SoS. 3/10/20
A really quick trip round the big garden today as I’ve been on a roll with my manuscript.
As spring continues…
A really quick trip round the big garden today as I’ve been on a roll with my manuscript.
As spring continues…
(SoS is part of a blog hop called Six on Saturday for gardeners and garden lovers across the globe. The theory is that anyone can contributes pics of six gardening subjects from plants and weeds to tools, landscaping, you name it. It was begin by our MC, The Propagator, and one learns an awful lot in reading all the participating blogs.)
My gosh!
The weather today has been a reminder that spring is here and summer is just around the corner.
The air was filled with such fragrances and even after sunset we were still in short sleeves!
It’s a gloomy, dreer day, threatening to bucket down at some point. It’s also the day before the winter solstice, so it’s a short dark day anyway.
We’re in the city for a few days and so Husband dashed out, mowed and threw handfuls of blood and bone around the Matchbox ready for the rain.
There’s nothing much of note in this little garden this week. Thanks to Covid-19, and being in Lockdown at our bigger garden, it’s been a long time between drinks in this tiny one. So yesterday, whilst the sun was shining, I took pics of rusty garden accoutrements we have spattered around. I love rust in a garden – it blends, harmonises and enhances any and everything. I. also love garden ornaments that are woven, welded and built, as my Rusticana board shows on Pinterest.
As the world begins to lockdown, the garden couldn’t honestly be a better place to spend one’s time, could it?
It’s been such a long time since I SOS-ed.
The main reason is the ongoing drought where I live.
Deciduous trees are yellowing and losing leaves, not because autumn approaches, but because of lack of water. Our subsoil is dry for at least a metre, if not more. The above is one of two massive sixty year old willows in our garden, favourite hiding places of our grandson and our terrier.
My borders stopped flowering weeks ago and whilst we can keep the borders alive, it’s as though the plants are going into hibernation. So there’s little to photograph as even in the city, trees are beginning to shed, street verges are dry and in some cases just dirt. And gardens of the less interested are looking awful.
However, on a quick walk yesterday, I took pics of what caught my eye and gave me hope that this pervasive dry will end one day and it will rain.
Acorns in a street row of oaks. I love the trees – so shady in summer.
Down a little lane and shaded from the worst of the westerly sun, this tiny little clematis (unknown?) which I found so pretty. I wouldn’t mind a cutting, as I have a thing for clematis.
Which brings me to seedheads of Clematis Montana in my own garden.
Nasturtiums. Love the colours, love the taste of the flowerheads in a salad.
And finally, Pachystegia insignis. This plant that grows down the road from our little city-bolthole is the one that caught my eye a while ago with its leaves. It has papery white flowers and now these wonderful seedheads. It’s very hardy and I purchased three last year. All in tubs as a plantsman friend says they do best in tubs, she has found.
And that’s it from me for this week and probably for a little while because of the drought. It will soon be time to begin reading catalogues, to separate seeds and think about propagating, but without adequate water, it’s hard to divine anything beyond life-support for what one already has.
So pootle on to other wonderfully wet northern hemisphere gardens with The Propagator, folks. It’s envy on steroids!
Toodles.
I’ve got a basically white garden and tend to accent mostly with blacks or close-to-blacks, even the odd grey or slate grey.
So here’s my few for this week’s SoS from our little Matchbox Garden in the city.
I haven’t done SoS for a couple of weeks as quite honestly, the garden sank into a pre-spring hiatus as our weather turned bitterly cold, windy and … wait for it … wet! We have managed to accrue some quite good falls in our area after minimal rain (what we called our Big Dry) from November. So it’s been with utter pleasure that I have watched things like tulips unfold and blossoms fill the air with their nutmeg scents in the evenings.
Today, my crocuses (Jeanne D’Arc) burst into bloom and I have posted three shots…
I’m back in the Matchbox Garden away from the coast as I prepare for further eye surgery on Tuesday, so had a trip to the nursery, bought a few things and had a little bit of a plantathon… not that one really gets a sweat-up in the Matchbox, unlike my Northern Hemisphere friends who are sweltering!
Today I offer up a bit of a mish-mash of pics because in all honesty, there’s only so much to see in a garden that’s tiny.
We’ve been in the city for 10 days, but are now back in the big garden. Despite lack of water and freezing conditions, the garden has surprised us, doing things with a distinct ‘Where’s spring?’ attitude. My six might show that our garden is gradually waking from winter (such as winter was…)