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Tuesday 23 June 2009

Uninvited guests

I've had a lot of luck with random plants accidentally sowing themselves in the garden, both front and back - one of the highlights in the front right now (and one of the few plants not to be entirely swamped by the rampant lavender) is this snapdragon, which appeared out of nowhere last year and is looking even better now. Apart from the ubiquitous perennial cornflowers and the yellow corydalis, there are also some love-in-a-mists which have grown up under the palm tree, one of the few plants that can actually survive in that soil (photo a bit blurry, alas).

The funniest visitor, though, has turned up underneath the bird table, and is liable to be pulled up very shortly before I get arrested... what do they put in that birdseed??


Blooming marvellous

Bit behind with this (mainly due to a holiday followed by a missing camera charger, which has now turned up) - so here's a quick look at the state of the garden as it is now, plus a few of the flowers that have come out over the last couple of months...

The clematis - supposedly it's a "multi blue" but lacks the multi-ness, so I suspect it may have been mislabelled.

The mossy saxifrage is doing pretty well in the wall - this pic is from May, and since then it's produced loads more flowers, in fact it's doing rather better than its siblings which were planted in the proper flower beds!


This aquilegia was one of the bare-root ones that I planted in the front, and the only one to have successfully flowered (the soil quality is awful, I think the palm tree just hoovers up all the nutrients). This flower was absolutely lovely for a few days until the bastard squirrels decided to bite the stalk off. Gah!


In the pots in the back, there are currently some magnificent orange lilies and a purple anemone (I planted several anemone bulbs but only this one has flowered so far); the sweetpeas are also starting to come out and are really beautiful.