Springtime salvias and sweet peas

I love these perennial salvia flowers that you can see poking up like purple spikes on the cover photo of this blog. All winter you are sure they are dead. And in fact I often forget where they are in the herb garden. The tulips come up, the alliums pop out. And suddenly the salvias seem to respond by flowering just when you want some balanced colour.

Another surprising return are the camassias which I planted as bulbs two years ago in the walnut path.

I think they get more water than the camassias I planted in the east garden. And they respond beautifully. I stalked over to the east garden beyond the quince to see if the bulbs were out there; but no. We are looking at green leaves but not much more. If they don’t flower, I ought to mark out where they are and once the leaves die down, dig them up and move them somewhere deeper and damper.

Remind me in a month’s time.

And it’s a shame you can’t smell my vase of sweet pea beside me as I type. These are the self seeding sweet peas that do their own thing in the potager. I never need to harvest and re sow.

It does mean that they will grow where you may not want them; here they are climbing through the rocket that is going to seed. I ought to just call this bed the self sown bed and leave it at that. Sweet peas, rocket, salad, fennel and coriander. A meal and a scented delight in one narrow strip of vegetable bed.