
My wee girl brought me these beautiful flowers and I was so dazzled by their beauty that I asked her to show me where she found them. She took me to a patch of chickweed in between the garden shed and the kids fort. I never knew that chickweed had such a beautiful flower - like a little miniature hibiscus in many ways. Perhaps I won't get around to weeding that patch...
Meanwhile the rest of the garden continues to flourish, although new seedlings disappear with frightening rapidity. I need to sow more lettuces but the prospect is filling me with dread. I'm going to try sprinkling coffee grounds around them, apparently that deters snails and slugs and since our budget doesn't stretch to beer drinking at the moment my husband would be horrified to see saucers of it put out for them.
I took my elderly neighbour's advice last weekend that the ground had no heat in it yet and didn't put out my tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and watermelons. They are still basking on the windowsills. I may be brave and put them out this evening, but I will then have to vigilantly go around with the torch every night again, just when I was feeling I could leave it for a night or two because the critters appear to be leaving my brassicas and the like alone for now.
I picked a tremendously windy afternoon to water my garden with my homemade sheep pellet liquid and found to my horror that I had left the back door open and the stench had permeated throughout the house. I also managed to leave the scoop (with which I was filling the watering can) outside. Apparently the dogs found it and regarded it with all the excitement of a child with an icecream: they came inside panting happily and letting us know that our nostrils would know no relief in the near future.
Aside from that I have accosted a poppy thief and demanded my plant back - a beautiful red flanders poppy plant stolen from out the front - and taken on a patch of my elderly neighbour's garden, which was overgrown with weeds and getting too much for her since she fell in her rosebushes and ended up in hospital. I've still got heaps of lawn to dig up, although the wheat and the alfalfa are doing well, the fennel has sprouted and I'm going to plant the corn today in the bit I dug up last weekend.
I'm going to be very busy indeed!
Seeds sown outside today: Coriander, Corn, Atlantic Giant Pumpkin