Dodging the Storm Clouds

Under stormy skies - the back garden in full bloom

I had been planning to plant the last of the potatoes today, but heavy showers of rain and hail are streaming across the Cheshire Plain and it's proving impossible to make progress in the garden between them.  With light evenings and the promise of better weather in the next few days, I've decided that the taters will have to wait and I'll do some writing instead.

  

Clematis montana / Spanish Bluebell and Golden Hop

I was tempted to settle down to a deadly serious politically-focused blog, with the General Election result still fresh and my thoughts not yet collected into a coherent article.  If I wrote that today, it would be a bit of a rant.  As the song goes, it's not easy being Green...

Alternatively, I have the closing chapters of my latest 'Welfare Rights Lit' saga to write, rewrite and edit - arguably, a task I should set to with greater urgency with the new Government pledged to slice another £12 billion from the Social Security budget and my characters still coming to terms with the last lot of 'reforms'.  But you have to be in the right frame of mind to write fiction and today I'm not, so here's a gardening blog post.  Late May/early June is actually when the garden tends to look its best and sunshine between storm-clouds creates particularly good light for photography, so there will be lots of pictures.

The front garden - replanted

After all the digging and shuffling about earlier in the year, the front garden has started to settle down, although the top bed still looks rather empty and I've yet to get the solar fountain for the little pond.  I'm not planning to add extra perennials to the top bed as I want to plant bulbs in the autumn and there should be some unexpected summer colour as turning the soil over has brought a lot of poppy and borage seeds close enough to the surface to germinate, though there are weeds to come out too.

It may be a little short of spring flowers, but the mixture of foliage creates a lovely tapestry of shapes and colours and, with perhaps some long-lived tulips or late flowering narcissi, should improve in future years.

Bramley blooms - one for 'AppleWatch'

Across the driveway, the apple blossom is now in full bloom - the question now is whether to report this to 'AppleWatch'?  Some friends will already know that a few weeks ago when #AppleWatch was trending on Twitter and Facebook, I thought it was a survey of when apple trees were coming into flower rather than the latest must-have gadget!  The plum and pear blossom is long gone, but it appears that our 'Onward' pear may have managed to coincide its flowering with the 'Concorde' and been pollinated for a change - usually it is slightly too early, despite being the same flowering group, through being planted in a sheltered spot against the outhouse wall!

The veggie plot

The back garden has also recovered well from a month of neglect, due to lengthy absences boating to Birmingham and back, with both the flower garden areas and veg plots looking good.  The quantity of flower on the strawberry plants is especially encouraging!  We have just about finished the purple sprouting broccoli, but there is still chard and a good crop of early lettuces in the cold frame propagated from a reduced to clear 'living salad' tray from Sainsbury's.

 

  Reproduction 'sagger' with geraniums / clematis arch

The flower garden area is almost overwhelmed in places by over-exuberant clematis montana, which I was afraid I had pruned back too hard for flowers during the early autumn.  No chance!  I plan to give it a more determined hair cut after it finishes flowering, though this might have to wait if the blackbirds choose to nest in it again this year, as they have done before - one reason that it has got so out of control!  The garden is blessed with lots of birds this year - nothing desperately exotic, but a good contingent of sparrows after a few quiet years and plenty of goldfinches, blue tits and blackbirds. 

  

'Hilary' and 'Tom' / purple aquilegia

Concerning birds, this post wouldn't be complete without a mention of the two wood pigeons who have earned themselves the nicknames Hilary and Tom (after a couple from my stories - that's a minor spoiler if you haven't read them, I'm afraid), on the basis that they are clearly very much in love and often to be found chasing each other around the lawn beneath the pear tree.

In between moments of passion, however, they helpfully hoover up the birdseed that the sparrows throw out of the feeders, which will hopefully avoid that awkward moment when something unexpected turns up in the border!