Still soaking up the 'ole rays!

image from Clipart Library

The glorious weather has continued all week 🌞  I still had plenty of "pottering about" jobs to keep me occupied Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday ~ we're really into full swing with the garden now!

I decided to tidy up the little tomato plants a tad, by removing the mangled-looking leaves.  They are still very bent but nevertheless do look rather better than when they first arrived.

The sunflowers just keep growing!  Of the 16 seeds I planted, 15 have germinated ~ to say I'm amazed would be something of an understatement 😮  

As they are now developing their "true" leaves, I decided to take the plunge and put each one into its own individual little pot.  I gently prised out the stronger-looking seedlings, potting them straight into their new homes.  I left the less well developed ones in the original peat pots, simply putting seedling and pot into the new pots together.

Whilst I was in potting-up mode I decided to do something with this tiny fuchsia, Pink Galore, that had really struggled over the winter compared to the rest of its family.  I'm not sure that it will thrive to be honest, but at least I've given it a chance.  I had just one pot of pratia pedunculata Country Park that I originally had in mind for somewhere else.  Since I ultimately decided against that idea it was going spare, as it were, so I split it in half and plopped it in with the fuchsia.  I fully expect to be reporting on the demise of the fuchsia in due course, I'm afraid!

Tuesday and Wednesday were rather disjointed sorts of days, with me doing little bits here and there, all of which I completely forgot to take photos of 😏 

I was pleased to see that the sunflowers seemed none-the-worse for their separation and potting-on.  It's quite fascinating to see how they turn to find the sun throughout the course of the day 😊

Just look at how clear the water is 😲  Perhaps all that dust from the Great Grit Spillage of '25 has filtered the water 😄  I will still empty out the bowl in due course to clear out the grit silt, though ~ when I can actually summon up the enthusiasm to do so, that is 😉

I decided to put the sunflower seedlings outside on Thursday.  They seemed very happy just soaking up the sun sitting on the garden bench in the back garden.

On Monday and Thursday mornings I usually Komp with my Dad so don't tend to do quite so  much outside, which probably is no bad thing to be honest.  Anyhoo, yesterday afternoon I decided to tackle the raised bed in the front garden near the bathroom extension.  My decision was rather fortuitous in that Adrian and I had been bemoaning the state of this border on the kitchen garden side of the path that leads to the gate earlier in the week.  It's a border that we've never been able to keep under control from the onslaught of the dreaded dandelions ~ the bloody things just keep on growing no matter how many times we try to dig them out 😠

I suggested to Adrian that we could remove a good chunk of the border, just leaving small sections at either end for the two shrubs that I would much prefer not to move.  As luck would have it, these sections of the border don't have dandelions so would only need to be kept free of much less persistent weeds.  That will be yet another "little" job to add to our ever-growing list of things to be done 😄

There were only four other plants in the border, so they were easily moved to the raised bed.  

Back to the current job, as you can see the bed wasn't totally overgrown but did need quite a bit of tidying up.  Everything that I had moved into the bed has settled in very nicely, except for the buddleja at the back which died off completely.

I'm particularly pleased with the ferns but nearly missed this little one at the front!  I thought it hadn't survived but luckily I spotted that it was sending out new shoots 😊

After I'd moved the four plants from the path border into the bed, I finished off with three of these rather lovely alchemilla erythropoda (dwarf ladies mantle) that I bought recently from the RHS.  As you know, my lovelies, I have a few garden flower favourites with alchemilla mollis being amongst them.  Much as I love it, though, it does have a tendency to grow rather large and blousy in our garden ~ I guess it really likes the growing conditions!  I was delighted to come across this little gem, though, as it appears to be a more restrained version ~ we shall just have to wait and see, I guess 😉  

I finished off the planting by splitting the basket of narcissus Cassata, that I had grown for cutting, in half and putting the two clumps at the back of the bed.

My last task was to try to do something about the bird bath.  The original dish is very shallow and the water quickly disappears from a combination of over-enthusiastic bathing by the local sparrows and starlings, and evaporation.  It is very popular with the birds though, so I wanted to leave it in situ.  I had a rummage around in the greenhouse for some supplies to "beef it up", and this is what I came up with.  The original dish now makes a very good base for this plastic planter.  As it's much deeper than the original I decided to make a sort of platform by placing a lump of stone in it that we found in the garden a few years back.  I sat the stone on an upturned terracotta saucer to give it a bit more height and it now protrudes out of the water somewhat.  The weight of the stone will hopefully help to keep the bowl in place when it's windy!

I'm pleased with this new set-up for the time being, but will be keeping a look out for a wider and shallower bowl to replace it with.  In the meantime, though, the birds still have a place to drink and bathe 😊