Is it May in the garden?
It seems to have taken a lot of plants in our garden a long time to wake up this year. Our comfrey plant was very slow to emerge from the earth and is only just coming into flower. The bluebells too were slow to flower, although when they did, put on a good show. The apple blossom seemed weak and was battered by the wind and the rain, but now we have quite a lot of tiny apples forming.
I thought that we weren’t going to have a very good year at all for a lot of crops, but the apples look good, the broad beans planted out in the vegetable patch are rapidly coming into flower and I have just planted out the runner beans, which were getting a bit too tall to stay in pots. The blackcurrants have also had a growing spurt and fruit is forming. My tomato seedlings are very small though.
It’s been a hard spring, although the recent heavy rains followed by the burst of sun this weekend seems to have enabled a lot of plants to catch up. Perhaps it won’t be as bad as expected if we get some more sun.
How are the plants in your garden?
It has taken a long time for the garden to wake up , but this weekend, I finally reclaimed the last area of garden back from nature, after last year’s growth. I selectively weeded and made a point of leaving common mallow to brightly annunciate between the forget me nots. I used to class forget me nots almost as a weed, but now take delight in its random seeding and just a little control over where it grows, makes for good areas of seemingly planned colour, and it’s free! The shock of bright pink azalias have really brought the garden to life.
The shrubs have all had their pre-seaon haircuts which has helped to create a ‘new order’ in the natural looking setting. The grass is looking less like a field now, after, maybe the third cut of the year, and the clean edges seem to help give the perennials a bit of the spotlight. Astilbe, foxglove, some sort of yellow iris, another with a small red flower that I can’t remember the name, of are beginning to make headway, and even some early flowers are appearing. The clematis is almost ready to put on its display. I’m not a great fan of summer bedding, especially those floppy petunias – but there’s a few marigolds and dahlias that I’ve bought over the last couple of weeks, waiting to be put into their pots, and to fill a few holes elsewhere. I think summer’s on its way now. I suspect we’ve had our last frost warning now, and now May is nearly out, at last we can cast a clout.