Garden 2013 no 7 ( forgot to post it earlier)

Looks like I forgot to post number 7 so here it is

Garden 2013  no 7
It’s been a while since I posted on my garden. This summer has flown by; retirement is a very busy time of life for me. Like I said last time, I spent May in France and when I came home the garden was overgrown thanks to the deluge of rain that fell while I was away. 

The mini monsoons have been followed by six weeks of 30 + degrees, I’ve been hose piping the garden every night after the sun dies down.  These are temperatures virtually unknown in Scotland. Although I have to say this heqt wave is coming to an end, we have had thunder storms and today we are back to heavy rains. 

This bizarre combination of rain and extreme heat has made a noticeable difference to the garden. The soft fruit all yielded bumper crops and I have a freezer full ready for jams and preserves when I get back.

The only problem with the fruit was the birds, I think they ate as much as I picked; (mental note to self, buy fruit nets before next year). I even had 6 delicious red cherries from my young cherry tree. Not exactly a bumper crop, but it’s a young tree and this is the first year it has produced. I’m hoping this is a good omen for years to come.
The vegetables didn’t do so well. The beetroot looked as if it was flourishing, but under all those leaves leaves, were tough, woody baby beetroots hardly the size of walnuts.

I couldn’t leave them in the ground any longer because they started to go to seed, most of them didn’t even make it into the kitchen; they went straight into the compost. 

 I had more shallots than ever before. I’ve just lifted them out of the ground because I’m off to France again next week and I want to get them into jars of spiced vinegar before I go away. I’m struggling to find enough space to dry them all.

The garlic looks OK, not quite ready to lift yet so I’m hoping it doesn’t go to seed while I’m away. I need it to make my herb oil. I planted sets of red onions and the leaves grew tall but the onions themselves didn’t grow. I’ve pulled them from the ground because they started to flower, I’ll use the couple that grew to a decent size but the bulk of my red onions are destined for the compost pile. Salad has been strange, I’ve had a constant supple of huge radishes and spring onions, I pulled the last today because I want to use them before going away. That’s it for this year; I’ll not be putting in any more seeds in now, it’s too late in the season.

I’ve also had a never ending supply of cress growing in the window but; none of the lettuce, rocket or salad leaves survived. Despite my daily hose pipe watering, they died off as fast as I could plant them. In the end I gave up and concentrated on the things that grew. The oddest thing of all this year is the non show of the nasturtium flower. Every year I grow lots and lots of nasturtiums and they’ve always flowered profusely. 

This year I’ve had the usual abundance of good strong healthy looking plants, they are a great addition to the salad bowl, but not a single flower, and I’ve no idea why. My lavender liked the hot weather, I have lots drying ready to make little lavender sachets.
Talking of flowers, this year I have really enjoyed my flowers. I’ve spent the last few years transforming my garden from the traditional lawn and flower borders into a food producing plot. 

 

 

The plan was to have a fairly productive and established food growing garden by the time I retired so that I could indulge my love of the garden in all that extra time I was going to have. This is my first summer of retirement and so far things haven’t exactly panned out the way I planned. Rather than having extra time for the garden, I’ve ended up with a lot less. I’ve come to realise that retirement is exactly the same as any other time of your life in as much as there is a finite amount of time and usually an infinite amount of things you want to do. 

 

I’ve spent very little time here in the last few months because I’ve been trying to cram so much in. I’ve spent a long time in France, I’ve spent more time than usual enjoying the company of my grandchildren, I have my painting to find time for plus I now like to go out taking photographs AND, I like to walk every day. I have signed up for photographic competitions AND a painting competition. I can walk much further now than I used to. I’m determined to keep up with the walking, I want my retirement to be long, happy and healthy, and to do that I need to keep fit and walking every day is my chosen method.

 

So now I’m thinking maybe my garden would be better used as a quiet restful place where I can sit and relax occasionally rather than a place that needs time and effort. I guess its all about priorities; no one can do every thing. I’m considering grassing back over the vegetable plot and just keeping the soft fruit, they mostly look after themselves any way and I do quite like making jam. No firm decisions yet but I’m ‘considering my options’ as they say. I’ll miss the shallots, they always do well and I like to have pickles but I’ve come to realise, I can’t have every thing.
I’ve already made a quiet area at the top of my garden where I can sit and enjoy the sun and I’m still thinking about putting the grass back. 
 

These are just random photos taken over the last month or so. Like I said, I’m enjoying getting back into sitting watching the flowers. It’s been hectic, but it’s been fun.  

When I get back from France this time my priority will be to paint the garden walls, fences and gates. It’s a big job and should have been done this summer but now I’ll have to find time to for it in between this trip to France and my next one which will probably be in October. I hope the weather lasts because I can’t paint in the rain.
The grandchildren go home on Tuesday and I leave again for France on Thursday. It’s my sisters 60th birthday and we are having a garden party. I doubt I will post again before I leave although I will do my best to visit sites and posts I’ve missed.

 

 

By the time I come home in the middle of August, the children will be back at school, the evenings will be getting shorter and the best of the summer will be gone. Summer in Scotland never lasts much past the end of August, maybe, just maybe, some sort of normality will return to my life. 

Garden 2013 no 8

Garden 2013 no 8.

First thing to say is that when I came home from France and walked through the gate, I was astounded at the amount of colour in the garden. I thought after almost 2 weeks of neglect in the sunshine, every thing would be wilted and brown. Happily it wasn’t. The nasturtiums were in bloom at last, not the masses of flowers I’ve had in previous years,  but there were a few nice big bright orange flowers hiding amongst the leaves. 

The Buddlea bush looked about   10 inches taller and full of blooms, (also full of butterflies). I can see why it’s called a butterfly bush, it really is. 

Just before I left I filled the old strawberry tub with some inexpensive bedding plants and when I returned……………the old strawberry tub was transformed into a mass of blue and white, it makes a very pretty addition to the garden for next to no cost or effort.
 

The Lavateria has done very well this year, I had a mass of bright pink flowers before I left, and I returned to even more flowers. This particular shrub had flowered so prolifically, I had to stop and dead head it before I even reached the front door, and its continued to flower ever since then.

 It must be  2 or 3 years old now and they’re only supposed to last a few years,  I’ll have to remember to prune it vigorously next spring to try to keep it going. 

I also need to prune the Spiraea Douglasil back next year because that has had more flowers this year than ever before. I’m a bit undecided about this plant, it looks very pretty with its soft pink spiky flowers but after a short while in bloom, the flowers go a horrible scruffy shade of brown and don’t look at all attractive.
 
I think the biggest flower success this year has been the Montbretia, the lovely bright orange flowers that grow from dense clumps of upright sword-shaped foliage.

I love the story behind this plant; it originated in Southern Africa but has become naturalized in (of all places) the Western Isles, off the northwest coast of mainland Scotland. There they grow in great colourful swathes along the roadside, in country lanes and beside the lochs. Considering this plant originated in Africa its amazing that it can acclimatise  to the harsh climate of the western isles. 

This is the first year they have grown in my garden, last year I put a couple of the little corms in the ground along the border, and this year, I have lots of flowers in 2 sizes (2 varieties). In a couple of years, I should be over run by them.
The yellow tansy is still in flower, it’s lasted for ages this year and it still makes an impressive sight as you enter the garden. And last but not least is the Campion, I had Rose Campion, (which is what this is), pink Campion and white Campion in the garden this year. The white and the pink are the wild flower variety and the rose is the cultivated variety. The white and pink flowered earlier in the year but the rose still has the last few flowers of the year.
Next year I intend to carry on with the fruit, it pretty much looks after itself and I love making the jams and chutneys, I’ll also do the radishes and spring onions in tubs because they are easy, delicious, don’t take up a lot of space plus you get crops every 6-8 weeks. I’m not sure if I will carry on with the veg though because at the moment, I want to reclaim my lawn and enjoy the flowers and butterflies. I'm in the middle of repainting gates and fences and after that, there is fruit pruning to be done in the Autumn, and thats about it until next spring. 

Garden 2013 no 6

Garden 2013 no 6

As I said in the previous garden update, I spent the month of May in France. It rained a lot while I was in away, but this is Scotland, and I’m pretty certain it rained even more here. Thanks to the heavy rain throughout May, I came home to a jungle. I’m not complaining, every thing I planted before I left had grown, but so had every thing else. 

The grass was knee high and took several attempts at cutting and there were more weeds than my little veggie plot had ever seen.

The pond looked lovely with forgetmenots all around and the water marigolds spilling out of the pond. But the water was so high it was overflowing at one end.  On the plus side, the radishes were ready to eat as soon as I arrived home and the strawberries will not be far behind, they already have lots of flowers.

It took me a couple of days to cut the grass, weed the shallots and then weed the little plot behind the pond. I planted garlic sets, red onions sets and beetroot there before I went away.

The garlic and red onions have done very well but needed weeding and the beetroot, which was planted from seed,  had done so well in the rain they needed thinning out as well as weeding. 

This little chappie was my constant gardening companion for a few days.

The bags are all doing ok, the radishes are ready to eat. The rocket seems to be slower, I just hope it didn’t get too wet, the spring onions are looking good, they needed thinning out but they are fine and the beetroot I planted in bags also looks good. The carrots are coming up very well in the tubs. It looks as if I accidently left some potatoes in there because I have potato plants growing in there with the carrots, which I wasn’t expecting. I resorted to buying some little lettuce plants last weekend because the rocket is no where near ready and it would take too long to grow lettuce from seed. I bought a tray of green lettuce and a tray of red lettuce, the type where  you can just pick leaves and leave the plant in the ground.  I need some green to go with my radishes.
And on the ‘non eating’ front, I came home to find the London Pride and the Bluebells in full bloom down the side of the garden. 

Lastly…………….this beast of a plant nestling between the Pink Campion and the Bluebells is Mullein. I scattered seeds from wild Mullien on the ground two years ago and when nothing happened I thought the seeds were dead. 

I didn’t know Mullien takes two years to grow. They are fantastic plants, described on good old Wikipedia as; ‘’a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 metres tall or more. Its small yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which bolts from a large rosette of leaves’’. I first saw this plant growing outside a ruinous, abandoned farm building in rural France and fell in love with it straight away. I’m so pleased I now have these in my garden. Its old fashioned herbal name is lungwort which reflects mullein’s traditional use as a treatment for relieving cough and congestion of those with minor respiratory ailments. Mullein is recommended by herbalists for treatment of cough, sore throat, and colds. Not of course that I intend to use it, I just like looking at it and as it grown to its full height, I’ll be posting more pictures of it.

Introducing my new blog.

Introducing my new site; The Paint Shed

This is my Gallery.

It's a collection of paintings and drawings produced by me over the last five years. After much encouragement from many, many friends, I decided to collect most of my work and post them all together in one place. And this is the place.
When you visit, start with the introduction (tab at top of the page), then take a look at the work. The work is posted separately making it easy to comment on individual pieces and before you leave, there is a guest book at the top of the page for you to sign or comment in as you wish. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a 'work in progress', and it's obviously going to take a while to get all my work photographed and posted but; the general idea is that this is the online gallery for my own work. I’ll try to get as much as I can posted before I go to France but I suspect this is going to take a while.


I've looked for the 'join this site' gadget and it has been removed and replaced with a 'Google+' gadget. I really don't want to do this, it entails filling in a new profile that displays your real name and is used on all Google sites including blogger and YouTube. If I fill this in my blogger profile will disappear and be replaced with the new one.

Anyway..........I have a plan, I've left the 'follow by email' gadget in the right hand column and suggest those who want to ‘join’ this new site use the email alert to keep up with new posts and leave their name in the guest book to say they are following. That way I know who 'follows the site', followers get regular updates and I don’t have to join Google+ Hope this is OK with every one.



introducing

THE PAINT SHED

http://thepaintshed.blogspot.co.uk/

Garden 2013 no 5

Monday 15th April was a rare day of sunshine and I took advantage of this all too brief window.
The shallots I put in last week were virtually unearthed by the heavy rain, they all needed bedding down in the soil again.
I dug over my other small bed and planted out the red onions in neat little rows.
After the onions the garlic went in. Or at least some of it did. I have another whole garlic to split into cloves and plant out individually.
There is a space left at the side of this small bed for my beetroot. I didn’t have time to put the beetroot seeds in because the weather started to turn but that is the next task on the list. Hopefully I’ll not have to wait too long for another window of opportunity. The important thing is that I get these few basic tasks done before heading off to France.
I put some carrot seeds in my big potato barrels late last year and left them to over winter. I wasn’t expecting much because I thought I’d left it too late, and then we had so much awful weather I thought what ever was there would be ruined, but to my surprise, I’ve now got more than a kilo of young sweet and tasty carrots. I intend to replace some of the compost, re-fertilise it and then grow more carrots in the same barrels. I think if I can keep this going, I could get two crops per year.

The ultimate plan is to get the beetroot seeds in, plant the rest of the garlic, prepare the barrels and get some more carrot seed in. Then I’m going to  prepare a couple of the containers. The containers will be used to sow lettuce, radish and salad leaves before I leave, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll come home to fresh salad. I’ll also come home to weeding, grass cutting, tidying, fence painting and all the other routine jobs that badly need doing. Of course on the plus side………….being a retired lady I’ll have the time to do all these little jobs.