Semi-riotous spring garden
So the ME started to wear off last night . . . at, oh, mmph o’clock, approximately, while I was trying to go to bed because I had to get up early to say goodbye to departing family and then go on for my grilling by the local anointed CRB goon. Aaaaaaaaand . . . I couldn’t sleep.* So today I’m probably just as tired as I’ve been the last two or three days, just for different reasons. I’m a deep and profound believer in the amazingness of homeopathy–I’ve seen it work far too often to have anything but scorn and fury for the obstructionists out there–but one of its basic tenets concerns the wisdom of the body. Which makes me scream and throw things. Especially at mmph o’clock in the morning when my ME is ebbing and my energy level is flowing with the result that I can’t sleep. This is really, really common, that the changeover happens in the middle of the night. I’ll give you wisdom of the body . . . where is that hat pin . . .
I got through the goodbyes, the grilling . . . and the voice lesson, and the tower practise at Old Eden. I am now cross eyed and need to go to bed.** So let’s have some spring plant photos.
Azalea. Going for it.
There are also a geranium and a gazania on the inside of the window saying, Me too! Me too! The pansies on the left here . . . you will notice the unpansylike bamboo support arch over their heads. The pansies were supposed to be a stopgap till I could put my sweet peas in. The ones in the little temporary pot have rooted through. So I’ve pulled the bamboo out of this pot and put it in the pot that now does have some sweet peas in it.
Itty bitty fuzzy things
I love these immoderately. Not that I remember what their names are. But I saw them in an alpine catalogue–alpines and I do not get along–and I ordered them anyway. First year I thought they’d died. Second year–last year–out of three clumps I got maybe three flowers. This year . . . they’re spreading! They’re spreading! Yaaaaay!
More immoderate love
This rather ordinary dahlia (for those of you who recognise dahlia leaves) coming up for a new season . . . spent the winter in the sitting room. Next to the radiator. Oh gods. The prevention of cruelty to dahlias society will be after me. Some of you will know that you’re supposed to dig your dahlia tubers up every autumn (first check: when they haven’t bothered to form tubers) and go through this whole frou-frou of hanging them upside down either on slatted shelves or in boxes of sand, depending on who you read, plus the ritual chanting and the sacrifice of a virgin black goat. I have occasionally dug them up and got as far as the wrapped in newspaper in the attic trick . . . but they don’t actually live that way, and who needs an attic full of rotting dahlia tubers? I’m not sure why I even bothered with this one last autumn. But I brought it in at the beginning of that vicious cold spell and forgot about it, and when all of its brethren and sororen were outdoors getting flash-frozen it was indoors . . . withering. There is no frelling way that a tuber in a pot left dry in the dark for six months next to a radiator (even a radiator that is rarely on) is going to be alive in the spring.
Except that it is.
And for my next trick . . .
The rampant pink thing in the middle is clematis Markham’s Pink. We had it at the old house where it survived by sheer obstinacy, growing up a shed wall with nowhere really to get its feet down. But I saw it from our bedroom window and it became a crucial Hey, it’s spring! thing. Then we moved into town and I bought Markham’s Pink and it died. Then it died again. The third one I put in a pot where I could keep an eye on it–maybe I’d try the virgin black goat and the chanting–where it is suddenly going like ninety and is now much too large for the pot, which had been chosen as appropriate for a fading tubercular heroine. Not to mention creating a hedge, which was not a part of the plan. But I forget what the plan was.
Front door step
Including some of my fritillaries. Yaaaay. You will however notice a label on the lower, blue-green pot. One of my pet peeves is frelling garden centre labels that won’t come off. You could mend battleships with the glue that frelling garden centres use on their sale stickers. Arrrgh.
Trip over one of my pots and be torn to pieces by savage hellhounds
The wilting foxglove on the right is, as you might expect, a volunteer. I have tried to water it, since I admire its chutzpah, but I’m not sure where its roots go (probably into my foundations, and I shouldn’t be encouraging it) and the water just runs down the step. I’m still, um, rooting for it. PS: the tatty green thing in the lower right-hand corner is a badly slugged daylily which is now wearing a copper necklace and recovering nicely.
Daffs.
If you pay attention to flowering times you can have daffs about six months of the year–December through May. And you can start forcing them in October. I keep meaning to pay more attention to flowering times.
Yes . . .
. . . the bluebells are starting to come out. It’s predicted to be a good bluebell year this year but we need rain. Meanwhile they’re early.
PS: And speaking of early:
Yes, that's a rose bush
Old Blush’s first rosebuds are showing colour. It’s not even quite the middle of April yet! And Old Blush is early anyway, especially in a pot against a house wall, but this early??
* * *
* So, hey, what did it matter that it took FORTY FIVE MINUTES for hellhounds to eat their snack? I got one and a half Secret Project #1 squares knitted, and these are the intensive ones, 22 stitches by 28 rows. Wow. You’re saying wow, right? You’re supposed to be saying wow.
** I’ll lie down on the floor while hellhounds are negotiating with their final meal.^
^ Although I’ll probably lie down with yarn.
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