Shopping not gardening

I’m waiting for a few loaves of bread to rise, so I have time to actually let you all know I’m alive and not neglecting you all.

An interlude in the capital. The British capital.  I will be having an enforced interlude in my own local French capital next month for the dread appointment with destiny.

Believe me, you don’t want to know the shenanigans of that drama.

The only up side to feeling constantly anxious about my future in France after Brexit is starting to exercise in earnest.

Now I know that we gardeners are active all day in the growing season. And even in this slower season we can be hard at work. So I’m fit. But not aerobically fit.

Enter the hour long power walk. Yep, I’ve kept it up. Yay.

And in London that is a blissful march around Hampstead Heath. I am marching so fast I don’t want to break the rhythm and take out my phone for long. So this is the only snapshot I can find.

Oh, here’s one.

Dawn glow.

Better glow. The dahlia glow.

I went shopping while I am twiddling my thumbs.

I have thought hard about the cut flower garden in the potager.  Dahlias work for me. Sowing zinnia and cosmos and other flowers less so. I always have to go away for a week during the early sowing season and my germination rate for zinnias and cosmos is just not fab. And it’s fiddly. Always fiddly. Especially as the zinnias don’t like root disturbance.

I know a lot of you are not fans of dahlias. But they are so simple and utterly prolific. A no-brainer if you can get the tubers started and well watered over the summer.

And I have ‘accidentally’ bought some half price bulbs of ranunculus and liatris and more lilies too. Hate that. They just leap into the shopping trolley when you are stocking up on toilet paper and leeks.

My cut flower garden seem to consist of marvellous dark red dahlias.

So I have branched out into a dozen new plants:

City of Leiden, Furka, Ripples, Mel’s Orange Marmalade, Snowstorm, Burlesca, Julie One, Brown Sugar, Perch Hill, Ludwig Helfert, Emory Paul and Penhill Dark Monarch.

Yes, yes. That looks lovely, dear.

You’ll just have to wait and see.

I want to try more perennials and that means bulbs. And hoping and praying my rudbeckias make a return.

And any self seeded cosmos will be a bonus.

Now don’t make me waste half an hour perusing my Cut Flower Garden photo folder. I have bread to attack, housework, more photocopying of yet more utility bills. And counting the days until my return.