Green fingers

pumpkins in potsSo that’s where the term comes from. Squishing the green aphids off the rose buds.   Everything is early this year, and the roses in the courtyard are just starting to come out.   There isn’t enough for a vase, but I am putting individual buds into small skinny glasses to dot around the house.   Each time I walk out the front door I zip over to the roses and inspect minutely for aphids, buds, or caterpillars hiding in the leaves.   I will give the planters a good watering later today just to help them along.   I am amazed just how much growth can be had from one small box of soil.first gertie rose

Did it rain? We only had one more millimetre. Not fair! Leslie had plenty and even Andrew had some.   So I shall just have to make more time for watering in my very busy days.   It didn’t spoil the festival over at St Michel this weekend, but it did rather spoil my hopes for a lush garden.   What on earth will happen when I am away for three weeks in May? I have managed to ask Leslie, Estelle and Nicolas to help out.   And Jean Daniel might be able to find time to do a bit on the upper vegetable garden.   I will have to leave the hoses out all over the place, and practise praying for rain.potting shed end april

But here’s a round up of the things I have managed to get done.   Naturally all week I have been saying to myself: when it rains I will clean my potting shed.   So I had been lobbing things in without much care for days.   But yesterday it was in with the broom to sweep the compost that inevitably falls on the floor, sort the empty pots and then finally do something creative.

potting shed front benchesAnd that meant potting on. Here’s the list of things I have managed to coax into a bigger pot: tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, nicotiana, eragrostis, stachys, verbena bonariensis, lime basil and a few red basils.   The basil seedlings are the ones that suffered most from their enforced cool shed experience last week. I may have to sow again at the end of May.

But the rest seem fine.   I even managed to get some of the pumpkins and the echinops from Andrew into the wonderful square long pots that make the roots behave perfectly when they grow.

I also had a little helper.   Artur has returned.   And despite much fussing and howling, he took his usual place up on the shelves on top of the sage.  It beats me how he finds it comfortable, but I’m pleased to see him. A very elderly gent.