More fruit

Lots of fruit to be picked this week - first some gooseberries from my parents' garden, then strawberries and the first of the redcurrants from my own.

Sweet pea or just 'pea'?

 I've two sorts of pea-style flowers in the garden right now - some tall peas plants and some sweet peas. Confusingly though, the white flowers are the scented sweetpeas, while the purple ones are the flowers of blauwschokker purple podded peas and have no scent at all.

First fruits

I suppose these are really 'first fruits' of the year as we've been pulling rhubarb for a while but it's still exciting to have the first home grown strawberries - and a solitary cherry!

Coming up roses

 My rambling rose which used to twine along a fence dividing the flower beds from veg patch is being re-trained. When we first got an allotment, I decided to cut down on the vegetables grown at home so removed the fence which had split the garden in two. I tried to move the roses but the roots were too deep. A small root lifted and I planted this on an outer fence where it's getting established and has a couple of flowers this year. But the main plant stayed put and I'm trying to shape it to form a pyramid clump.

 As a rambler, it wants to carry on growing forever - and has managed to sneak out of the 'pyramid' and round the other side of the birch tree....

...and even up into the leaves! It's maybe 10 ft high and growing faster than the tree.
I rather like this weirdly-flowering tree look so for now at least the rose can stay.

Organised chaos - or June flowers

 There's no formal council-style bedding structure to my flowers beds - just colour running riot. The plants at this time of the year are a mix of perennials and self-set annuals and biennials. Later I'll add a few 'bedding plants' - marigolds and rudbeckia - because otherwise after early Summer's riot things are too dull.

 From their sheer size and flamboyance the oriental poppies dominate now - there's a variety of pink, red, orangey shades but I'd love to have some darker plum colours too.

I'm not fond of gaps between flowers so it's barely possible to see the soil in places - and even the leeks are hidden here.

A splash of colour by the back door - again no room for weeds!

Finding the path....

 Here hiding under the flowers are my garden paths - the main ones are slabbed with the blunt edging softened by foliage; the smaller ones are made of bricks, though mainly hidden under forget-me-nots.

I like them like this with all the hard edges well hidden but on a wet day it isn't necessarily very pleasant to walk through dripping plants and if I don't keep an eye on things the paths might disappear completely so I've had a bit of a clear up.

path? what path?

Some of the aquilegias had been knocked down by wind - or maybe the dog - so I brought a few inside, but as the forget-me-nots get taller and stragglier there's nothing much to be done except pull them out

the step from patio to lawn,soon to be hidden by foliage