April has been another busy month in the garden with lots of things to be nurtured but also lots of things to be chopped down. As the buddleia in my neighbour's garden has begun to leaf up, it's become apparent that there are a number of dead branches - no leaves forming being the biggest clue! Those dead branches all seem to be on my side of the fence, pulling my fence down for a change. (We have the situation in reverse where the weight of the branches on my solanum are pulling down his fence too.) So I chopped all those buddleia branches down (and a few solanum branches that I could get to, while standing precariously on the backs of two garden chairs - don't try this at home, kids!) to try and save the fence a bit. I wish my neighbour would chop my solanum down in their garden - it would save so much strain on the fence.
My brown bin is giving me cause for thought also. The bin is only collected every two weeks and I pay the princely sum of £42 per year for this service. But this week, I managed to fill it in a record twenty minutes which means I can't really do any tidying for a fortnight unless I go to the tip - a job I absolutely HATE - so am wondering whether to have an extra brown bin. It's not so much the extra £42 that is troubling me, it is the fact that my front garden will soon look like it belongs to a block of flats - I've already got three wheelie bins out there and a second brown bin will mean the fourth. What to do? Perhaps I'll monitor it for the rest of this year - up to now, two bins would be a very sensible option, but it's that time of year when I chop down manically. Perhaps, during the summer, I really won't use the one as much? Oh, it's all too complicated!
Anyhoo, enough of the angst and more of the pictures.
This rather scary chap has been residing in my garden for six years apparently and I've never seen him! I only found him while doing some chopping back on the right side of the garden. He's only a head and looks like he's been cemented in as I couldn't pull the blinking thing out. However, I've now rather warmed to him so he's been given a stay of execution. I have kept him covered up though and done no more chopping as I don't want him scaring people away.
The forget me nots are beautiful but are rampaging all over my garden. To the point that I've even pulled loads of clumps up and chucked them on the compost heap and also into the brown bin. While out yesterday, I saw pots of forget me nots being sold for £2.25 per small pot - had I known this, I'd have been dividing mine up into individual pots and selling them from the front garden. I'd have made a small fortune by now!
Pear blossom looking beautiful, but somehow losing its fragrance? Is that supposed to happen?
Camellia before the frost got to it. The flowers are mostly brown now, so, although there are still plenty of flowers on the shrub, I don't suppose there'll be any more photos appearing soon. Not beautiful enough!
Climbing hydrangea going a bit berserk over my outhouse in the front garden. It has really taken off this year, but I need to do some cutting back - it's threatening to cover the small window in the front and I don't want to lose any light in that room. Also, if it gets any taller, it'll be covering the corrugated clear roof, blocking out the light that my seedlings need, so it will definitely need a haircut then.
Muscari going over a bit now. (But being taken over by bluebells which are just opening up.)
Proof!
This month's seeds (on the left). I didn't sow the Miss Jekyll this time as I had so many Nigella seeds from Mary and Jim so they've all gone in now. I hope they don't run riot like their aquilegias have in my garden! Blinking things are everywhere!
Seedpods from Mary and Jim's Nigella.
Lots of foodie seeds this year - I really must learn the art of succession sowing - I've only ever managed to grow two solitary beetroot which both went in one of Andy's hotpots - and delicious they were too. But I need to grow rather more than two to make it worthwhile.
Trailing lobelia seeds sown back in January (with carrot encroaching!). I deliberately haven't put anything out in the garden yet - as per Mum's instructions - but it's May today - hurrah! So I think I'm going to start moving things outside. The lobelia are destined for pots hanging off the pergola - I'm hoping to have a lobelia curtain!
Tomatoes sown in March.
Courgettes also sown in March (with tomatoes to the right).
I have bought some lavender for the front garden to hide the hebe wall - as the hebe is so tall and woody at the bottom with little leaf growth, I can see more of the wall and the trunks. Not as beautiful as the top bit of the hebe at all, so the lavender will stand around the wall for aesthetic (and hopefully fragrance and pollination) purposes.
I've also bought some more flower seeds which I'm going to sow directly into pots in the front garden - I have inherited some really ugly concrete pots from the previous resident and they were cemented to the paving slabs. So every time I've been in the front garden, I've been kicking the pots about a bit and finally managed to loosen them so I could move them. They are standing behind the boundary wall and are just a wee bit shorter so people passing by won't be subjected to their ugliness - they will just be admiring the flowers towering (hopefully!) from the pots. I'm very excited about this.
So that's the story for April. This is a really exciting - but also quite overwhelming - time of year for the garden - lots of things popping up, but a never ending list of things still to do. I have set up my own gardening notebook - basically a list of things to do, and at the moment, I've filled four pages!
