I’m back.  And after obsessively watching the weather websites everyday in London, I can now live inside the weather here on the farm.  And it’s cold! Damp and a very cold house.  So I’m perched in front of the fire (mid April? Fancy) plotting my work.

We had an inch of rain in the past week, so things are looking lush. But I think my first job will be to pour a bucket of water over all the newly transplanted grasses and trees.  They need a soak.

And then I must attend to the wretched mole damage.  You go to all that work to weed, landscape, mulch and generally pamper a patch of ground. And a mole comes along and digs holes all over it.  I can understand why lawn obsessives get mad.  My shade garden grasses are hillocks of mess thanks to a hunting critter.  I will have to carefully scoop up the soil (trying not to disturb all the lovely mulch) and redistribute it.  I think it can go onto earthing up the potatoes.

That way it won’t only be the mole earthing things up around here.

***

And have you noticed something slightly different about the blog? I’ve decided to post larger pictures.  It may not only just be my eyesight that’s failing, but I am tired of squinting at murky blobs.  So hopefully it will be more illuminating.

I did get the soil onto the potatoes. I was actually surprised how little soil that could be scooped out of the mole tracks.  I will need to find more to add to the growing potato rows. Maybe tomorrow.

I will have to consult  my list. I find that you have to be strict and adhere to the list on the first day back. Otherwise you just wander round in a daze wondering where on earth to start.  Or just nibbling at the edges of things.

That’s how I started weeding the soft fruit orchard (luckily on my list). I was walking down to the potager and noticed a weed about seven feet long snaking along the grass path. I’m amazed at its prodigious length (still don’t know what weed it was) and found it has started life underneath the blackberry bush.

So off I went. Hands and knees and weed like mad. The soil is incredibly soft so it’s not hard to pull out the unwanted greenery.  Artur came down to help and sit in the sun watching and purring.  And I managed at least two heaping wheelbarrow loads of future compost before I was done.

Next up was to try and get ahead and prepare my bean poles with string.  I needed to add another row of string to help the peas on their great upward climb; so once that was done I have launched myself at the central bean poles.

I have the feeling it isn’t going to be easy to access these central areas of the potager once the growing really gets going.  So I have done four layers of very pink string (it fades fast) to help the future plants.

And Artur was delighted with my little surprise. I had so many nepeta (catmint) plants left over from the landscaping of the wall near the pool that I plonked four little plants in each of the central squares.  (There are heaps in more logical places.)  My indulgent plan is to have a lovely little shaded place for the elderly cat in the heat of summer. With his favourite drug at hand.

He has done a test drive and it works.  He loves it.

I didn’t have time to linger for long in the potager; it started to rain. Well drizzle really, but enough to make me head for the comfort of the potting shed. My faithful drugged moggy at my heels.

I had moved in all the plants and seedlings when I arrived. from the open barn to the more warm and controlled  environment of the potting shed.  And things were thirsty and a bit confused about the moving about.

I have lost of few of the tiddlers, but hope that with daily watering and nurturing I should be able to bring everything on.

I’m particularly nervous about all my eryngium seedlings.  A slug took the tops off a few while in the barn which is frustrating. Some of these seedlings have taken an age to germinate and coddle to the small plant stage.  And half of them are a present for Leslie.

And I had to pot on my new purchases.  I am very bad and buy in the special tomato plants. Gone are the days of sowing from seed.  Why? Because I get thousands of unwanted plants.  The curse of a perfect germinating environment: I always sow way too many tomato seeds, and end up pricking out trays and trays because I can’t bring myself to throw them on the compost heap.  And I find that M. Bois at the market on Thursdays can provide kilos and kilos of wonderfully colourful, flavourful and cheap tomatoes.

But I do grow about six plants each year in the garden.  And I have broken this pledge and sown a dozen Gardeners Delight cherry tomatoes to add to the group.  Those you can’t buy from the market. And nothing beats walking past a tomato plant and popping a warm cherry tomato in your mouth as you go.

I have three grafted aubergines (eggplants) which are an indulgence.  And I bought two new parsley plants as my perennial ones didn’t survive the winter.  I shan’t mention how many more thyme and lavender plants I bought as well. But hopefully I have now come to an end of the buying season and can get on with the growing season in all its complicated glory.

This is the lovely view that greets me every morning when I open the shutters.  The lavenders look quite fetching from on high.  All it needs is a serious weed, some gravel mulch, and some fencing and it will be perfect.

Today was to be another mad mulching day. With weeding thrown in.  I started off with the lower potager.  To start I planted out the red cabbage that were still in the potting shed, and then mulched like mad.

And as I went along the rows I weeded out the cosmos seedlings as I worked.  Most of them I just chucked, but some I have transplanted to the edge.  That’s the plan this year.

And I recall that last year I was in Australia for three weeks in May. Which meant that I took my eye off the weeds.  And believe me, cosmos flowers are weeds in my potager.

Next up was the broad bean section. Out came the cosmos, down went the mulch. And I weeded the top part that I had pretended wasn’t a thicket of unwanted plants.

I have tucked the net properly, hammered in a few more stakes and generally stood back and marvelled at the vision of orderliness that is my garden.

Oh yes, and I mulched around the healthy looking echnops (from Andrew) and philadelphis and roses (from Leslie and Teo) in the corner.  They should put on quite a show this year.

I had a bit of mulch left for the hedge up at the potting shed. So I continued the work from last night. I don’t have enough for the entire hedge, but at least I’ve made a start.

This fantastic moist soil makes weeding a joy.  Except I have volumes and volumes of the stuff to shift.  So it was make yourself comfortable and start at one end and work your way down the thirty foot row.

I am saving some of the clary sages and cornflowers which has self sown.  But up came the verbascums, and everything else that wasn’t welcome.

It almost feels a shame to just devote this area to 50 or so shrubs. Once the shrubs get really going, I might try and be brave and put in some annuals that won’t interfere with the roots.  Right now it just feels great that it isn’t mad rampant weediness.

The photinia are doing well, all garish reds, and most of the rest of the shrubs survived the worst of the weather. Some are blasted, but at least I can see new shoots coming through.

I did sneak in three pyracantha (red) to give a bit of winter colour in a gap. There always seems to be some small gap between the hedge.

And just as I was blessing the moist easy to work soil, the heavens opened and it started to pour. Again. And I wasn’t finished. I still had over ten feet of border to go.  So I ducked into the potting shed to wait it out.

Artur was already inside, pretending to be a dried flower arrangement on the very top shelf, but he came and sat on my lap, briefly, and then returned to his box.

If I wasn’t so wet and grubby, I might have tried to join him. Instead I sowed a dozen more sunflowers and six more nasturtiums while I waited for the rain to stop.

Once it did, I raced through the last of the weeding, spread the mulch and made a note to buy yet more.

And then it was down to thistle control.  I have noticed that the thistles (up there with verbascums in the Enemy Plant List) are almost starting to flower down on the bank near the road.  So down with the secateurs and the thick glove and off I merrily went.

I love the look of the Mount Tacoma tulips in the plum terrace. They look like peonies, too beautiful. And I couldn’t resist walking along the orchard to admire the apple blossoms on my way back up to the house.

Tomorrow I need to move all the seedlings out of the potting shed and into the calabert.  Again.  But it’s great exercise if a bit plodding.  But at least I can admire my newly mulched beds and vegetables en route.

I didn’t realise you can garden until 830pm at night. That is the reason for the rather evening glow to the shade garden tonight. I’ve gone mad with mulch.

And at long, long last this festuca side of the shade garden starts to make sense.  It actually looks planted.

And even better, you can see the species tulips in among the grasses. I must plant a hundred more next year to make it a more dramatic picture. But I just love the simplicity of the three colour scheme – green, brown and a hint of red.

And now this part of the garden feels complete. I’m boasting, but it’s amazing what a spot of mulch (well, sacks and sacks of the stuff) can do.

I cleaned out Castorama and Dia’s supply of cheap mulch this afternoon, and had enough to weed and get some more mulch down on the south side of the shade garden.  The euphorbia polychromas positively grow in the evening light.

And I have even made a start on the hedge.  I don’t have enough mulch to cover the entire top hedge area. We are talking about 30 feet by three feet long here.  But at least I’ve made a start on the weeding.  I couldn’t believe the number of worms I managed to bother while I worked. This is a happy part of the garden indeed.

And on that note of happy gardener and happy mulched soil, I’m off to mulch myself onto the sofa indoors.

Easter Monday.  And boy did I have a festive day. I burst out the door early and just powered through the day.  The forecast is for rain tomorrow, so I decided that every plant that could, should go into the ground. That meant plants that have been having a lovely life in the warmth and regular watering regime of the potting shed now have to learn to live out in the garden.

I kicked off with planting three clematis: don’t ask me how to spell it… warszawska nike… which I have decided can do their climbing work up over the rocks of the calabert garden.  It is much too dry at the base of my many walls. And too hot. So I wanted to put them somewhere I can keep an eye on them and know they are going to have good soil. 

And the soil underneath the lovely brf wood chips of the calabert garden is perfect. Moist, well conditioned, plenty of good funghi.  And I have some room at the back of the bed now that I have removed the gaura.

I might not get much out of them this year, but at least I can see how they do. They claim to be hardy.  So if they did start life in Poland, then I have a chance.

I’m optimistic about the honeysuckle as well.  I have two rather plump looking plants of Lonicera periclymenum Belgica and these have joined up with the other lonicera japonica ‘Chinensis’ in the courtyard.  It survived the winter.  And I had a cutting from the mother plant of Chinensis that Jane and I took last year. It is just on the edge of ready to be planted out. But I was ruthless today. Out it goes. They are tucked underneath the large stipa gigantea plants beside the uprights of the grape vine supports.

Next up were all the lavenders (14 of them), the three perovskias, a caryopteris, possibly Kew Blue, and two euphorbias purpureas.  Most of the plants have gone into the calabert bed that needed bulking out.  Now that I’ve moved half of the eragrostis grasses out of there, I needed to fill in the gaps.  And I have finally got round to moving the lavender hidcotes which I grew from cuttings two years ago and did that dumb gardener thing of just dumping them temporarily in the wrong space and forgetting about them for years.

Here’s hoping they will prefer the sunnier side of the bed.  I have had a little rummage around the dead foliage of the six agapanthus I planted two years ago, but can’t see any sign of life. I guess being proud of choosing plants that can cope with minus 15C is all very well. But not much use when you get a winter of minus 20C for days on end.

No rest for the wicked. Next up it was the wildflower garden. I needed the spare soil to build up my little bowls in the lavender bank. So out came three wheelbarrow loads of good soil and then out came the rake.

I got the fright of my life when I went up to the potting shed to fetch it.  I have a busy mole that digs holes all over the shade garden and makes a diagonal run near the shed. I was just walking past and stepped over one of these little mounds of soil when I suddenly saw digging and then paws. Ugh, I wasn’t ready for that. I have no idea what the mole activity is, but I had this vague idea they are nocturnal.  Ours aren’t.

I have no love of the creature which insists on digging runs all over the place, but I don’t know what to do when confronted with one.  Naturally my thoughts turned to the champion Mouser of the district – Artur.  And in fact he wandered past about a minute after the paws incident. I pointed excitedly at the mound, and said the word ‘taupe’. But the cat just looked at me blankly, probably thought; mad human getting excited by a mound of soil and ambled past. So much for hunting today. He is in a very haughty mood indeed. I didn’t get a single bit of affection from him today.

The wildflower garden is now raked and sown and ready for a day of rain.  I left some of the achilleas which have self sown so well. And I sowed some escholzias in other parts of the rich weed free soil.  It’s always sad when you buy a packet of seeds and find barely twenty grains in one corner of the packet. That’s the case of the Californian poppies (easier to spell than escholzia) but the colours are so beguiling that I couldn’t resist.

So the soil. It was destined for the lavender bank.  The trick is to look at the bowl of soil around the lavenders – cleverly designed to take a bucket of water and catch all the drops.  Avoid looking at the green lush weeds around the plants. I’m just not ready to do a close weeding of this bank just yet. Next trip.

And I wanted to see if I could get the chestnut poles in place. I hammered in the metal rods as the upright supports. And did a first go of laying the poles. The aim is to have some horizontal supports that will hold back any erosion after heavy rain, keep the mulch in place and improve the look of the whole bank.

I need to cut more rods, and find a way of keeping things securely in place. It will look amateurish I suppose, but I’m resisting calling in the experts. It’s so much fun to try these things oneself.

One thing I am expert at is weeding; so I applied myself to that in the afternoon. Out came the buckets and gloves, down onto one’s creaky knees and off I went. The rest of the shade garden, the top side of the calabert bed (where I had to cut out a lot of dead lavender stoechas plants which Had Succumbed) and even the path underneath the walnut trees. I only managed to snag myself on hidden brambles once, so that was what I call a result.

Oh yes, and I planted 16 more cabbages in the top vegetable garden. It’s funny how you almost forget what you do. If I hadn’t taken this rather poor picture of them they would have slipped my mind.

I finished the day with riddling the compost and adding more as mulch to each little lavender plant and generally feeling exhausted but pleased with a fantastically productive day.

And now I’ve gone away from the brown and am into the green. Sorry it has been a few days. But I fear that the forest has taken most of my outdoor gardening time this weekend.

We have set ourselves a mad task. To cut down and remove all the huge box trees that are growing all over the forest right up at the top of the property. So top in fact it is the summit of Mont Godin.  I can’t work out why the box grows so regularly up through and beside all the dry stone walls.  Was it planted? Surely not.  It’s just a local native tree left to grow and grow and obscure the walls.

It’s a shame we can’t make use of them. Don’t they use box to make pencils? Right now we are just stacking it and hiding it and pretending it doesn’t exist. We have no way of getting the wood off the top of the mountain yet.

Our neighbour M. Perochon, is going to create an access road on his side of the mountain one day to harvest the douglas pine trees that thrive up here. But until that happens the box is not going anywhere.

And in between forest work it has been raining. Well constant drizzle is more like it. But we are having sessions of 5mm each day which is all great news.

I have managed to plant out all my salad crops. It’s lovely moist soil so the little plants don’t appear to be too shocked by the move.

I seem to have filled two enormously long cloches the bottom left quadrant in the potager.  Hundreds of little plants all grown from seed. That’s satisfying. (Fingers crossed they don’t get decimated by deer, hare, rabbits, drought.

And for once I’ve managed to make my own new cloches. Nets, sturdy plastic bits of hose and metal rods. I want to use all the special home made cloches for the cabbage area this year. I never seem to grow enough cabbage varieties, so I’m determined to use the most of the space well this year.

Tomorrow, when I’m more dynamic and not lying prone on the sofa with a sore back, I’ll post more pictures and offer more news.  But that’s it for Sunday night.

Am I ever out of the dirt? It seems I spent the day in the stuff. I began the day with weeding in the shade garden.  This was easy as the soil is so soft and the weeds just gave up as soon as I approached.  Marvellous.

And then I was able to put down the last bag of mulch.  I’m short two bags to complete the entire shade garden area.  Well, I actually need six more bags to do the top side.  But that can wait. The festuca grasses are planted so closely together that there won’t be that many weeds to push through.

And I need to do a more careful weed and mulching of the area where all the euphorbia polychroma and aquilegia lurk. But they form such a thicket of ground cover that I can leave it until next week.

It looks quite fetching with its carpet of dark mulch. I am pleased.

And even more pleased to see some life in the cistus shrubs I thought had carked in over the cold winter. They look a bit battered, but there are new leaves appearing on the blasted stems, so I have to leave well alone and wait.

And then to get even grottier, I moved onto the calabert garden to weed there too.  Here it’s trickier as I had to cut back a lot of poorly shrubs as I hoovered up the weeds.

There are dead perovskias, sickly rosemaries, a very dead teucrum and rather absent agapanthus in here. I’ve pruned back and cut out as much as I dare.  And generally fussed and bothered about in the gravel and the mulch. I have more lavenders to plant in here when I get away from weeding and get stuck into more creative toil.

Now I could have swanned off and done something else after all this weeding. But no. I decided to go for the deepest excavation of weeds of all. Time to sort out the wildflower garden.

This is the very long fifteen metre terrace just above the swimming pool. The far right end is fine – it has well established achillea pot of gold, cornflowers, gauras and many wildies that came from a packet of Pictorial Meadow flower mix years ago.  It does need a bit of refreshing. But boy does the far end of the terrace need more work.

When I first cast my gaze over the area my first thought was – good, a quick weed. I mean it just looks like lush grass that needs to come out. But I was to be cruelly disappointed.  But it’s a good thing I always have the end result in mind. I know this will be a stunning blank canvas to scatter my wildflower seeds. But it’s going to be Sunday at least before I can do that.

Rule one. Never try and keep a neat garden underneath a stonking fifty foot high chestnut tree. Well armed with thick gloves I first had to pick up all the chestnut burrs that had embedded themselves in the grass and soil.

And then there were the playfully hidden brambles. And tendrils. And broom plants. And a carpet of nasty wild mint.  I stood up and decided to scrape the weeds off the wall above the garden and came across a dilemma.

Is this wall a rock? Or a badly constructed loose terrace; hand made and liable to topple? If I keep scraping off the weeds and soil will I end up with an avalanche? It’s an exciting bit of excavation.  I still don’t know what’s underneath as I got a bit scared and stopped.

I’ll have a better look tomorrow.  So instead I contented myself with removing metres and metres of weeds from the flat bit. But where to put this mountain of weeds? I had started a compost bed way beyond the duck pond at the very end of the property. It is building up nicely and as I plodded over with my first bag of weeds I discovered something wild and fluffy sleeping in among the green mess. Artur. Getting his sun kicks in a very strange place. Still, it was fun to wake him up every time I walked over and added a pile near his head. 

He came over to inspect my work at occasional intervals. But preferred to snooze in the sunshine.

I could have done the same, but I had the urge to keep going.  The tricky bit was to not weed out the lovely poppies and cornflowers that are well established already here, and not to step on all the rose cuttings that I have struck here. Or knock the heads off the emerging lilies.

But by the end of the day with a thunder storm brewing I decided to stop.  I have a few more hours to go just removing the weeds. And then I’ll have to think about the wall. But that’s the morrow. Now it’s Friday night and that means the first beer of the week. Hurrah.

The forecast was actually true. It rained overnight. You can’t imagine how excited I was to open the shutters and see grey.  Overcast, foggy, rain on the ground. Utter bliss.  I raced out to the rain gauge: over half an inch.  And the day promised more.

That meant I could tick things off my list without having to haul any hoses. No more asparagus watering by hand over at Jean Daniel’s, no more careful watering of the aspargus and raspberries in my top  vegetable plot. I can now ignore the carrots, parsnips, potatoes, clover (green manure) or any crops on the lower potager as well.

Weeding will be easier, trees will be happier, the shrubs won’t suffer. It’s all great news.

I nipped up to have a look at the newly planted mini hedge; and I even managed to take decent photographs of the main hedge, the terrace bank above the potting shed and the shade garden.

In bright sunshine you can’t even see all the honesty plants that are pushing up in the shade garden right now.  So it’s great to have a record of the plants.  They are all blow ins.  I just scatter the honesty seeds all around when I do my dried flower displays, so it’s a bit of a lottery.

And naturally with so much drizzle outdoors, you can imagine that I spent most of my gardening time inside the potting shed.  I was joined by Artur who found his favourite wooden wine box (lined with old cashmere sweater) up on the shelf at the end of the building.

I actually have an action shot here. I think he moved just once in ten hours. And that was just to stretch, jump down to the floor, look baleful, and then go back into the box.  Great life.

The rain sounds so much more impressive under a perspex roof. It’s a bit like being under canvas in a tent. It sounds like it’s pounding, but it really was perfect gentle soaking rain. Something we so rarely enjoy.  I did have to nip out and sort out the water butts – some are linked together so they flow nicely, but the one at the far end of the potting shed seems to fill the fastest, and just overflows. So I have been decanting into the spare barrels.

I kept busy by sowing lots more seeds. Here is my very own action shot of verbena bonariensis and gaura seeds in a big tray. I know, not madly exciting but the shed benches are filling fast.

Todays tally: verbena bonariensis, gaura, rudbeckia cherry brandy, eryngium gigantium, sobi cabbage, cosmos tall sensation, tsoi sim, turnip greens, sunflower claret. A truly mixed bunch.

I’ve planted a new hedge extension. A perfect little task for the weather.  Andrew kindly hauled the heavy load of special organic fertilizer pellets (mostly sheep manure) up near the huge oak tree at the top of the property.

So I got stuck in. This area just beside the dirt road suffers from heavy rain.  And I wanted to build up a mini barrier and plant an extension of the hedge.  And luckily I had some home grown plants to hand. First up I decided to move the non thriving bupleureum plants which were in the wrong spot.  And then out came the cuttings from Lynn and Jeff’s red currant bush and extra jostaberries which had survived over winter. Eight in all.  And three more to go.

They are titchy right now.  But are sitting in a lovely nest of improved soil and lots of water. And as the soil is frankly just sandy and bare, it was a joy to dig and turn.

Naturally with a 30kg sack of pelleted manure (which I couldn’t shift) I decided to put it to use. I had a lovely plod all around the trees in the garden scattering a handful of goodness at the base of each tree.

The apple blossom is just coming out in the orchard on the terrace below the pool.  The apricot and peach blossom is already up and gone.

I can’t ever take a decent shot of the fruit trees as they stay resolutely inside their deer proof cages.  And at the slow rate of growth, they will be livin in these cages for years and years.

But as I did a loop past the newest cherry tree near the (ahem) septic tank, I did have time to admire the newly planted terraces under the plum trees. That’s a cheering sight. All the Mount Tacoma tulips are poised to open.

And then it was more planting fun.  I bought three climbing hydrangeas from Vachon earlier in the week and have been mulling over where to put them.  They are deciduous alas, but will give some good cover in summer.  And best of all they are self clinging.

But where I planned to put them is a challenge. I have planted three in front of the potting shed.  The only one that is barely photogenic is the far left one to the left of the main doors.  The other two are in front of those hideously ugly water barrrels. 

They aren’t going to cling to that slippery material. But if all goes well (and they were planted well) they will climb above the barrels and make their way towards the wooden walls.

Well the second 18 actually. But it doesn’t have the appropriately natty cricket analogy.  I’ve been in among the lavenders this morning. It’s cooler and overcast and rain is threatening. So I thought I’d nip down and try and sort out the easy lavenders on the flat first.

Each plant needs a bowl of space for a large downpour around the base of each lavender.  We don’t seem to do rain well here.  It’s either completely absent (only 65mm since Christmas) or bucketing.  And I’m rather dreaming of some bucketing over the next week. Hence the need to get the plants ready to take a beating.

I’m going to try and attack the steeper slope this afternoon. 

Here’s a snapshot of yesterday afternoon’s tick off the list task. I planted out the iris bulbs I bought at Columbia road.  I’m trying desperately to find their name (Andrew asked) but it will take a bit of a rummage.

Medical report: Artur is no worse and seems a bit better. So that’s a huge relief. But he is still clingy and floppy. Or maybe he knows the weather forecast better then me.  The temperature is going to drop tomorrow with rain (hurrah), wind (boo), and cloud cover.  So he’ll need to find somewhere comfortable to snooze. He’s trying out lots of spots in the potting shed.

I didn’t have much time to linger with him as I was going to have a visitor. Andrew was coming up for lunch. And when he finally made it past the road works down in the valley it was fantastic to see him.

We had lunch out on the terrace even though the wind was blustery. Lots of cherry blossom swirling about like mad and just on the edge of comf0rtable.

But we had the first asparagus crop, chicken campagnolo, fresh goats cheese and a new loaf of bread from Madame Boudouin’s relentless marketing drive. This loaf was called zig zag.

The main fun of course was the garden tour and the goodies. Andrew brought up my order of 50 lillies and 50 crocosmia Emily McKenzie, but also kindly brought me more little lucifers to add to the crocosmia colony I am trying to establish among the fruit trees.

And he brought me an abundance of cut tulips from his garden- such extravagance. I feel like I’m living in a Dutch still life painting with all the blooms about the house.

I’m not sure about my flower arranging – I need Jan to be here to sort it out – but the colours are unbelievable.

And best of all, I was able to show the new landscaping projects I’ve done in the past few months and the plans for the next ones.  And when fresh experienced eyes have a good look at the garden there are always great ideas.

He has a clever and elegant solution to the blank canvas of grass up on the slope above the courtyard: a grove of oaks. We have thousands of seedlings up in the forest and it would be fun to try and bring some on and create some cover and watch our own holm oaks grow.

There is one holm oak there already which I’ve given the Nicole de Vesian treatment – cut the lower branches and shaped the crown – so here’s hoping they will grow lustily enough to get the same treatment.

Ah, gardening.  You look at a blank patch of ground and you are already pruning fully grown oak trees.

Back to earth. Andrew also brought me up my precious seeds of Oillet d’inde Reine Sophie and Favourite Red.  That’s french Marigold to you.  And they are hopefully going to form part of my swoosh design in the potager among the leeks.

I’ve sown two large trays of seeds and hopefully will get a quick germination.  The ones I sowed last year came up in no time.

And to finish the day I planted out most of the lilies and crocosmia; weeded around the soft fruit trees, planted out the irises that weren’t happy in the potting shed, took one last look at the blazing setting sun and came indoors for a nurafen and pain relief electrodes. Sciatica? Who mentioned sciatica?