The bees are back in town!

If you’ve been reading my ramblings for a while, you may remember that last year I wrote about the bees that were mining in my back garden. If you’re new to me, or you want a reminder, you can read about them here. To cut a long story short, I didn’t think they would ever choose my garden again, after I unwittingly attempted to fill their home with gravel, not realising they were the cause of the hole that had appeared in one of my borders. Well I was wrong, they’re back! They’ve opted for an earlier check-in this year – by a fortnight I’d say. Once again I am having to reassure GR that they won’t sting him to death and that they’ll be gone soon, but he’s not happy.

Now, I’m perfectly at ease with the bees visiting my garden. I’m not so impressed by two other visitors though. I wondered why some of my strawberry plants were looking so sickly. On investigation I discovered vine weevils had moved in and munched their way through the roots – don’t they look disgusting – no wonder they’re so plump.

Whiteflies have decimated many of my beautiful pansies – frankly, they’ve left them looking ‘scabby’. Some are still stunning – but for how long? The ones below are fighting back.

My seed growing seems to be slightly more successful second time round. The broccoli seedlings are small but look healthy enough – I don’t want a repeat of the caterpillar massacre of 2022 – remember this?! I’ve given up on mangetout this year, but I have managed to grow three fairly robust dwarf runner bean plants. Apparently slugs, snails, blackfly and greenfly love them, but if they fail in their mission to annihilate them, there are a multitude of fungal and viral diseases that will happily do the job. Courgettes continue to challenge me this year. I’ve managed to keep just one alive from my first sowing, and only one has germinated from the second. My pepper and tomato seedlings are still miniscule. I think my vision of filling one of those wooden trug baskets (beloved by the TV gardeners) with a variety of veg and salad for our tea, is a pipe dream.

Talking of my flights of fancy, I started out this month resolved to embrace No Mow May. This resolution lasted way longer than semi-dry January, but after a week I binned the idea. I set out with the notion that I would mow a heart shape in my lawn. My plan was that the rest of the grass would grow longer and longer, leaving the beautiful shorn heart shaped path for Lily and me to stroll, wee and poo on (to be clear, I was only going to do the strolling bit). Things didn’t work out the way I’d imagined. Our lawn is comprised of many different types of grass, weeds and moss, so in a matter of days the heart shape disappeared. I lost patience and mowed the whole lot, but you can get the general gist of what might have been from the photo below. I have consoled myself with the thought that mowing after a whole month would have been a hell of a job, and after all, I do No Mow October to February.

It’s been an expensive few months on the garden front – a new fence and the steps to the front door were budgeted for. What we hadn’t bargained for was the collapse of the rendering from the ten meter long wall below our terrace. It’s been replaced now, but it’s a good job GR has started working for a living again after all his skiing jaunts!

Not everything has gone wrong in the garden. Just look at my ceanothus! Despite all the traumas over the winter, it has put on a magnificent display and looks stunning against the hawthorn blossom. The wisteria has survived the new fence and is making a valiant attempt to camouflage the drainpipes – it’s scent is intoxicating. My little lilac tree is also giving out a delicious aroma and my new clematis plants are putting in a good effort, although they are a bit vertically challenged at the moment – they need to get climbing!