What a legend!
Welcome to the second week of January. My New Year's Resolution still holds fast - what a legend! But all is not well - I have some concerns about flower colour in the January mid-summer garden.
Fluff-Fluff the Cat in the Garden
Saturday 8th January
I need more tall colour. The daylilies and the self-seeded dahlias are providing medium colour interest, and I have planted scatterings of flowering annuals, like pansies, calendulas, and cosmos. But I need something big (or at least one hundred somethings) to take the place of the foxgloves and lupins between the main rose flowering times.
Even blazing knee-high daisies alive with blooms could work, but all my daisies seem to be delicate things requiring a lunge or a creaky knee-bend to view. And when the lawns are too long (this happens quite often as Non-Gardening Partner thinks he's on holiday) all my flowering annuals, as if in sympathy, take on a disgracefully messy look, and lose their colour impact.
Peachy Dahlias
A Nursery Visit?
Hmm... I could just pop into the nursery and see if any huge blazing bushy blobs of colour are available at the moment. For example, if I could find a show-off daisy I could buy one in and take cuttings. Thankfully I didn't make any New Year’s Resolutions which involved a plant purchasing budget.
Much, Much Later...
How good have I been in the garden today? Will modesty (or gender and species) forbid me from crowing? For I have worked for three uncomplaining hours, just garden maintenance, weeding and trimming and watering and organising things.
I've also had a thought about the colour problem in (for example) the Birthday Rose Garden, which is over-abundant with fluffy pink peonies and roses in late spring and is now rather green and forlorn. If I promise myself to keep them from seeding and spreading, I could transplant smallish clumps of white Shasta daisies into these garden gaps. White is a colour, and in flower these tall daisies are brilliant. And they are free.
Shastas by the Water Race
Sunday 9th January
My life is full of weeds and words (it's the summer book-reading season). Plus a few crotchets and quavers - but not very many plods. And the mountains are so close!
Adirondack Chair :- Since I visited the USA garden Chanticleer, I've wanted pairs of Adirondack chairs placed strategically in my garden.
It's a struggle getting Non-Gardening Partner (who is on holiday) to leave his best friend Rusty the dog and come hiking for the day - any day. He always says it's too windy, and I half believe him. But mustn't grumble, can't complain - never! For he has been busy making the second Adirondack chair for my garden. Ha! So I will have the perfect pair.
More Family News
Little Minumus the cat is better, and is eating again - she's been very subdued with a sore mouth and throat (I suggest that some bird bones were incorrectly digested). She was to be going to the vet tomorrow, but I think we'll be OK with this one.
Bossman Garden Gnome
And I have 'lost' my visiting gourmet cook (Daughter of Moosey) who starts her latest piece of work in the Cook Islands, building self-composting toilets. Aha - perhaps she can build me one for Pond Cottage when she returns...
Much Later...
I have done so much good work, clearing the gardens around and behind the pond. All the paths are done, all the borders are weeded, and all the tree suckers are chopped out.
I've planted a shrubby Salvia in a gap - hopefully it will be OK here throughout the winter. I've noticed that new dahlias planted over here have been battered a bit by the nor-west winds - in other words, someone (me) should have staked them but forgot to. I'm thinking they are misplaced, and would do better in more sun anyway. I can move them later in the year.
Ginger Cat Company
I took my late lunch out to the white wire seat in the dappled shade behind the pond. This is a delightful summer reading seat (I'm onto Georgette Heyer Regency Romance Number Two). And it's a friendly place, with my large garden gnome called Bossman standing laconically on a felled tree stump by the seat, keeping watch over the pond. It's peaceful, with sounds of water trickling into the pond and pretty reflections of the pink Filipendula over by the decking. And wonderful little Pond Cottage is just over there through the trees, looking picture perfect, even if bedless.
My two ginger cats Percy and Fluff-Fluff provided high quality furry feline company, and a beautiful colour contrast with all the green foliage. Both are extremely decorative at the best of times, and they love being in the garden.