Even less time to stand and stare...

Turn around and it's Friday again - turn around and autumn's almost here!

My garden good intentions seem to have evaporated into thin air. I begin each year with an imaginary list of garden good intent which gets whittled down from the 'if I only could I would' to 'need to do just to keep on top of...' actual list.

Even more true of the allotment.
Having moved from a very poor site, riddled with roots from the nearby ash tree (which remains remarkably healthy, I'm sorry to say) to a much improved and better designed allotment I have allowed the weeds to envelop some areas and had to spend lots of time hand weeding just to allow the poor beetroot room to breathe.

Hey ho - next year...

I have managed quite a few garden-related jaunts - to the Malvern and Tatton Park Shows, to Littlethorpe Manor Garden, to a 4-day holiday to view gardens of the Welsh Borders - including the highlight, Sir Roy Strong's garden - amongst many others.

Despite this, here are a few photographs showing various aspects of the garden.

Top of the left hand border in May

The left hand border on 11th May


- showing the gorgeous aubergine-coloured acer near the
french window area, together with some of the tulips which I
planted in November. I love the lily-flowered form of
tulip and buy a selection each year from the Daily Telegraph.
Then I struggle to find space for them in the borders.


I guess a better solution is to plant tulips in layers in tubs as is done in Durham's Botanic Garden. That way I could place the tubs wherever I wanted in the borders.

Must make a note for this coming tulip planting season!

A bit further down the same border showing euphorbia fireglow
and one of  last year's birthday presents - a roof finial.



Here we have a magnolia - forgotten which one - in glorious close-up. It has very little room to grown, poor thing, as it's squashed in the right-hand border so it tends to lean towards the lawn.

     Even so, it has begun to produce flowers with the most exquisite perfume.

The glory of the magnolia

Small stumpery with mill wheel 

Both stumperies are beginning to establish well.
I acquired a small mill wheel last year and it has
pride of place in the smaller of the two. I have
morelogs which I need to position before the winter
sets in which will give insects etc an opportunity to
survive until spring. There is a hedgehog house nearby
but, sadly, as in many gardens this year, no sightings of hedgehogs as yet. We often see the young during the summer months but not so far.

Fingers crossed that some appear.

It has been such a strange year in both the garden and the allotment. I do have the makings of a
superb pumpkin - in time for hallowe'en -  but only two peas germinated out of a packet of a few
hundred. Similarly, in the greenhouse tomatoes refuse to ripen - not enough sun until the last few days - yet the cucumbers are doing OK and we have to give many away.

However, the roses have been splendid and my favourite gardener, Chris Beardshaw, has excelled himself after a slow start in the small front garden. A particularly handsome twosome has been a pink climber intertwined amongst the philadelphus - and the combined perfume was especially memorable - Jo Malone couldn't have done better!

Philadelphus and  intertwined rose

I will make even more good resolutions...

...to fill my brain with remote books and habits

Snowdrops in Egglestone Hall churchyard

I suppose the first and most important resolution has to be to maintain A Garden for Pablo.

To this end I propose to whizz through 2015, beginning with an image taken at Egglestone Hall in early January. The snowdrops here in Pablo's Garden are just beginning to peep through whereas I suspect that in friend Wendy's garden they are in full bloom already.

A Mad Hatter garden fountain

Determining to concentrate on sourcing plants with a literary connection in an attempt to create a garden suitable for a book lover, I was delighted, whilst visiting Harrogate Spring Fair, to find a company specialising in characters from Alice in Wonderland - it being 150 years since the book was published.


Sadly, the prices were prohibitive so I'll have to continue to buy my weekly lottery tickets and  live in hope.

The Jubilee Park in Spennymoor is always a joy to behold.
I go there regularly to check on the two park benches we placed there, near the bowling green, one for my Aunt  and Uncle who loved this park where I spent hundreds of happy hours when small and one in memory of The Seven Law sisters - especially Frances, my mother - who was brought up in a small stone house in Park Street, just outside the boundary wall of Jubilee Park.

Tulips in Jubilee Park in May

     

May beats April in Pablo's Garden for colour and vitality.
The bluebell and forget-me-not paint vast sweeps of the left hand border a most delightful azure blue but it is the acid green of the euphorbia robbiae that shimmers and dazzles.

May border with euphorbia

It is the spectacular light  in May, however, that transforms even the most  mundane of plants
into a shimmering wonderland of colour.
                                                                           

May tulips


The garden must first be prepared in the soul
or else it will not flourish
English proverb


Review of 2015 to be continued...

April so it must be Harrogate Spring Show

Mixed weather this weekend for Bishop Auckland's Food Festival but, I'm delighted to report, that Thursday was glorious down at Harrogate for the Spring Show. Dressed suitably for the projected rain, by lunchtime we were stripped off down to t-shirts and basking in welcome sunshine as we ate our toasted sandwiches and watched the gardening world go by.

Veggie owl

 (The only disappointing part of the whole day was the dearth of vegetarian food. Vans selling veggie and nut burgers no longer make an appearance and we are resigned to the ubiquitous cheese sandwich- with or without onions. Organisers please note!)

The Flower Hall did not disappoint and despite avowing I wouldn't buy any plants before the Botanic Garden Plant Sale on Sunday 11th May, I succumbed. I even went back to purchase a clematis I'd had my eye on only to find I was too late, they'd sold out on the first day. A lesson for us all in not procrastinating. Even so, I was happy with my purchases - an unusual lavender and a delighful  woodland plant I'd not seen before, together with an assortment of summer-flowering bulbs for pots.

I was also tempted by a tree nymph-like piece of driftwood which will form part of the stumpery I'm hoping to erect - if the Prince of Wales can have one then so can Gillian Wales.

Euphorbia and flowering currant

In Pablo's Garden there's still lots to do -  annual tidying of the borders is still not finished - but I did manage to place stakes ready to tie in leggy perennials. The trees have finally had a trim back and part of the high fence which decided to lie down and die has  been resurrected. Both were large tasks that de-motivated me from gardening proper but now I'm full of enthusiasm and raring to go. Both the quince tree and the apricot which should have been a medlar have flowered so fingers crossed for a fruitful summer.


 I just need the sun to shine.

Put a spring in your step

Put a spring in your step!

How delightful to look out of the window at the spring garden.
 

spring border with hellebores

The apparent trick of the light in the early morning sunshine is no sleight of hand and one’s spirits soar at the promise of the garden magic yet to come.

euphorbia purpurea

Miraculously, almost overnight, the euphorbia purpurea has begun to unfurl, in contrast to the more common wood spurge which has been a glorious presence for some weeks. 

  

 Even so, the morning sunshine transforms its bracts into lime 

green sparklers. This is nature’s firework display, unsurpassed by any man-made New Year spectacular.

daphne odorata just beginning to show colour

Socrates, my chain-saw owl, stands guard at the entrance to the garden, keeping watch over a colourful spring basket.

Socrates - the wise old owl

                        

'A wise old owl sat on an oak,

The more he heard the less he spoke.

The less he spoke the more he heard

I would that we could be like that wise old bird!’

Thought for the day

Gillian