Primrose memories

When I was growing up I remember  my mother often talked about  a friend she had who was called Marjorie. Marjorie had married a farmer and moved from the north of England to Devon. Devon seemed a long way away, I had never been there, we only ever went to Wales. But the idea of living on a farm in Devon sounded really good to me as a child. My Mum and her friend used to write letters to each other and twice a year my Mum would receive a parcel from Devon which we were always excited about. One parcel always arrived in time for Mum's birthday in October and it was clotted cream. It was a real luxury because you couldn't buy clotted cream in the shops up north then. We also didn't have a refrigerator so we had to eat the clotted cream up as soon as possible before it went off. I don't remember what we had with the cream but it was probably tinned peaches as we wouldn't have been able to buy strawberries in October then like we can now.

The other parcel from Devon would arrive around Mothering Sunday and it was always a box of primroses cut from the wild in the Devon lanes. You can't do that now, but this was the 1950's before the laws about not cutting flowers from the wild came about.

I really loved those primroses with their delicate, little stems and lovely pale yellow petals. But they always looked a bit squashed when we opened the box so we had to get them into water as soon as we could before they died. Mum and I  would get together all the little vases and jugs  we could find around the house and fill them with these gorgeous little flowers. They soon recovered from their travels and they brightened up our shabby little house no end. I still have a little jug of my Mum's which always got filled with primroses. It makes me think of Devon lanes and banks of primroses. Marjorie eventually had to stop sending the primroses as she said she wasn't allowed to cut them anymore.

Mum's little jug filled with little flowers but not primroses as I don't have enough to cut yet

I have been to Devon many times but never in the Spring when the primroses are out, but I see them sometimes up here along the lanes in Lancashire or the Lake District and never fail to think of my Mum and her friend Marjorie when I see them.

Primroses along the road at Whalley in Lancashire

It's only in recent years that I discovered  you can buy native primroses-- primula vulgaris. I planted some in my old garden under the trees. Now we have moved recently and I am trying to create a little woodland patch in our new garden and one of the plants on my wish list was of course primula vulgaris.  My daughter who now lives in our old house said I could dig some up from her garden, they were in need of splitting up and replanting so I didn't have to be told twice. 

They look lovely nestling around some old tree stumps and I'm hoping they will increase in numbers over the next year or two.

Spring has arrived at the allotment

We've not been down to the allotment much recently, partly due to bad weather,  but also because of my ankle injury which meant that when the lane was muddy and the allotment paths slippy it was a bit of an unsafe place for me. But at last Spring arrived and fine weather, so off we went to get some much needed work done.

I was greeted by one of my favourite flowers in bloom, the marsh marigold in the pond. As I took a closer look I noticed that there was no sign of the frog spawn which had been there for a few weeks. I wondered if the rain had washed it away as the pond was pretty full up of water. But no, on closer inspection I could see little tadpoles swimming around happily. Peeping out from under the marsh marigold was a frog, I spotted another one down at the bottom of the pond. The frog was very quiet and still and didn't seem to mind me. 

Another welcome sight was the daffodils bordering the path, the bright lime green euphorbia under the sycamore tree and the tulips flowering in the big tub.

The last time we went to the allotment a few weeks ago, we moved the blueberry bushes from the fruit area where they were a bit overcrowded to another bed where they would have more space. They were looking fine after their move. The mulch you can see in the photo is shredded pine needles. We always shred our Christmas tree branches to keep for the blueberries as they like an acid soil. I have heard that this is a good thing to do.

Looking at the rest of the fruit bed we could see that the fruit frame was falling down, so some work will have to be done on it soon before we need to start netting the fruit against the birds. Richard dismantled the frame and repaired the support for the apple tree.

The rhubarb is growing really well and we should be pulling some of the stalks soon.

I'm a bit late planting the potatoes, I would normally have them done by now. So that was an important job to get done. We started work on preparing the potato containers with compost. I planted the first earlies in six of the potato bags. The variety is Maris Bard. I put compost in the bottom of the bags to about a third of the depth and sprinkled in a bit of bone meal. The bags are quite big so I put four potatoes in each bag. Then topped with more compost. When the potatoes start to grow and the shoots show through the compost I will top up with more compost. The next lot of potatoes to plant will be the second early Charlotte a salad potato.

Another important job was to weed the asparagus bed. I also fed it with some blood, fish and bone. I was pleased to see a few little asparagus spears starting to come through.

The fine weather didn't last long, it started to rain, but at least we got a good number of jobs done.

Plants for free

Having a new garden and lots of borders to plant up can be a bit of a drain on the finances. Trips to the garden centre for a few bags of compost often result in a few plants being added to the order. It's not often that I come away from a garden centre without buying at least one new plant. But there are other ways of acquiring plants. Fellow garden friends are often only too pleased to donate cuttings.  Visits to open gardens are a good source of plants, often at a reasonable price. A packet of seeds can produce many pots of plants.

A lot of the plants for our new garden have come from our old garden which now belongs to our daughter and family. Some of them were brought with us when we moved, but I didn't bring anywhere near as many as I had wanted to. I just didn't have the time with all the other preparations for moving house. Although on moving day when we loaded up the car with plants there looked to be an awful lot of them. Now it's Spring this is a good time to dig up clumps of plants and divide them and my daughter has been happy for me to go round to her garden and do this.

So for a couple of weekends I have been round to her garden with my fork, spade and a variety of plant pots and carrier bags lifting and dividing plants. Spring is the best time of year to do this with most plants. Back home I potted up the plants as there were so many I didn't have time to get them in the ground immediately.

Some of them were big clumps like this sedum which needed splitting up with a couple of forks. I thought I would get two or three plants from it but it split into seven. Some of them were quite small, but a few weeks later had grown much bigger.

The back area of our house now looks like a plant nursery with all these plants lined up waiting to be planted. There were very few plants in our new garden so we have a lot of space to fill in the borders. I can see I will be kept busy for the next week or two planting all this lot up.

Through the garden gate--March

The weather has not been very Spring like in March and I know we are all longing for some warmer days with more sunshine. No more snow please!  We have been working on our new garden whenever we can but we have had so much rain.  We get so disheartened when it rains hard and the bottom beds fill with water, but we can see progress. The spring bulbs which I planted weeks ago have brought some colour to the borders.

        

I have been enjoying the Hellebores which I planted. Some of them are a lovely dark red colour, one of them is called 'Anna's Red'. I bought it because my granddaughter is called Anna and she has red hair. I just had to have it! I łove plants which for different reasons remind me of people I know. I wonder now if I should look out for plants which are named after my other grandchildren?

On my potting bench is a collection of small pots of spring bulbs--tete a tete daffodils, yellow and purple crocus, blue Chionodoxa and Pushkinia. It's a lovely display of colour. I have planted some containers of violas too. They are around the garden in different places-- the garden table, outside the kitchen door.

Under the Weigela in the front garden are some bulbs which in  last month's 'Through the garden gate' blog were covered in snow. They are looking much more cheerful now and I have added some lavender and Heucheras to the front of the border. 

This is a border which is tucked away and can get forgotten, but it does get quite a bit of sun. I cut the Weigela back last year when we moved into our new house to make some planting space underneath. It will be good to have a bit more colour there this year.

I am pleased to say that my ankle is recovering well and I am able to get about the garden more, I can even use the spade and fork now, so as soon as the weather is better I will be doing much more planting in the garden beds.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.