Catching up with me!

image from Clipart Library

By Friday of last week I must confess that I was feeling very tired, so decided to have an easier day just pottering about in the back garden. 

The tomatoes are definitely straighter than they were, but I'm considering tying them to small canes to help the process.

I was so tired by the end of Thursday that I completely forgot to take the sunflower seedlings back into the greenhouse overnight 😳  Thankfully they were none-the-worse for my neglect and I've decided that they can now sit outside all the time.

I decided that I would spend my day of pottering about by doing some "tweaking" to the containers in the kitchen courtyard area.  By the way, just look at all that potential fruit on the standard redcurrant (Jonkheer van Tets) ~ I'm so glad I decided to keep it!

My first task was to pot up the pelargoniums, Sunflair Eva White, that I had managed to overwinter.  They were bought as a group of six little plug plants from Marshalls last year.  The four that survived didn't get anywhere near the 40cm x 40cm the description of the plants suggested they would reach; as you can see from the photo above, they are still only small!  I decided to put three into this one pot.....

and the odd one leftover into a pot of its own.  Hopefully they will put on some growth this year, and fingers crossed that I will be successful at overwintering them again 🤞

That single pot of Eva White isn't the only pelargonium on the display bench, as I included three scented-leaf plants of Attar of Roses with my order from the RHS.  I really like the scented-leaf varieties of pelargoniums but have never been successful at overwintering them.  If these grow well this year I will most likely take them indoors where they can spend the winter with my houseplants.

Next on the agenda was to put some more plants into the container with the chives and rosemary.  I split the basket of tulips Moon Blush, that I had been growing for cutting, in half and planted the two clumps either side of the old bird bath.  At the front I planted armeria pseudameria Ballerina White and Ballerina Red.  I bought these with my recent order from Shire Plants as a collection of three armeria, and had already planted Ballerina Lilac in the water bowl bed earlier in the week.   

Despite my constant moaning about the dreaded dandelions, especially in the front garden, I just couldn't resist this pair of "ornamental" varieties of our native weeds wildflowers 😉  This one is taraxacum albidum (white dandelion).....

and this is taraxacum pseudoroseum (pink dandelion).  The advice on the plant descriptions say "doesn't seem to self seed as readily as our native dandelion, but pull off the spent flower heads if you want to avoid it completely".  Of course if I was more on the ball I would have been doing that with the bloody dandelions that are plaguing me elsewhere in the garden 😏 

I also dismantled the water dish display and redid it, as it just kept tipping to one side.  I now have a terracotta saucer nestled into the compost, with an old slate roof tile set on it and the edge of the planter for a bit more support.  I sat the dish on the tile but it was a tad wobbly.  Looking at the base of the dish I could see that it wasn't flat, so got another terracotta saucer to place beneath it which seems to have cured the problem!  I felt that the large fairy could do with something a tad more stable to sit on; luckily the piece of stoneware that I had beachcombed a few years back made an ideal seat for her.  The little fairy also now has a better seat, perching on the terracotta balls. 

I was pleased with all the little jobs that I managed to get done, but was pretty pooped by the end of the week 😴 

Someone else who was obviously pooped was next-door's moggie!  I walked from the kitchen into the dining room on Friday evening and there he was, sprawled over the edge of the border with his face planted into the gravel path.  My first thought was "oh my god, he's bloody died in our garden", swiftly followed by "oh my god, what are we going to tell Helen and Paul" 😱  Thankfully he then stood up, had a big 'ole stretch.....and promptly settled back down again to finish his snooze 😄

A stroll around the "grounds" ~ part two

Sadly the osteospermum and argyranthemum haven't made it, but I'm thrilled to see how well all the fuchsia and geranium plants are doing.  I shall have to start popping them outside during the day to harden them off now, as I will soon need the greenhouse for other things 😉

Although the photo doesn't show it too well, I was delighted to see blossom on two of the fruit trees: Summer Sun (cherry) on the right, and Scrumptious (a dessert apple) on the left.  No blossom yet on the plum, Victoria, which is further to the right and out of shot but I'm just really happy that all three have come through being uprooted from the front garden!

Both of the two little redcurrant bushes, Jonkheer van Tets, look like they may well produce fruit although the one in this photo is further ahead than the other one in the bed.  The strawberries are looking good, too 😊

The primroses that I moved last month are finally filling out and showing signs of blooms.

The mint seem to be enjoying their new living accommodation!  I still can't remember the name of the one on the right but its leaves have a lovely spearmint scent.

The standard redcurrant (also Jonkheer van Tets) must be feeling happy too, judging by all the potential currants forming on it!

Buds are starting to appear on the chives, but sadly I think I've pushed the thyme (out of shot in this photo) to its death with my over-enthusiastic pruning 😯  I have a rosemary to replace it, though, which I got from Tesco with the shopping this week from their "growing herbs" section.  I have my doubts as to whether it will survive here but I do like to give things a go 😉

The pansies (Matrix Mix Coastal Sunrise) are looking a little better than they were last month.....

but are being totally outshone by their brethren on the kitchen windowsill 😆

The raised beds are filling out.....

and amazingly those little fuchsias do indeed appear to have survived the winter!

I'm really pleased with how good the water bowl bed is looking.  I've just got to remember to fix the poor hare's front legs this year 😳

When I last showed you the tulips (Apricot Beauty) they were still in bud, but look at them now ~ aren't they pretty!  I'm so glad I didn't miss them flowering whilst we were away 😊

Gently pottering about

image from Clipart Library

When I posted on Thursday of last week, I was still beavering away in the back garden and had brought you up-to-date with what I'd got done on Monday.  The remainder of the week was spent in much the same fashion: tidying a little here, sorting a little there.  It's amazing just how long it does actually take to get these things done, and it can be a teensy wee bit disappointing when the end result doesn't look a helluva lot different from when you've first started 😏  Perhaps I should try looking at it another way, and remind myself that it doesn't look too different because I've been hard at work to keep it neat and tidy (ish!) out there 😉

Not really garden-related as such, but languishing in the garden nevertheless, are the old roof slates from when we had the house roof replaced the first year we moved up here.  Some of them were taken away at the time but a fair few were left hanging around.  We've made use of them over the years mainly for weighing down bags and tarps ~ indeed, that is exactly what some of them are doing right now up in the utility area 😄 ~ although they have come in handy for other little jobs, too.  

Anyhoo, someone on Orkney Merkitplace was recently asking for recommendations for someone to do some repairs to their roof, and a chap mentioned in one of the comments that he was on the look-out for old slates to engrave on.  I have tried to get rid of these old slates before, for free obviously, and although someone asked if they could have them, they never actually turned up to take the bloody things away or even contacted me to say that they'd changed their mind!  So although I messaged this engraver chappy to tell him he was more than welcome to have these, I wasn't convinced that he'd be interested.  But he proved me wrong and popped round Tuesday afternoon to take the ones he could use with his machinery.  So that's a few less broken pieces of slate to get rid of in due course 😊

Adrian helped me to get the kitchen courtyard area finished.  He moved the black tub from beside the arbour seat, across the stone chippings ~ no easy feat as it was full of compost 😯 ~ into the corner here.  You may recall that I decided to save the redcurrants when we dismantled the bed in the front garden patio area.  This standard bush was rather unhappy at being moved as it promptly dropped all it's leaves when it was dug out and plopped into a tub!  I'm sure you can well imagine how happy I was when I realised it appears to have forgiven me by sending out lots of lovely new leaves 😊  I thought I'd give it a larger tub to call home, so repotted it into this one.  I had filled said tub with forget-me-nots last autumn but sadly none survived the ravages of the winter weather.  I may add some of the London Pride plants from the path border in the front garden that still need to be dug out.

There were a number of pots in this corner last year.  As I mentioned on Thursday, the rosemary had gone extremely woody with over half the plant dying off completely, so I decided to discard it altogether.  The two mint plants are now in the wooden planter to the left of the bay tree.  The latter was repotted last year and seems very happy and healthy.  There wasn't quite enough space for its pot to sit between the planter and the large tub, but raising it on this chunk of tree trunk proved to be the perfect solution.

The final "tweak" was to bring this potting bench down from the utility area.  We will be making a few changes up there later in the year, and this needed to be moved.  I shall use it as a display area, with little pots of different seasonal plants and bulbs.  The bird cage had been sitting on the old bird bath (which is no longer functionable as it has a crack in its bowl!), which I have now planted up with houseleeks.  The cage already had houseleeks in it, so I thought it could be part of my new tabletop display.  The lump of pottery on the bottom shelf is something I beachcombed one year when we came up on holiday.  It's a weighty piece, which I think may have been part of a stone flagon, so rather than lug it home I managed to persuade Beverly to look after it for me until we moved up here 😏

It's such a shame that this lovely terracotta pot, which had one of the mint plants in it, got broken.  When I picked it up to get the mint out I noticed that there was a crack right across it, which of course lead to the pot breaking as the mint was so firmly wedged in that it was very difficult to dislodge!  Rather than smash it up to make drainage crocks, I just tapped off a little of the broken piece to that I could wedge it across the pot to make a double-tiered planter.  I will put some tiny alpines in it in due course 😊 

Ta-daa ~ behold the newly-tidied/rearranged kitchen courtyard!  I'm really happy with how nice it looks now, even if it did seem to take longer to do than I thought it would 😏

Oh dear, another blurry photo 😕  The tub had been sitting further to the left, on the stone chippings but Adrian slid it onto the flagstones, closer to the old arbour seat, for me.  It's planted with more of the rather disappointing seasonal bedding: pansies Matrix Mix Coastal Sunrise.  To be fair, I suppose, only a couple of the plants didn't survive but they are very much further behind the others which were planted at the same time.  Hopefully now that the weather is better they will catch up and put on a nice display. 

By contrast, the same pansies on the kitchen windowsill are looking lovely!

I had some little pots here last summer and thought it would be nice to have something pretty in the same spot to look at now.  The tulips, Apricot Beauty, are part of the collection of bulbs I planted in the kitchen garden last autumn for cutting for the house. 

The utility area of the garden, as you may recall, is much higher than the kitchen courtyard.  I usually take photos of this bed from the other direction, i.e. looking from the back of the house but standing on the raised area.  I thought it would make a change to take a photo from this angle 😊  

It also gave me the opportunity to see the pretty little narcissus, Tete a Tete, up close too.....

along with the larger narcissus, Sempre Avanti ~ they are both lovely 😍

Just to give you a heads-up that I shall most likely be MIA again for the next couple of weeks as I'm going to be rather busy ~ never fear, though, I shall be back to bore you all in due course 😉

Basking in the sunshine!

image from Clipart Library

Monday was another dry day, with lovely warm sunshine.  In fact, we've had quite the run of dry days ~ I may well have to water some parts of the garden where I've been planting out and moving things if we don't get any rain soon!

Excuse the quality of this photo, I don't quite know what I've done to it!  I upload my photos into PicMonkey so I can tidy them up and add a watermark but something seems to have gone adrift here, even though it seemed okay when I saved it to my files 😒

I decided to carry on with tidying up in the back garden this week, and moved my attention to the kitchen courtyard area.  I showed you this planter last month when the narcissus were blooming, which somewhat hid the disappointing "show" of primroses I planted last autumn.  As you can see, after filling the planter with them I ended up with a meagre four plants that actually survived the winter.  I shall definitely have to rethink my strategy with winter/spring bedding in future.  Perhaps a better idea would be to grow on the little plug plants in a sheltered place (perhaps in the growhouse within the old arbour seat if we manage to get the thing set up before this winter 😏), then plant them out when the worst of the winter weather is over. 

I had a similar situation with the old wheelbarrow (along with another dodgy photo!) I planted up in the front garden.  I think the weather did play somewhat of a part here as well, but it was exacerbated by one of the local blackbirds constantly picking through the compost!

Anyhoo it didn't seem worthwhile leaving just those eight little primroses in situ so I took them and the narcissus out from the planters. 

The primroses are now in pots beside the old arbour seat, and look very much happier.  I'm most likely going to plant some kind of perennial in the terracotta pot but haven't yet decided what that will be.  It did have a rosemary in it but I decided to be ruthless and dispose of it as it had gone extremely woody.  The moon-gazing hare, a Christmas gift from Sam and Beverly which has spent the last few months sheltering in the greenhouse, sits very nicely in this new little display area 😍 

Most of the narcissus (Tete a Tete) are now in this bed with the escallonia, up in the utility area of the garden.

As it was warm and sunny, I then took the opportunity to sort out the little solar fountain.  It's meant to simply be free-floating but because it gets pretty windy here at times, that's proved not to be really practical.  The fountain tends to get blown up against the edge of the bowl and the water then gets splashed out, which means that the level drops considerably.  It came with a number of different nozzles but I decided to stick with this one which stays low.  

It has four arms, which you may be able to make out, which draw in the water to be pumped out.  I wrapped some thin garden wire around the arms, anchored by a piece of broken slate at the bottom of the bowl.  When I was sorting through my craft room I came across some shells that I didn't think I would get round to using, so I put them in the bowl to cover the slate along with little pieces of broken pottery and china that we've come across when digging in the garden 😊 

I've never thought to take a photo of the bed from this angle before 😄  As you can see, I planted one of the clumps of narcissus beside the water bowl.  It will fill the gap nicely until the alchemilla mollis comes through.  I forgot to put the shell ornament in the greenhouse, so the winter weather has taken its toll on the painted finish.  I think I prefer the terracotta, to be honest, so will let it continue to flake off 😉  

I then turned my attention back to the planters in the courtyard.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and release my two mint plants from their pots into the planter ~ they can fight it out between the two of them in there 😄  The one on the left is Moroccan mint but the other plant has lost its label and I can't remember which variety it is.

The water dish was previously in the other courtyard planter.  The fairies were originally beside the pond in the front garden, then I moved them to the water bowl bed, and finally I decided to place them here.  I believe the terracotta balls are meant to be used as a top dressing on pots, but I have no idea what prompted me to buy them in the first place LOL  I've had them for absolutely ages and have finally found a use for some of them at least!  The large fairy is sitting on an upturned terracotta plant pot saucer, which I nestled within the terracotta balls. 

The tiny fairy did have a companion but she seems to have disappeared ~ perhaps I'll come across her when we finally get the pond and surrounding area sorted out! 

I gave this second planter an overhaul as well.  The chives are obviously very happy and just needed a tidy up.  I don't really use the stalks in the kitchen but I love the pretty purple flowers.  There were a couple of clumps of houseleeks and a lemon thyme in the planter, all of which were very much past their best, so once again I was ruthless and just pulled them out.  I was on the brink of doing likewise with the other thyme (Faustini) but when I looked more closely I could see that there were a number of new shoots lower down on the plant.

Faustini therefore had a reprieve!  I cut it back very hard so now I'm hoping that it pulls through the drastic "surgery" I've subjected it to🤞 

I really do love hares 😍

The primroses, Scentsation Rhubard and Custard, are so very pretty 😊

And to finish off the post, here's a close-up of the sweet little terracotta fairies 😊