Apart from my reading round-up post earlier this week, I've been very remiss in posting recently. It's not that I've been doing nothing, but I must confess that it's been a struggle to push myself to get on with things. I mentioned in my last "proper" post that I was feeling pretty tired, and to be honest I've found it rather hard to shake that tiredness off. Some of it is genuinely feeling tired with the physical work as I'm extremely overweight and unfit, plus I'm not as young as I used to be 😄
However, there has been a large splodge of procrastination thrown in! I worked my way round the relatively "easy" sections of the garden/kitchen garden but all the while the spectres of the ornamental borders in the front garden were dancing about in my head, most of which haven't been tackled for about three years 😱
Behold, one of the overgrown borders 😏 Actually, I forgot to take a photo before we started to tackle it so this is after Adrian had dug out three overgrown shrubs! I guess it doesn't look too horrendous from a distance.....
but once you get up-close-and-personal the disarray is plainly evident 😯 This photo was taken after some shrubs had been dug out, sadly not all of which were salvageable.
The poor rosa rugosa (which we inherited when we bought the house, and transplanted from the other side of the garden) had what I'd bought as a dwarf fuchsia planted in front of it. Turns out that it wasn't such a well-behaved shrub after all ~ it just kept on growing and pushing into the poor rose. Still, rosa rugosa are hardy buggers so I'm sure it will soon regrow into a better shape 🤞
Everything in the right-hand side of the border had got out-of-hand, too.
We are still working on the border but already it was starting to look better by this point last week.
Whilst it's probably not the best time of year to trim it, I nevertheless decided to cut back the escallonia somewhat. I didn't cut it down as low as I really wanted to as I didn't want to lose all the flowers. I'll save the final chop for later in the year. It doesn't look particularly pretty at the moment but like the rosa rugosa, escallonia are tough shrubs and I'm confident it will bounce back in due course.
We did manage to save three of the smaller shrubs, which have now gone into the low bed in the front patio area. Needless to say, they have all lost their labels and I can't remember what they are called, although I believe the middle shrub may be Rose of Sharon 😕
As you can see, I also moved the brazen mermaid bird bath (she was already in the garden when we bought the house) into the bed; one of these days I will get round to giving her a verdigris-type finish.....don't hold your breath, though, 'cos I've been saying that for the last seven years 😄
The peonies have been beautiful again this year. I have no idea what variety these lovely red ones are as they were already in (different parts of) the garden when we moved in. I planted a white-flowered one two or three years back which has been very slow to do anything, but this year it has a number of buds so I'm hoping for a good display in due course.
I'm way behind with greenhouse photos; these were taken a couple of weeks back. As I mentioned in my last "proper" post I was contemplating tying the tomatoes to canes to help straighten them somewhat, which I have now done. I'll try to remember to take some up-to-date photos to show you their progress.
The sweet pepper plug plants, Peppers from Heaven Orange, arrived looking a little sad. They were pretty dry so I soaked them for a while, then put them into larger pots. They looked like this for a few days but I'm happy to report that they have since perked up considerably ~ photos to follow in due course 😉
In the end, 15 of the 16 sunflower seeds germinated which I found immensely pleasing. They are, of course, a fair bit larger by now 😄
Ta-daa! I now have the perfect little spot for sheltering some of my plants that are not-so-keen on the cold and wet Orkney winter weather. I can also use the shelf above the little grow houses to store the garden décor that might otherwise be damaged by being blown all over the place! I'm so pleased with what Adrian has done with the old arbour seat, it's made such good use of something that was just going to waste. I'm thinking of swapping the large tubs and chair display around at some point ~ I'll break the good news to poor 'ole Adrian in due course 😏
