What a day….

Lavenders & Lobelia

…. For getting down and dirty in the garden!

Salad Troughs

The sun surprised us by showing its face this morning.  Determined not to miss a good day of being outside I weeded the Lavender patch again – Seems like only yesterday when I did it last – trimmed the grass and sat back with a beer whilst the OH mowed the lawn.  Have to say our front garden is looking more like a ‘looked after’ garden now and less like a forest.  I did plan to do all sorts – finish digging the back garden, move my greenhouse, plant out the herb patch, lobelia, sweet peas and morning glories.  All I have managed to do is sow 4 troughs of mixed salad seeds (one of which is my BBC Dig In Salads), plant out the lobelia (bush blue and trailing white) in and around my lavenders (hopefully the ground cover will stop my cats from using the area as a toilet) and help pot on my Mum’s tree that we bought for her birthday.

Huge Lemon Balm leaves making themselves known by my front door.

Still, tomorrow is another day…..

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Bank Holiday Diggin’

Making full use of the long weekend and armed with the lawn edging knife, spade, fork and some tunes, the garden is now starting to look like something usable and less like a forest of weeds.

5 hours later and I’m absolutely shattered.  The weather has been great.  Warm with a gentle cool breeze.  I’m just hoping it’s like this tomorrow so I can get a bit more done.  I’m dreading the task of relocating the compost bin though.

Everything in the greenhouse seems to be coming on strong.

Pea Planter, finally out of the greenhouse.

My one and only Iceberg Lettuce.

Lavender

My little helper.

No photo updates for a while.

I’m camera-less 😦

Our beach outing yesterday resulted in my camera being dropped in the sand and now it won’t work.  So you might not see any photo updates for a while.  Well, unless it gets fixed…. Which as it stands at the moment, might be a while as I can’t seem to find the warranty to send it back to be repaired.  Balls.

I might still have my old ‘I like batteries’ Samsung floating around, so all might not be so bad.

I’ve been out in the back garden again this afternoon.  I pulled back some of the plastic sheeting and had another attempt at digging over my herb/salad bed and I have to say it’s made a massive difference.  The lawn and weeds came up no problems, the ground all moist and earthy smelling.  Whilst digging more up and turning over the soil I’ve discovered an oblong trench that runs just below the herb/salad bed.  Maybe my landlord used this trench as a in-built flower planter.  I’ve highlighted the area in red on the pic:

Now to explain our garden.  This top bit is built up, about 6 bricks from the normal garden.  So I’m thinking (because the bricks look ugly) of digging out the trench and planting some lovely flowers that will compliment the Lavender beds and also the herbs/salads.  I’m not very big on flowers really, so I’ll probably opt for something trailing but pretty.  Any suggestions? Keeping in with my blue/purple/white theme of course.

Hopefully the weather will be nice tomorrow so I can get back out and dig some more.  I’m getting there…. Slowly.

Alyssum? Maybe?

Last year I planted baby Alyssum in my Lavender patch and it did well, giving me great floods of white flowers, almost, as its name suggests, like a carpet of snow.  With the bad weather we had over Winter it died right back to nothing.  Probably due to the frost/snow we had.  Now I know this is an  Annual, so I know it self-seeds and comes back….. But, is this my self-seeding Alyssum?

My photo quality isn’t all that great at the moment, so my apologies.  If this plant is indeed Alyssum, then it’s appearing all over the garden!

To me it just looks very weedy and I’m worried it might start strangling my lavender’s…. Any idea’s anyone??

On Saturday we’re off to a local Allotment site to check out a 6×4 shed that is for sale. The owner said we could go have a little look before we decided if it was for us or not. It’s only £50 and apparently in great condition. Hopefully that means at some point next week we’ll have everything cleared out of the house that needs to be in the shed (kids bikes, tools, junk etc!) Our plan for the back garden is to put decking down on the top half of the garden. Hopefully there will be plenty of space for my greenhouse and shed. Not sure what the extra space will be used for. I quite like the idea of having veggies growing in pots. I don’t think my raised beds will be put to use this year.

Tonight whilst the OH has been watching the football I have sown some Stocks (night Scented), Morning Glories and some more Forget-Me-Nots. They are now sitting quite happily on my bedroom window sill. I’ve also re-potted the Mothers Day basket I got off the kids. The Ivy was strangling everything, so I’ve split that into 4 and planted it into the garden. I just hope it doesn’t take over the Lavender patch….. Which I know it will. Damn.

Off to bed soon, apparently the weather is going to be god-awful tomorrow. It’s British Summer Time and yet some parts of the UK are having to deal with more snow. Bummer.

What a view!

This was taken on our last full day at Bognor Regis.  Almost makes me wanna cry, I mean look at it!  Clear blue water and bright blue sky.  Who’d have thought we were still in the UK?  Absolutely beautiful!

It was such a shame to arrive at Liverpool Lime Street yesterday evening to be greeted to grey skies and deep puddles 😦  But hey ho, we’re home and I’m pleased to tell you that all my greens survived my few days away.  Mum did well keeping everything watered, cool and living.  Everything has certainly changed a lot since Monday.  I now have flowers on my pea’s, my herb pot has actually started looking like herbs!  And my pumpkins are starting to flower.

Enough of the babble…. Here are a few pics I took this morning:

Already ready for picking

Yesterday we picked a few of our strawberries.  Mum is really surprised that the size of them, considering when she gave them to us the flowers (fruit) forming was so tiny.  Looks like a little bit of research did them some good.  Who know’s maybe next year they’ll give bigger fruit.

Everything else is looking as green as ever in the garden space and you can check out some recent pics out here.

We go on Holiday on Monday so the past few days have been spent panic buying and trying to pack.  Today is pretty much the same.  The weather is totally gorgeous at the moment and I really don’t want to have to shop…. Why can’t I just stay in the garden?!

Ho hum!