Time to stand and stare

One of the wonderful things about being retired is to be able to take life slowly.  I don't mean that I drift about all day doing nothing. In fact I'm as busy as I was when I went out to work. I still have commitments, but I have the freedom now to choose how I spend most days. To take in and  enjoy all the little things in life is a great privilege.

There's a poem by William Henry Davies:

'What is this life if full of care 

we have no time to stand and stare'

And as I walk almost the same path each day I so much enjoy the changes I see along the way.

As I passed by the woods the other morning I could smell the wild garlic, which tempted me inside.There I found bluebells, buttercups and old tree stumps.  I was reminded of years ago when we used to walk here with our children and they always played on a massive old tree stump. I found the remains of it, much rotted down now but still there.  There was a little area with lots of old tree stumps and logs and I wondered if this was where my grandson and his school class go when they have their 'woodland classroom'.

Down the lane, where I walk several times a week, everything is changing. The hawthorn blossom is out, reminding me both of the hedges near my childhood home and of our first house when we were married where we planted a hawthorn hedge. I love the delicate scent of the blossom.

 The cow parsley is out too, there is a delicate airy fairyness to it which I love. I would like some in my garden.

'No time to stand beneath the boughs

and stare as long as sheep or cows'

The cows were out in the field being quite inquisitive as I passed by

'A poor life this if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare'

Salad growing

As I  review my salad growing  for this month for the salad challenge, I'm feeling that I'm making progress. I have a raised bed which I am using for growing salad and there are some neat rows of crops coming along nicely. I'm also using the cold frame to grow salad.

There are some  radish  now  ready to pick from the first sowings I made. The tom thumb and little gem lettuce which I transplanted into the raised bed have taken well.  I had so many of the little gem lettuce that I also planted some in between the broad beans and peas. In the cold frame I have some tantan lettuce which is a little gem type. I have planted out the watercress which has been a bit slow to grow, but hopefully the warmer weather will bring it along now.

I have been sowing more crops this week. I sowed  watercress,                              mizuna, and lollo rossa.  I also planted some beetroot seedlings.  We had planted most of them at the allotment and these were left over. Couldn't bear to throw them away.

I bought some herb plants a few weeks ago. There are ginger mint, basil mint and lemon mint, sorrel, hyssop and three sorts of sage. I potted them up into terracotta pots and left them next to the raised bed whilst I decided where to put them. I the end I left them there because I thought they looked quite good. I have other herbs around the garden, different types of mint, thyme, oregano, marjoram and chives. Today I sowed seeds of borage and dill. I have parsley and basil seedlings too.

I've been trying to grow outdoor cucumbers, the seeds germinated but the seedlings eventually died off. I've sown more seeds and if these don't work then I might buy a couple of plants from the garden centre to grow in the cold frame.

There's lots of salad growing, I just can't wait to eat it!

  

     

http://vegplotting.blogspot.co.uk/p/52-week-salad-challenge.html

Making a bug hotel

I've had a few projects planned for the garden recently and one of them was to make an insect hotel.   

We do a lot to encourage wildlife into our garden, so this was just another thing to do and a great way of getting children involved. I got some ideas from Dawn Isaac's book, Garden crafts for Children and also from the Internet.

My husband made the framework from an old bird table and bits of wood he had lying around. He drilled some holes in larger pieces of tree branches and we collected stuff from around the garden, like twigs, leaves and bits of rotting wood. We also used cardboard tubes, drinking straws, pine cones, old plant pots, bits of moss and straw. These are all the sort of materials which bugs like.

Our 8year old granddaughter really enjoyed putting this together, the 6 year old helped a bit, but he prefers to dig up the garden.  We placed it in a little corner of the woodland garden. I think the children will be checking each day to see if any bugs have moved in! We enjoyed making it so much that we plan to make a bigger one at the allotment.

Phyllis's garden

I've been working on a problem bit of the garden recently. This little area of the garden was for years regarded by our cat Phyllis as her spot. That was one problem, the other was the dry shade. The dryness was caused by a massive conifer taking the moisture from the soil.. The result was that there were a few plants which struggled to grow there and for most of the time the border looked dull and lifeless with a lot of gaps where nothing would grow. Whenever I tried to plant any new plants Phyllis would look most offended and either lie on them or poo around them.

Well sadly, Phyllis is no longer with us and I shed many tears at the time but I decided that I needed to brighten up this little spot in the garden. The first step was to get rid of the conifer and we did this earlier this year.

I thought long and hard about planting schemes, poured over gardening books and magazines, visited garden centres and nurseries and still remained undecided about what to plant. The area has sun for the early part of the day and the plants which seem to do best are those which flower in the spring and early summer. After that time it becomes a fairly dark looking area. I wanted some plants which would look good during the summer as well as the spring, even if they were foliage rather than flowers.

At first I was going to dig everything up and start again, but some of the plants were doing quite well and I always like to leave  plants which are happy to grow as long as they don't take over. Some plants I've just moved around to better positions, others I have been able to split up and spread around more.

At the back of the border are Solomon's Seal and Centaurea (perennial cornflower). In the middle are some Marguerite daisies and a  blue hardy Geranium. There is also some yellow Lysimachia punctata which seems fairly happy. Aquilegia self seeds itself around as does Honesty. These were all in the original border and were growing quite well. In the spring are Snowdrops, Tete a Tete daffodils and Grape Hyacinth.

When we were having the conifer cut down I dug up some Brunnera and Heuchera which would have got trampled on by the tree man.  I managed to split them into several plants and I've now replanted these at the front of the border. There are 2 varieties of Brunnera, a plain leaved one and  'Jack Frost' which has silvery leaves. The Heuchera is a purple leaved variety. Further back I have planted Tellima and pink Astrantia and a Polemonium (Jacob's ladder). Two new recently acquired plants are a lovely purpley blue Lathyrus and a yellow leaved grass, called Millum Effusum Aureum. I managed to split the grass into 3 plants when I took it out of the pot. The label says it likes shade so I have high hopes for it.  At the base of the stump of the conifer is Gallium Ordoratum (sweet woodruff) which has white flowers and looks lovely when it is in flower but is inclined to take over so needs to be kept in check.

The finished result doesn't look too bad.  And I'm pleased that most of the plants I've put in this new border are from cuttings taken from my own garden.

I'm now looking forward to the plants filling out and hoping that it will be a much more interesting and colourful border. Phyllis may not be around now to give us her opinion of the border but we still think of it as her garden.

A canal walk

Yesterday we really felt the benefits of being retired. It was a lovely day, we had no grandchildren commitments so we took ourselves off  for a pub lunch and a walk.

We went to the Cross Keys on the A59 at East Marton near Skipton, which does lovely food. We'd been there for an evening meal the other week on our way back from the Harrogate Flower Show and were keen to return. The pub is in a very picturesque setting next to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

After lunch we decided to walk along the canal. I like canal walks because they are flat, easy walking--no tiring hills. It was hard to believe we were only a few hundred yards from the busy A59, it was so peaceful. We passed a few canal boats as we walked along.

This little church, tucked away amongst the trees had a sign which said 'open all day'. It was on the wrong side of the canal for us to visit.

After about a mile and a half we reached an access point to the road, so we headed off along the lane in the direction of West Marton.

I've seen a lot of this wild flower about recently.  I think it is Jack-by-the-Hedge or Garlic Mustard. There was lots of it along the lane. It's very pretty.

Our final lap of the journey was to walk back along the A59 to East Marton, not an easy walk as the road is very busy and there is not much in the way of footpaths on this stretch.

Our walk was about 4 miles and it took us an hour and a half. A good afternoon's walk although my feet were aching.

Harrogate Flower Show

 

I was really excited about going to Harrogate Flower Show. I'd never been before, in fact I don't think I've ever been to a flower show before. I could see it in the distance across the fields as we drove along the road. There looked to be big tents or marquees and lots of people.

We were directed along the road into a big field.  It looked quite muddy and I was glad we had brought our walking boots with us.  We parked in the muddy field and put our boots on.  We looked around--there was no sign of the activity I had seen from the road. We wondered which way to go.  Perhaps we should just follow everyone else who seemed to know what they were doing.  We followed them onto a bus which was parked nearby.  I hoped it would take us to the flower show and not into Harrogate town centre, so I asked the driver. People were getting on the bus carrying things which I thought might be small folded up chairs. They were obviously 'seasoned flower show visitors'  and knew what they needed to bring with them.

We arrived at the gates to the flower show within a few minutes. As we walked onto the site we were met with an amazing array of stands selling just about anything you would want for your garden. There were not just plants and tools, but all sorts of garden sundries, pots, ornaments, plant supports, garden seats, old galvanised watering cans, buckets, rusty bird cages, African art and crafts, wellingtons and much more. We soon noticed that what we thought were the folded up seats which people were carrying around with them, were actually folded up trolleys to put their purchases in.  What a good idea we thought.  These people knew what they were doing.

I felt slightly overwhelmed by all that was on offer, it was much bigger than I had anticipated. So we went into one of the floral halls. Here we were just bowled over by the displays of plants and flowers from the specialist plant suppliers.

There was so much to see both inside the halls and outside, that we realised if we tried to look at everything, we would never get around the place in the one day. We needed to be selective and just look at the stands which were of our particular gardening interest.  I loved the cottage garden flowers, the ferns, hostas, plants for woodland and shady gardens.  There were some wonderful stone trough arrangements filled with alpine plants. I particularly liked the sempervivums and sedums.  I was about to buy a few when my husband very cunningly distracted me by pointing out another great display on the next stand.

I loved this display of tomatoes, no signs of blight there!

These vegetables were very artistically displayed. What perfect cauliflowers.  

Wish I could grow them like that!

By now I had managed to buy a few plants and was feeling quite envious of those people with their pull along trucks. We bumped into a couple of friends and they had a truck too.  Then we found some on sale, looked at the price and decided we'd manage without. I bought a canvas bag instead from the Kitchen Garden Magazine stand. It had some freebies in it and it held our plants nicely.

Back outside we looked around the eight show gardens, they were quite small, but very well designed. My garden never looks so immaculate, but then I'm not a garden designer.

We were getting tired,with all that walking round and my eyes were aching from trying to take it all in. So after a drink and a sit down, we decided to head off to find the bus which would take us back to the car.

By this time we were loaded up with a bag of plants and several plant supports.  This was nothing compared to some of the visitors, who had truck loads of garden plants, trees, pots and other paraphernalia.  As we queued up for the bus I wondered how they would get on the bus with all their stuff. It was quite amusing to watch, but they all seemed to manage.

As we travelled back on the bus we wondered if first of all we could remember whereabouts the car was in that huge field and secondly would it be stuck in the mud. No need to worry, we spotted the car all safe and sound.

What a great day out!