Gardening here and there

In the morning, a couple of hours got my little front garden looking perkier. The view from the top of the stairs shows that, among the foxgloves and mexican daisies and geraniums and heuchera and lavender - and rosemary - there's room for a few new plants, which means a visit to a garden centre sometime soon....

In the afternoon I trotted over the hill to do some tidying and weeding in Tom and Gemma's garden - but managed to leave my phone at home, so ... no camera, no photo.

On the way home, there were many roses to admire and smell - not my favourite flower, and few if any bees visiting roses - but there are so many varieties, with so many subtleties of colour, shape, growth habit, etc, that they become quite fascinating. I found the bees, busy at work on the ceanothus and wiegela, riveting too.

An effective, if simple, floral display was a "lollipop" tree in a large pot, and all around the base were different colours of pansies - grouped by colour, and perhaps purchased as several trays of assorted colours. That stood in the middle of the small front garden, and the window boxes repeated the pansy treatment. (No camera, no photo, alas - but hopefully you get the idea.)

Amazing what a difference two weeks of sun, and a couple of lashings of ardent rain, make to a garden -

The "other" garden, two weeks ago

Lilac has finished, but everything else seems to have expanded in size, and there were so many new plants among the paving stones (including some self-seeded pansies) but mostly weeds. The wallflowers have finished, and I've cut them back in hopes of having them again next year (cream-coloured and heavily scented) - instead, delphiniums are getting very tall, and the grasses are reviving. The pansies in the window boxes are thriving, with regular watering and dead-heading. It's my delight to help nature along... and when a passer-by stops to comment and chat, that's so nice too!

Last year at this time, the garden was completely full of alkanet, with its deep perennial tap root (and pea gravel) but we don't have a photo of that either. Local legend has it that at one time those plants were growing into the windows - hmm, "legend" indeed.