, back to a revitalised pond - and some primulas nearby -

with a final flourish - Hilary's rose (I know that is not really its name but as Hilary gave it to us . . . .