HER GARDEN

SWEET PEAS

ROSA MUNDI

LEOPARD'S BANE

Photo: Leopard's Bane (Doronicum orientale) lighting up a neighbour's garden

BUGLE

Ajuga reptans aka bugle, blue bugle, bugleweed, bugleherb, common bugle, St. Lawrence plant or carpet bugleweed

BONE-SEED

Osteospermum’s scientific name is derived from the Greek osteon (bone) and Latin spermum (seed).

DAFFODILS ON CHURCH WALK

Daffodils along Church Walk, Wickersley, South Yorkshire (Author's photo)

DAFFODILS ON CHURCH WALK

Your parallel parade

Glances along stones

On this ancient path

Buttery with livening light

Yolk-gold and lemon

Riddling flaxen sun-shafts

Into the moment

Weaving sorrowing souls

Their soil-bound stories

With a nod of now

A frisson of forever

Spring

On the dullest days - a splash of colour

 Golden Gerbera from a friend

Poppies smiling through the rain showers

Heads heavy, hearts light

Petunias starting to radiate joy

Wild Geranium having a purple patch

♪♫♪♫"See my baby Chive" ! ♪♫♪♫

A petunia that thinks its name's Scarlet O'Hara!

Missing a treat?

"Everything glowed with a gleam.
Yet we were looking away" (Thomas Hardy, "The Self Unseeing")

I went out with my camera into the garden today, hoping to capture the technicolour tulips. They've only just begun to flower. At the weekend they were being modest. Slim buds giggling in corners for the wind to nudge and snigger over. Now they're splaying their innermost secrets for the sunshine to smile into!

 

When I reached the gorse bush at the far end near the shed, I began to snap the blossoms there, too. I cranked up the close-up macro focus...

It was only then I noticed the ladybird...

 We often focus on the showy ones. The ones who demand attention. The loud and the shouty things.

We risk missing the precious tiny things God's put there for us to delight in.

The loss is ours if we do. But we hear the echoes of our Father weeping with disappointment that his treat didn't make our day complete.

Spring comes March-ing in

Heart of gold with skirts of a scarlet woman

Lemon meringue froth

Sulphur set alight by sunshine

Mirroring the sky on earth

Which colour shall I be today?

Tempting the birds to a banquet

Green's not just for leaves, you know

Ding a ling Ling

Not so green as you're cabbage looking

Pining for Christmas

Skimmia does this season's catwalk colours

Who stuck me up in this hanging basket? Put me down!

Look closer - you might be missing pure beauty

Achillea millefolium in my garden

I love all the living things in my garden, but my eye can be shamefully selective. For years I thought less than fondly of my two clumps of Achillea Millefolium. They seemed so ungainly at times. They carry their yellow cauliflower heads with the geeky flattened tops high above feathery, silver-green foliage, top heavy as a silicon-enhanced bust on a wasp waisted model. Somehow, they never quite pushed my buttons (more fool me)! I was often vexed by the way they lunged out over the lawn  like a little crowd of rubber-neckers  at the scene of a disaster, twitching the borders like nosy neighbours at net curtains. Then as summer faded, they'd be at it again, laying their oversized top-knots down on the ground, ostriches ready to stick their awkward heads in the sand.

This week I got out my mobile to take photos of some of the flowers that already make me smile. Snapped the settings to "macro" focus and away I went. I even took a photo of one of my "ugly duckling" Achilleas and wow! I confess I'd never really SEEN their intricate geometry and symmetry before. God's awe-inspiring eye for detail sang out from the images of his sunshine-faced creation. Thank goodness the Lord of life doesn't walk on by me because of my less than glamorous outer casing and uncoordinated stumblings!

"This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes!" (Psalm 118:23)

Never too late

I decided this year to try a different approach with one of my favourite flowers, the humble Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus, Latin fans!). 


One year I had the whole conservatory at the Manse filled with blooms. Cut and come again from July to late September. Most visitors, friends, bereaved, wedding and baptism couples went away that year with armfuls of the glorious blooms. That started out as an unplanned indoor display. I'd had them potted up, three seeds per pot, on the east facing conservatory windowsills, intending to transfer them to the garden once established. The transfer never happened and the sweet peas joyfully took over every available inch of window space, like rainbow stained glass letting in the morning's lemony light.


When I moved into my retirement house a few minutes' walk away, I still have an easterly facing conservatory, but planted up my sweet peas at the far end of the garden, trellised against the fence under the fruit tree. The ground was very stony and the earth quite thin under there; the snails had a field day, so I put down piles of bran which the little darlings gorged on instead and left the pea shoots alone (mostly!). The sweet peas thrived but could only be seen in the distance from the house.


So this year, I planted some in one of the hanging baskets closest to the house. Nothing seemed to be happening much for ages. July came and went. August too; one visitor said her Sweet Peas had flowered and finished ages ago. Then today, at last, among the tendrils and leaves, one bloom, promising more to come. Not just any bloom, but a rich purple, one of my favourite colours.


Spring is beautiful; but Autumn speaks of God's love, too, and it's never too late for the hidden seed to blossom.

A quick walk round my back garden

Well, I couldn't manage a quick walk round today, but wanted to share these moments with you as some of the most colourful blooms are having a field day...

Hanging basket on gate between my back garden and my lovely neighbour's, planted with fuschia, petunia "Surfinia" etc

Osteospermum (Cape Daisy) smiles from a border and better than any weather forecast with its opening and closing mirroring the degree of cloud cover

I have an old wheelbarrow planted with lavender (smells delicious on a summer's evening), petunias and sometimes verbena etc for a bit of colour in the middle.

This year I'm combining my clematis with a hanging basket next to it, planted with my favourite sweet peas. One year, the manse conservatory was overrun with dozens of pots of sweet peas I meant to plant out in the garden once frosts were no longer a threat. Energy failed me, along with best intentions, and folks marvelled at the astonishing indoor display from which I had endless armfuls of sweet peas to give away to friends and visitors! When I came to my current pied a terre, I tried sweet peas trained up a fence with trellis on some very rocky soil. They flowered but I didn't get full benefit of a view from the house windows. So this year I hope the sweet peas will soon be joining this clem close to the conservatory...watch this space!

Lavatera - beautiful and in best "cut and come again" tradition, like my hebes (not pictured here today), nothing can keep it down!


Persicaria. This reminds me of the wild persicaria I used to see on childhood walks. This one is a cultivated variety, always bursting with fluffy pink and red spikes. Useful as a loo brush if you have fairies to tea....

Some Phlox next to my huge fern (possibly Phlox "Alpha" unless you know different?) always adds a rich shade of pink to the borders near the pergola (and just far enough away not to be splattered with guano from the bird feeders there!) Too much information!

Blackbirds, Starlings (and squirrels!) enjoy digging up the compost in this white pot in the centre of the lawn. If they didn't, this would be a more impressive display of wallflowers (how I LOVE their scent!), impatiens (Bizzy Lizzies) and that lovely purple fluffy flower I've temporarily forgotten the name of. Note dead eucalyptus leaves from my huge, beautiful tree that makes summertime like one long South American autumn.

And now we're back at the gate, fancy coming in for a cuppa and a slice of something naughty with thick chocolate icing on, or a bowl of cookie dough ice cream?