welcome to my little suburban oasis, filled with flowers,fruit trees and vegetables

Friday 27 May 2016

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.

Monday 2 May 2016

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