Category: Gardening
-
Opportunism: not such a nasty word
Any biologist will tell you that without opportunism, few plant species would survive. Their entire reproductive strategy seems to be built on the chance that a wandering seed, among many that are lost, might find a suitable place to germinate and grow. Whether the distribution is by wind, by animal, or by bird, eventually the…
-
Persevering flowers
High up on the fellside of Sparty Lea, you’ve got to be tough to survive. That adage is true for birds, animals, plants and even humans. But if you do manage to withstand the constant wind, the lowered temperatures that altitude brings, and the frozen winters, then you may find, like these persevering plants, that…
-
Weekend joys
Throughout the afternoon, and into the later evening, we kept the water warm and inviting, while for excitement we roared along with the rest of the country as the Lionesses took the Euro Championship. The dinner thereafter was a wonderful flourish; we chatted about life’s new challenges with our beloved neighbours until we were absolutely…
-
Just in time for a perfect bloom
Not that the week gone by was hard, but I thought, and felt, that I’d put in a fair amount of physical effort. So we were looking forward to a couple of days quietly tending the potted plants in the New Galloway garden. But had there been sufficient rainfall to keep them alive? The rose…
-
Clearing joys
It was a hard job, but somebody had to do it! Over the years I’ve been accumulating defunct items in a corner of the field. The weeds have overgrown the small heap so it was as if there was nothing there. But I knew the day of reckoning would arrive, and yesterday morning it did.…
-
Potluck Hellebores
It’s difficult to find the correct attribution for the often-quoted aphorism ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.’ But Roger Pearse has made a good stab at the challenge, and believes that the line can be attributed to a Quaker thinker, D. Elton Trueblood, in his…
-
Spring garden blossom
It’s no longer spring, and the garden is really a series of plants in pots on the gravel and deck, here at Spring Cottage, but the blossoms greeting us on our arrival were fulsome and real. We tied up the drooping Scottish thistle, falling from its own magnificence, and positioned the ruby snapdragons tighter against…
-
Our first salad from our downsized delight . . .
They say you need to pick the baby leaves of the mixed salad crop so as to enjoy their special piquant flavour and delicacy, and so that’s what we did last evening just before dinner. Very tasty with slices of cherry tomatoes and avocado in a simple olive oil and white balsamic vinegar dressing. Delish!…
-
More things to do . . .
I keep forgetting that work around a big garden is never done. Much as I’d like to pretend that we’re keeping some borders wild and free (folks in New Galloway are very keen on the new ‘ark‘ concept of gardening, in which Acts of Restorative Kindness are brought to bear on domestic gardens that have…
-
Reclusive eccentricity . . .
I believe that I have Florence Trevelyan’s odd and lasting legacy to thank for my renewed interest in creative writing. We visited Taormina in 2012, a rare holiday, where we discovered the public gardens that she left to posterity. A plain, rather forbidding woman, she made her life in Sicily after a Grand Tour of…
Roads to Joy 