LIFE IN THE OLD GARDEN

Yet! 

Here are some of the wildlife from the last month or so - we have also had many more including a badger visit.

RAT

Immature cock pheasant

Wood mice (long tailed field mouse)

Rabbits

Wood Pigeon

There is so much to do, put off because of the operation, but having said that, the limping man has just mown a chunk of lawn (can you have a chunk of lawn?).

Now to reds and yellows, red sky and euonymus elata - and yellows - Acer Sango-kaku and Rudbeckia Goldsturm -  

On some of the evergreen shrubs the greenery is reverting and will need the reverted bit cut out - when I get around to it. R continues to dead head and cut back and plant stuff, she has put endless bulbs under the white birches. I had not been down to that part of the garden for a while and was delighted to see the bark, even on the youngest trees, has now gone white.

And still it rains a lot giving so many grey days (the spot of yellow is a self-sown sunflower from the bird feeders.

 So as Boris the Cunning weaves his way through the politics of Brexit pretending to be a bumbling harmless chap (don't you believe it), Donald the Devious dodges impeachment if he can and Pugilistic Putin watches and smiles, I think I will have a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread.

And now I learn that Charles Jencks, co-founder of Maggie's cancer charity and designer of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Crawick Multiverse has died aged 80. 
The world is a poorer place.

SELF SEEDERS, SUN, SCOTLAND

There are some plants in the garden that sow themselves year on year - orange and yellow welsh poppies, forgetmenots, aquilegias, honesty, white hesperis, camassias, fritillaries - that are welcome. There are others not so welcome depending where they are - wild garlic, bluebells - and some positively not welcome - goosegrass or cleavers, bindweed, horsetails etc etc etc.
 

 There are some that spread relentlessly unless culled like the geranium on the left and white rosebay willow herb.

So, lawns mown, a walk up the garden and a tawny owl floats silently from the bottom hedge. The ducks are back on the shed roof, the garden is so dry and the pond low - so three cheers for a borehole and a top up. Nevertheless the bogbean and water lilies are doing well (as is the blanket weed.)

R has found a recipe for what she calls jam but I feel is more of a conserve or something -
Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam - 600g rhubarb chopped, 300g hulled and quartered strawberries, 450g sugar, juice of half a lemon.
Mix and leave overnight to extract juice.
Boil 5 to 10 min.
If any scum - add knob of butter.
Put in hot sterilised jars - or - we put some into the freezer as it only keeps up to  a month in the fridge.

I have added petunias to the wallflowers in the pots by the back door and put in the erigeron, anthriscus and perennial wallflowers from Sarah Raven. A few seedlings are appearing, reluctantly, in the veg beds. Put in some flat leaved parsley and sweet peas. We continue to gorge on the asparagus.

Elsewhere in the garden the hedge parsley flowers as do the azaleas. In the leaf litter under one of the rhododendrons hoverflies seem to be gathering.

The new extension and paved area (hate the word patio) give new seating areas but we have yet to get into our heads that we can just walk out from the living room instead of round from the other doors. The orange gerbera which has lived and flowered all winter in the kitchen is now in the new bed.

And the fruit - abundance this year, mildewed gooseberries (but no sawfly (yet)), and the pear tree will fall over when the fruit get to full size. The strawberries I dug out last year had sent out runners around the edge of the bed, so I left them, and now we have fruit coming with no loving tender care.

We are not long back from Scotland, cliffs laden with sea pink (thrift), campion, tormentil and gorse at Balcary Point on the footpath to Rascarrel. We have seen a dolphin from the cliffs in the past but not on that day.

A visit to Crawick Multiverse, still a work in progress, just adults behaving like small boys damming streams? And a walk around Drumlanrig Gardens through the azalea scent where the most interesting thing was a remote control mower for steep bankings - love one - but £10,000 and then some, so no go.

So much to do and so little sense of urgency, cuppa and a sit in the garden.