Last year I grew baby courgettes, cherry tomatoes, alpine strawberries and baby carrots from seed and transplanted them into containers. Victoria kindly babysat the seedlings while I was on holiday. The carrots turned out well but a lot of effort for only one meals worth!

The tomatoes were prolific and while delicious all came at once – I gave a lot away and ended up making soup to use them up. The baby courgettes were a great success and provided us with veg several times a week throughout the summer. The alpine strawberries looked beautiful and tasted great but being  so small and only a few at a time being ripe meant they were only good for decoration. Some have survived over the winter in one of my pots – or have they reseeded – I’m not sure?

This year I’ve grown the same variety of mini courgette but decided to try growing some flowers from seed as space fillers for the bed at the bottom of the garden, which I started to plant up last year. I ended up with a lot of cosmos, candytuft and cornflower seedlings. I grew them in my plastic greenhouse which took on the appearance of the Leaning Tower of Pisa but seemed to do the job. The process was not without disappointment. One morning I found a lone snail had made its way up to the 3rd floor of the greenhouse and munched its way through two of my cosmos seedlings overnight. He was duly dispatched over the fence.

Where seeds are big enough I give them their own little pot to avoid the painful task of thinning out. I had to do the deed on the candytuft seedlings though. I don’t like doing it  – with some of the seedlings it’s obvious they’re not very robust  but with many it feels like performing a death sentence on a healthy little being.

I dithered for weeks about whether my seedlings were substantial enough to plant in the garden but took the plunge in May. The cornflowers have not been a great success. They are very lanky and several were trampled to death by fat pigeons or eaten by snails. The candytuft have flowered well but I think I should have repeated the thinning out process before planting them out because the end result has been rather gangly plants. I think they were all fighting for light and space. I’ve written previously about my Cosmos traumas https://ramblingrose110646429.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/help-i-think-ive-got-thrips/ Sadly it didn’t get much better – the survivors are all a disappointment.

My only real success is the courgettes. They are proof that you don’t need much space to grow veg. They’re already providing us with enough veg to go with a meal once a week and are delicious. Who cares if they’re not perfectly shaped ?!

The UK public has been asked to take part in the world’s largest butterfly count, to see if the nation is experiencing a once-in-a-decade phenomenon – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49041006

The charity “Butterfly Conservation” has said that unusually high numbers of the painted lady butterfly had been spotted flying from Europe to the UK. They usually fly to Britain in the summer, but every 10 years millions arrive in a mass migration.

The charity’s Big Butterfly Count begins today and runs until 11 August.

To take part, you are supposed to spend 15 minutes in a sunny spot anywhere in the UK, counting the butterflies before submitting sightings online or via the app.

I couldn’t be doing with sitting for 15 minutes in a sunny spot – that would be a waste of gardening time in this wonderful weather. I decided I would just keep my eyes peeled for butterflies as I worked and take photos of those I spotted. This wasn’t entirely successful. I saw a “Painted Lady” but had left my phone on the window ledge at the top of the garden, to keep it out of the sun. By the time I ran across the lawn, up the steps and back again, she’d gone.

Then I spotted a “Large White”. She flitted about for ages without landing on anything. Having Googled, I am sure she was a “she” as she had two dots on her wings. I think she may have been looking for somewhere private to lay her eggs, which was difficult when I was looming over her space with a camera! Eventually she must have been exhausted and landed on a nasturtium leaf – so here she is.

I also spotted a “Peacock” and a “Red Admiral” but I couldn’t get a decent photo of them – they just would not keep still! This could have had something to do with Lily snapping at their tails every time they came near us. I did capture (not literally) a “Comma” though. It looks a bit like Lily might have taken a few chunks out of it’s wings but it was well away from her, sunbathing peacefully on our fence.

I have to say my Buddleia, commonly known as the butterfly bush was not doing a good job today. I didn’t spot one butterfly on it. In my opinion it couldn’t look more irresistible to a butterfly if it tried. I’d love to hear whether you’ve had more success with the Big Butterfly Count than I have?

Victoria invited me over on Sunday afternoon for Pimms in the garden and to identify a plant. After attempts with two different Apps which came up with some ridiculous suggestions, we identified it as Campanula. Even with my limited knowledge of gardening, I realised this is a very common plant and a name we should probably have been able to come up with ourselves. I think you’ll agree, it is very beautiful.

While guzzling our Pimms, surveying the garden, Albert joined us. This unfortunately meant the Pimms had to go round further. However, he told me about their blackbird visitors with a taste for raisins! Several of them, male and female, come to their back door every day to wait for these treats. Victoria and Albert have discovered that only Morrisons raisins will do – for whatever reason, the Asda equivalent have been rejected by the blackbirds!

I asked for a demo and it didn’t take long for a female and 2 males to make an entrance. Here is one of them enjoying a feast of the favoured variety.

Garden sounds are often a pleasure – small birds twittering, pigeons cooing, bees buzzing, the rustle of leaves and perhaps a radio playing in the distance.  Behind my garden there are trees,  a park and a playground, so I hear children chattering as they play and dogs yapping happily, other than the occasional fall out when they growl fiercely at one another while owners shout at them and sometimes at each other. Noise generated by humans does tend to be annoying though – lawn mowers and hedge trimmers for example, but I can’t complain because I need to use them too. Children often take a tumble in the park and after a deep intake of breath, cry out in pain for a few seconds, while they are dusted down and kissed better. A more prolonged annoyance is “the child” – I’m sure it’s the same one every time – she seems unable to play without emitting a high pitched scream every few seconds for hours on end. I am rarely conscious of traffic noise when I’m in my garden, other than the sirens of emergency vehicles or the air ambulance overhead, which nobody minds.

A couple of years ago we started to hear gunshots coming from the park. Initially this alarmed me and my neighbours, but after it happened several times over the course of a few weeks, we were pretty confident no one had been harmed. We  can’t see into the park when there are leaves on the trees, so when it happened again, it was discussed through the natterhatch and Victoria dispatched Albert to investigate! He discovered a man who explained he was firing blanks, with the aim of training his gun dog. He didn’t take kindly to Albert’s suggestion that there must be a more appropriate location for this activity. However the talk did the trick as he never returned and Albert survived to tell the tale.

A footpath running through the park is used by revellers returning home in the early hours – this brings a variety of noises – singing, fighting, crying and sometimes sounds of a sexual nature. The path also attracts skateboarders – what a racket they make – I breathe a sigh of relief when it stops and no-one has been mowed down. We always know when GCSEs have finished because teenagers start to congregate in the kids’ playground, their voices competing with their music long into the evening.

My latest bugbear is a drone! The first time I heard it I thought a swarm of wasps was on its way to attack me. It certainly lives up to its name, droning on for what seems like an eternity. What really brings out the Mrs Meldrew in me is that the controller of this contraption is not a child – it’s a grown man – grrr … I hope the drone doesn’t have a camera – I might be captured on film wearing my “never to be seen beyond the back garden” shorts!

I decided to try to be thrifty earlier this year and grow some cosmos from seed instead of buying from the nursery. At first they looked to be doing quite well, if a bit stunted. Then I checked them one morning to find one was just a cut off stalk – I blamed snails and sprayed with my eco friendly snail deterrent.

Then as the flower buds started to open I noticed the petals were either missing or very ragged round the edges. There was no sign of snails. Having donned my specs I caught sight of minute flying insects scurrying about on the soil. This meant war! I Googled and decided these were thrips. I rarely use insecticide but having read about these beasties I decided there was no alternative if I wanted to save my plants.

Insecticide instructions are very suspect –  “spray between 7-9 am and 6-8pm when bees are less active”. Bees do not conform to these time-frames. I took my seedlings into the garage to spray them and left them there for 24 hours before allowing them anywhere near the bees. They look a bit better and some almost complete flowers are in evidence. The still don’t look anywhere near as robust as the ones I bought from the nursery last year though …

For me my garden isn’t just about having something beautiful to look at – it’s a friend. When I need to, it helps me switch off from life’s trials and tribulations.

When I lost my beloved dog Pebbles in March 2014 I spent hours out there finding jobs that needed doing and some that really didn’t. Although it hurt to be in the garden without her and I wept so many tears that I didn’t need a watering can, it seemed somehow better than being inside the house without her. 

In 2016 my sister and I had to take matters into our own hands and find a nursing home for our much loved mum. Her Parkinson’s and associated dementia had reached the stage that made it impossible for my 83 year old dad to cope with the demands of caring for her. The first home she went into was the only one we could find with an immediate vacancy. It soon became clear that the staff were not geared up to caring for her needs and we found her in some distressingly undignified situations on a number of occasions. When I returned home from visiting her I would go straight out into my garden and work on it. It helped me take my mind of my grief because it did feel to me as though we were letting her down. After 3 months we got her into a nursing home dedicated to the care of patients with severe dementia. The staff are wonderful carers but it doesn’t take away the feeling that I have already lost my mum. She loved gardening. When I sold my parents house I transplanted some of her plants into my own garden, including some forget-me-nots. They reliably reseed each year and remind me of the warm, capable mum and granny she once was – never to be forgotten.

In May 2015 we took ownership of our new puppy Lily. I spent a lot of time in the garden with her but not much gardening got done that first summer! Close supervision was required. She thought it great sport to chase fledglings who hadn’t quite mastered the art of getting airborne on the first attempt – thankfully she never caught one. She tried to eat every plant and I spent hours scouring the internet to identify whether what she had munched was poisonous to dogs – most seemed to be. Miraculously she didn’t come to any harm. She also found wasps and bees fascinating, despite my attempts to teach her to leave them alone. How she has never been stung remains a mystery – she would pounce on them and bat them with her front feet until the tiny body no longer moved. Fortunately she has grown out of eating my garden, other than the odd blade of grass when she wants to make herself sick. I have not been so successful in deterring her from chasing insects but I do my very best to protect the bees and butterflies. Other than the risk of a sting, I don’t feel so inclined where the wasps are concerned, even though I know they are good for the garden too!

My next door neighbour Victoria also likes gardening. We chat endlessly about our plants and how they’re doing. We share cuttings and seedlings but frequently can’t remember their names and text each other later after a Google. A couple of years ago Victoria and her husband Albert (affectionately known as the Royal family) replaced the rickety old fence between our gardens. The new version ended up being so high that we could no longer see each other over the top. We still spoke to each other through it but it wasn’t the same, not being able to see a face. Last summer  Victoria’s  son made us a fence hatch with a little hinged door. It makes us howl with laughter every time we use it. It’s known as the natter-hatch.

I don’t profess to be an expert gardener – far from it. I have made many mistakes over the years but I just try things and often they do work, to my great surprise. Mine is not a manicured well planned garden, it’s simply a mishmash of the plants I love. When I am indoors I like nothing better than to settle down in front of the TV with a glass of wine and Monty or Alan.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself – May Sarton

I began this blog in the summer of 2019. My gardening and life experiences definitely echo May Sarton’s words!

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