Poppy time

At this time of year the garden is normally filled with aquilegias in shades of pink, purple and dusky mauve, but this year there are very few - I blame the mild winter followed by late frosts for killing off tiny seedlings!

Instead, the back of the garden is carpeted with yellow welsh poppies, contrasting nicely with the forget-me-nots.

Elsewhere, a couple of clumps of Welsh poppies are a more unusual orange. As always they're self-set. so must just be a variant of the yellow flowered variety.

Soon though, they'll be dwarfed by the huge oriental poppies - flowering now in odd ones but a day or two of sunshine will have all the buds opening.

When is a weed not a weed?

lamb's lettuce

 Trapped inside with my continuing cold virus, I've become increasingly annoyed by the weeds running wild over the patio and paths. So today I decided they needed to be tackled.
There's plenty of the obvious sort of unwelcome plants there - grass, dandelions and such - but our patio had to try to be different! I found sycamore seedlings from the 'helicopters' that fly into the garden in autumn, self-set lamb's lettuce, oregano and lemon balm, strawberry runners, forget-me-nots, dog violets, aquilegias, and even lily of the valley spreading its roots under the slabs!

forget-me-not

Most I've tried to remove but some of the flowering 'weeds' I think deserve to stay for a while.

lily of the valley

dog violet and aquilegia