Summer is a'coming in...

Aquilegia Vulgaris - Mauve

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… Loud now sing cuckoo…

Summer is a’coming in? You’d never guess – yet another wet weekend. Oh, well I suppose that it’s good for the garden, and the garden does seem to be doing pretty well despite the ravages of the winter frosts. I’ve lost both of my Passion Flowers – which is a shame as one of them was almost ten tears old and huge. It was the first thing I planted when we bought the cottage - I bought it from Woolies, so no chance of getting another one from the same place. I also lost my big Marguerite, which I’ve replaced – I wonder if this one will last five years like the other one did? I’ve lost all sorts of stuff. Of course, it’s still very early in the season so there are lots of surprises still to come through… potentially at least – Snake Lilies, Cannas, Begonias, the more slow growing Dahlias - underground things that take a little more warmth to break through. I guess that the warmth will come eventually but not just yet… another wet weekend - and cold, brrrrrrr.

Summer is a coming in? We’ll have to wait and see. I have an old terracotta pot that used to belong to my aunt Nellie. She’s been dead fifteen years or so, but each year the most beautiful Begonia shoots out of the dusty earth in the pot and by mid-summer it’s a tumbling mass of tiny, delicate salmony orange blossoms and light green foliage. It’s survived just about everything – even being shoved inside a hedge for two years and forgotten about until I rediscovered it one day like a long lost friend you bump in to at a motorway services, full of life and eager to reacquaint.

Summer is a coming in? I hope so - my seeds seem to be telling me that it is. I grow from seed every year. I’ve tried all sorts of things, some easy (nasturtiums, I love nasturtiums, I like the taste of the young leaves), and some hard (the Himalayan blue poppy, not even ever a single seedling). This year I’ve bought lots of packets of seed from Leidl and sown them straight into my pots - nothing incredibly exciting, Marigolds, Cosmos, Californian Poppies, Livingstone Daisies, Ipomea (Morning Glory), Sweet Peas. At under thirty pence a packet I thought ‘Why not’, and I was right! If all the seedlings survive I’ll have enough plants for ten of my little Welsh gardens let alone one!

Summer is a coming in? It is seven forty-five on Sunday the tenth of May and I’m sitting at the kitchen table writing this, listening to a Cuckoo, door open, drinking coffee, longing for a cigarette (I gave up five and a half years ago!), and waiting for the rain to stop so that I can go outside and take some cuttings from my Fuchsias. The garden is full of free plants if you take the trouble, so whenever I buy a plant from a garden centre I generally snip off a couple of small cuttings, dip them in some hormone rooting powder, shove them into one of my pots and wait to see if they strike. They generally do. Hurrah for free plants!

Summer is a coming in? My Aquilegias seem to be saying so. A couple of the earlier ones are in flower and there’s the promise of other beauties yet to come judging by the long flower stems that seem to have shot from the foliage over the last week. That’s the great thing about only seeing a garden at weekends – you really see the progress week to week – last weekend there weren’t any flower stems on some of my Aquilegias… next week they could be in flower. You have no idea how excited I am sometimes when I pull onto our drive… or disappointed when I see what the slugs, Lilly bugs, wind, or too hot sun have done to my plants.

Too hot sun? Fat chance!

Summer is a coming in? It’ll get here eventually I guess.
Aquilegia Pixie - White Chocolate