Category: Garden

I returned to find that what was blooming two weeks ago now looks rather sad; the blue haze of forget-me-nots is now a tatty mess, so I’ve been ruthless there. The long grass is swaying with ox-eye daisies and for a moment I couldn’t find the central path to mow along. The potatoes have grown tremendously and foxgloves have shot up everywhere. There are no pears at all on either tree: I reckon the magpies must have got in under the netting. Gooseberry sawflies have practically stripped one plant of its leaves but – happily – the gooseberries themselves are fine. Vegetable seedlings have not grown as fast as I’d expected and I must plant courgettes and beans, even though the temperature is still fairly cool.

There’s no end to it!

I’ve mown the grass – a lower setting than usual, which means the lawn looks unnaturally neat – and have put up all kinds of defences against invading birdlife. It looks like paranoia on my part . . . but those tiny leek seedlings didn’t pull themselves out of the row to wilt on the bare earth. My particular bêtes noires are wood pigeons, cats and magpies (I was too late in netting one of the pear trees). Even sparrows: I shan’t forget watching them nip off and eat the just-emerging gooseberries a couple of years ago. Gooseberries are now shrouded like phantoms – which does leave them vulnerable to gooseberry sawfly damage, since no birds can pick off the caterpillars. Red- and whitecurrants are similarly defended.

Anyway – to pleasanter thoughts. Everything is growing fast in the usual haphazard way, and the rhododendron is blooming again. (Five years, is it?) I shall be cutting back and pulling up ruthlessly, but at the moment there’s still room for everything. Even better: the weather is finally warm enough to make sitting outside a pleasure.