Hobbies and Crafts

Lol I don't like nettles either. I believe the butterflies use them to lay their eggs on.

I have put a few more photos on the photo blog. This time individual flowers plus all my Hostas and ferns.

Nettles are a pain Kandj and a nightmare to get rid of, but they feed the larvae of the small tortoiseshell, the peacock, the red admiral, the comma and other butterflies. We won't get the lovely butterflies on our buddleias if we don't provide food for their young.

It's very hot here today and OH and I have spent the morning moving garden furniture about. On Saturday I have a coffee morning here and I am trying to work out how I can seat around 30 people for coffee and cake, and make room for a plant stall, a book stall, a tombola and a small table for raffle prizes, in a garden the size of a pocket handkerchief. As the song from The King And I says "Is a puzzlement".

Ann, I hate buying shoes too but In the future I shall go first to the shop recommended to me. I was so impressed. The shoes I got are navy in a mixture of smooth leather and patent and should go well with my outfit. I took a scarf from the outfit with me. The wedding isn't till August but I started looking in February to be sure of giving myself time to find something. It is my son who is getting married for the second time, having divorced several years ago, so I want to look my best for him and the lovely lady he is marrying.

We either have a gremlin in our garden or I am going mad. In the troughs down the side of the house I planted 6 dwarf asters, 3 mauve and 3 pink, and 3 penstemon. I know for sure that's what I had as I still have the labels and pots. So why do I now appear to have 3 mauve asters, no pink asters but 6 penstemons? :-S

The obvious answer I suppose is that the pink asters were mis-labelled and were really penstemons, except they have a completely different type of leaf and I think I would have recognised them as penstemon plants.

There's certainly nothing boring about this garden - it's a surprise a minute :-D

Last night I won a plant in a raffle - a white aster. It's in full bloom at the moment and that has gone into the troughs as well. What do you think it will have morphed into next time I look?

:-D late snowdrops I expect Vera!

Who knows Vera? Gardening is never boring with lots of surprises each day.

Very interesting variety of photographs again Ann. Loving the purple Alliums.
I planted 12 supposedly purple coloured ones and have 7 purple and 5 white ones??

How lovely and unusual to have yellow Irises. Do your neighbours have these too?
Is that a garden wall mirror reflecting the lovers ornament? I have wanted to have a
garden mirror but never got around to it (yet).

Beautiful close up photos of your flowers Ann. You should enter them into a photography competition, you're sure to be awarded a prize.

Thank you KandjI was pleased with the photos, the light was just right.
Yes that is a garden wall mirror. We had a different one for a long time but it eventually deteriorated so we got that one from an independent garden centre near here. I love the way the lovers are reflected in it, they are part of the water feature of course, in front of the mirror.

It is sometimes annoying when bulbs and corms etc get muddled up. presumably if you had wanted white youw ould have bought white!! :-S

On a mission to clear the 2' high nettles, anybody want some??

I went to refill one of the bird baths and decided to cut back some more nettles, and some have fallen on my arms and now I am uncomfortable with nettle rash. Not happy!

There is a path behind where the nettles are growing and they are so high that they are leaning over and almost blocking the path. Unbelievable when I dug so many
nettle roots out last year. Why do weeds grow so much faster than our flowers??

I made a good clearing with the high nettles yesterday. Green dustbin is half full and there is still as much to clear today as yesterday, so I hope to find the time to attack the blooming things again sometime today, preferably when it is a little cooler.

In the front garden we have a really beautiful ornamental orange coloured poppy.
This came from a neighbour who has sadly died, so it is a lovely reminder of Norma and happier times we all spent together. No idea of the variety. Need to look it up.

The baby bunny has gone from the front garden. We just hope he hopped back to the fields at the entrance to our village and didn't meet up with any dogs or cats on the way. It was cute and amused us while it was here but has eaten a fair few plants, so they may have to be replaced.

A cool beginning to this morning but the sun is trying to break through.

"Norma's" orange poppy I think is Papaver Aculeatum, not sure really as ours seem
much bigger flower and brighter orange. It is a beauty though and very different.

I am hoping to finish clearing the nettles today so that the path at the very bottom of our garden is weed free. I don't plan to be out long or do too much so I have aches and pain like I have had all this week. I thought I had dug all the nettle roots out last year but obviously missed some, hence the 2' tall nettles needing to be cleared now. I will leave two or three but keep my eye on them, as they are sure to please the butterflies. (Listening to your advice Ann and Vera.)

Don't envy you that job Kandj but the butterflies will appreciate you leaving a few. We are now at our timeshare in the Kake Dustrict, was a bit of sun this afternoon but drizzly now. The usual westher for our timeshare week.

Still not finished at the bottom of the garden just yet. We have had family here this
weekend and my son in law and grandson began painting the garden fence. They went back home after Sunday lunch and I finished the fence painting off just before
we had a downpour. I got soaked clearing everything away, but it's all done now.

Later today, if I have the energy and if the rain holds off, I hope to sort out the weeds and nettles at the bottom of the garden, and that will be another job all done/dusted!

Hope the weather improves for you Ann but it's generally wet in most areas I think.
Enjoy the change of scenery anyway and relax while you are away.

Can't you tell I was/am on the ipad, always hit the wrong keys on here.

Another typical Lake district day today, drizzle and downpours, not cold though so must be grateful for that.. :-)

I hope the weather improves for you Ann, though our experience of the Lakes is that if it is not raining, it is about to rain.

It's pretty wet here too and no sign of it changing for a while yet. We were very lucky on Saturday. I held a coffee morning here for a club I belong to. Somehow I managed to get about 30 people, a plant stall, a book stall, a tombola and a table of raffle prizes into my little garden and the rain held off :-D. This was just as well as I had expected it to be over by 1 pm but a dozen or so people hung on and the last guests didn't go till 4.45 pm. Some morning! The heavens opened about 10 minutes later. We just had time to grab the seat cushions in before everything was soaked.

I had lots of nice comments about the garden and how it looked as though it had been established for ages, when there wasn't a single plant in it 9 months ago. So my head is well swollen now :-D

Glad your coffee morning went well Vera, goodness did you have to feed the ones that hung on?

Actually today has been quite nice, no rain and quite a bit of sun. We went to see friends this morning and then we went to Conishead priory for lunch and a look round, such a peaceful place belonging to Budhist monks. We also had a short walk down to the beach on the estuary at Bardsea.

I hadn't heard of Conishead Priory so googled it. It looks an interesting and peaceful place.

Ann, when there were still a dozen or so people in my garden at 2 pm, I took a big bag of finger rolls out of the freezer and defrosted them in the microwave and managed to find enough stuff in the fridge for fillings. I had plenty of cheese and biscuits and there were still some cakes left from the morning. Himself brought out a couple of bottles of wine and everyone tucked in. I think I made them too welcome so no-one wanted to go ;-). But it was very enjoyable.

Your coffee morning turned into afternoon tea then Vera? How lovely for you to be able to show off and share all the hard work and effort you and OH have done.

The priory visit sounds good to me Ann. I like peace and quiet, don't get that much.
Need to do a Google. I'm like Vera and haven't heard of this one before.

Raining hard here this morning, all the work at the bottom of the garden is finished.
I did leave a few nettles for the butterflies, but I'll keep my eye on them this time.

At the front of our bungalow there is grassed area and then the pavement. Last year
I sprinkled poppy seeds along the outside of our boundary wall, not expecting much.
Now we have poppies all along the outside wall in several colours. Pink, light and a deep purple, deep red and orange. A beautiful display and all for free. A joy to see.

Too tired and disorganised to add a "proper" comment about my garden at the moment.
I have been reading your posts with interest. Thanks for teaching me so much. I really must get a "gardening file" perhaps put that near the top of my to do list.

Have been battling nettles, still have some at the end of my small garden. Often have nettle stings on my arms, but getting used to it.

Have been digging a small patch ready for planting. Already got an Acer and two Hebes ready to go in. Need to check to see if I've got any seeds, bulbs or cuttings that can go there too.

Dug up all sorts of thick roots, as they were not attached to anything at the time, have no idea what they were the roots to!

Looking forward to having something that deserves the title of "garden" outside my back door.

Could get to like this lark! ?

Hello TessAka, it's good to hear another voice on the thread. You certainly sound as if you have been busy. Aren't nettles a nightmare? If you have a tiny hidden corner where you could leave just a couple, you will benefit the butterflies.

I am hoping the rain is going to hold off for a while today so I can get a couple of jobs done outside. How much more water can there be up there? On Saturday OH and I drove to the supermarket and sat in the car for 15minutes because of the horrendous downpour of rain and hail. Then, with no sign of it stopping enough for us to be able to run into the shop, we drove home again!

Sun has just come out so I am off outside now to put a cage over my ripening blueberries, otherwise the birds will have them.

Hi Tess, Welcome to the gardening thread, by reading you will have realised we are not gardening experts but all jogging along getting help and advice from each other. How big is the patch you are planting? If it is not too large don't plant any shrubs close together until you see how big they will be likely to grow. Daffodil bulbs can go in in September and tulip bulbs in October/November. I would think that, if you have only just dug up the roots, they would not have grown this year. Most roots of plants left in the ground would have been showing some shoot growth by now.

Vera, that was a wasted journey to the supermarket then, hope you didn't need food for your dinner!!

You have reminded me to go and look at the red currants and raspberries before the blackbird gets them. I was about to pick raspberried yesterday after a lovely sunny morning when we got the torrential rain.
All the time we were at daughters in Dalton in Furness last week we didn't have more than one light shower. Immediately we got home the rain started here and it has obviously been wet while we were away as the petunias are very soggy - they don't like rain.

Kandj your poppies sound lovely, we had a huge one in the front garden it now has masses of seed heads on it, unfortunately we only saw half a dozen of the poppies before we went away and I didn't photograph them, gread big double flowers, bright red. :-) :-)