Asparagaceae (13 MAR 2012)

There are some things through life that are certain, as sure as eggs is eggs : first eaten half-boiled served with toast soldiers, then poached and perched on baked beans, egg 'n' chips, eggs benedict, fried sunny-side-up for full english breakfast, and now back to half-boiled with toast  ... or asparagus spears, simply but carefully steamed, for a special occasion.  If I had known that I would

London Plane Tree (03 MAR 2012)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) lived in Italy during the Renaissance, a time when scientists were polymaths rather than the specialists we recognise today. They understood that the sciences, mathematics, architecture, engineering, philosophy, literature, art and music were all inseparably linked together. Leonardo himself is reknowned for his paintings and inventions but not many people are aware

Foxgloves (25 FEB 2012)

After I published my last post, I noticed in the "You might also like" section that I had written another entitled "Crocus" almost a year to the day before. It also pictured the first yellow crocus of the season, probably from the same bulb. It made me think about how I'd passed the time since the first crocus flower died and while the bulb stored up energy to prepare for its second. If only I

Crocus (17 FEB 2012)

When I was five years old, I was given the opportunity of my first acting role, the colour Orange in the school musical Joseph's Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat. My mother bought a large remnant of saffron-coloured curtain material and stitched a portion of it into a tunic using her sewing machine. I don't remember much of the performance itself, or exactly how the other pupils and I assembled to

Thanks (10 FEB 2012)

As you might have gathered, there's not much happening in my garden at the moment. It all looked so promising on New Year's day with the bulbs forcing up their leaves prematurely, but then icy temperatures set in and most of the plants were put on hold.
   

       
hellebores battling on - two weeks ago






















I resorted to blogging about tufts of grass and dirty birdbaths,

Birdbath (04 FEB 2012)

All surfaces give back light to varying degrees; generally reflections are diffuse, just allowing us to see the objects themselves. In special cases, some incident light rays bounce off at an equal and opposite angle from whence they came, forming an additional specular or mirrored reflection in the observor's eye.

The only potential mirror in my garden is the pool of water in the inherited

Nicotiana (26 JAN 2012)

In my first post I wrote :  "This is one of seventeen nicotiana lime green grown from Mrs F's seedlings. Each one grew to maturity and developed its own personality. Had to transplant them several times as I kept underestimating how big they would grow. Think this traumatised them in the summer heat as they would raise their leaves up to cover the inner shoots. They all survived though."

You

Grass (17 JAN 2012)

So much for being smug about the mild winter in the UK ...  On Sunday it was freezing in the spots where the sun wasn't shining. Quite in contrast to a month ago, there weren't enough blooms to justify a Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post. 

These photos of foxglove plantlets in different parts of the garden were all snapped at lunch-time :



sunny flowerbed


woodland


frosty flowerbed



Cherry Blossom Tree (08 JAN 2012)

This is a photo of my cherry blossom tree taken last year. Foxgloves and bluebells thrived in its shade during spring, hydrangeas in the summer.   Without it, the "woodland" would be a shrubbery.


 "woodland"

Worms in this section of the garden need not worry of being sliced by my fork as there's not much digging done here; the roots wont allow it. Cherry leaves provide a nutritious mulch which

New Beginnings (01 JAN 2012)

One of my favourite gardening jobs is pruning the coarse hellebore leaves to reveal the buds inside.
Casting away the mature leaves yesterday felt so symbolic.



healthy hellebore ...




leaves pruned to reveal pink buds with green bracts





poorly hellebore ...


white buds inside unaffected

On starting my previous job, I was registered to attend a team-building week-away-from-work. It

Year-End Review (27 DEC 2011)

Before I started gardening, I didn't care much about the weather as I spent most of my time in an air-conditioned office. I never looked up at the sky to trace cloud movement, never stayed out long enough to catch sunburn, never felt the rain on my face. In summer I wore one layer and in winter two; I always carried a jacket and umbrella just in case. This attire ensured that I was weatherproof

Strawberries (23 DEC 2011)

During my brief attempt at gardening as a child, my friend and I planted strawberries in a patch at the bottom of my mother's garden. No-one has watered them since I discovered that I had a fear of worms and my childhood plant experiments came to an abrupt end, yet those plants have reproduced themselves to this day by growing runners which root easily as soon as they touch soil.

Decades have

Fennel (11 DEC 2011)

The last post on moon gardens received more than 100 hits in one week which is unusually high for this blog. It wasn't due to people googling for information on "white-flowering plants"; searches submitted were more along the lines of "pictures of the moon on 3rd Dec". There seem to be a lot of people out there with a moon fascination, including some gardeners. I realised this when I was trying

Moon Garden (03 DEC 2011)

"Referred to as Moon Gardens, a white themed planting inversely glows at night , incorporating hints and tints from lime to blue."

When I first came across the concept of Moon Gardens while reading a post by Laura@Patiopatch, I was inspired to dedicate an area in my garden for moonlit viewing.

However, as with most of my whims, I thought about it, dreamt about it and did nothing.
Recently, a 

Foxgloves (29 NOV 2011)

This photo taken at the end of April is my favourite of this year so far. I remember how in awe I was with the scene; the cherry blossoms scattered over the "woodland" garden, the bluebells were in their prime, the foxglove spires on the point of emerging ...



April 2011 - Foxgloves about to bloom in the "woodland"
These are two of ten mixed hybrid foxglove excelsior plants that I raised from

Cottage Garden Annuals (20 NOV 2011)

What's in a name?  That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet.- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
 A row of unlabelled roses, planted in the flower-beds along the right border many years before I owned the property, is the enduring legacy of the previous gardeners. I don't even know their names, but they certainly took care to choose plants for all seasons including a

Hydrangeas (09 NOV 2011)

Last winter I took cuttings from plants in my mother's garden, the ones that I had grown up with. Some of them were in my subscious from as far back as I can remember being alive. They were transplanted in pots in my garden and fared so well through the winter that I was abnormally cocky, wondering why people bothered buying plants when it was easy to propogate cuttings. Then we experienced an

Butternut Squash (02 NOV 2011)

While halloween is still in the air (or in the shops at least), I thought it would be fitting to post about the mysterious premature deaths of my baby butternut squashes  ...
I didn't intend to grow squashes this year but when my neighbour offered two baby plants, I couldn't resist. I never say no to plants looking for a home and usually end up giving them more tlc than my own, feeling under

Evolution (20 OCT 2011)

When Donna posted about "Evolution", she started her analysis in the garden but finally had to take a walk to the Niagara Falls to find the true meaning of the word.

So I have two problems with this challenge : (1) the scope of this blog is confined to my back garden (2) I live in a suburb of London where you would struggle even to find relics of the past century. In fact, I would go so far as

Dwarf Flowering Quince (10 OCT 2011)

It would be exaggerating if I called myself an insomniac, but I often used to wake up in the morning feeling more tired than when I went to sleep. Worries in my head before climbing up to bed would multiply overnight and bother me even more the following day. This was the status quo until I realised that actually sleep isn't the best way to rest because one is out of control. Isn't it the case