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| HOVERFLY - Eupeodes corollae - This photo is not from today but from 16th June. There are many wild flowers growing in my street. This ragwort is one of them. I'm really fortunate in my neighbours for they value wild plants as well as garden flowers and vegetables; so ragwort, willow herb, buttercups and dandelions are all left in place to grow and flower in season. |
This is an indulgent post. I walked out of my front door a few times today, took photos for the record and came back in again.
I have no garden, just a few square feet between the house and a little wall, beyond which is the pavement. Some of this gap is covered with a huge stone slab which does as a front path. To one side, there is concrete. To the other a tiny patch of earth - a few square feet where, at present, there are nigella turning into seed heads and poppies newly opened today. Mostly my plants are in pots - lots of them; small and large, within this confined space then along the pavement and down the street!
Here are some of them:
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| 'Sweet Dream' rose from David Austin. |
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| The same plant later in the day. |
Later in the day they mature decadently. It's as if they've put on thick make-up.
Candytuft by the front door looks pretty when the light is thin.
The candytuft on an old lintel glows through the shade as the sun moves round.
While I was watering nasturtiums growing up a little bay tree, a neighbour asked if I'd been having 'trouble with teenagers' recently. 'Not at all,' I replied. (Little knowing!) "It's just that two or three weeks ago they were taking the soil from your pots to throw at the police." I've been watching bees and hoverflies. Urban living!
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A bit of housekeeping:
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10 comments:
A beautiful rose Lucy. Obviously the nasturtiums are tough customers and don't look any worse for the experience. The joys of urban living are very much apparent here at the moment with late evening noise. Relatively new neighbours are most generously sharing not only loud voices but their music too with all in earshot. I will however be able to enjoy early morning peace and quiet tomorrow 😂 Yet another spanner in the works from Blogger.
Hello Anna. There's a Stevie Wonder song (I think it's 'Isn't she Lovely?') that begins with the sounds of the neighbourhood. Whenever there are voices or music outside I think of that and it makes me feel happy. (Not that I'd enjoy constant loud music of a kind I don't like!)
It's strange about Blogger. People obviously value it for so many of us still use it but over the years it has been steadily made harder to operate and now the option for people to have their posts emailed is being withdrawn. It seems like a self sabotage but if they don't want to run the platform you'd have thought they could simply stop rather than kill it by running it into the ground.
Nasturtiums are tougher than teenagers! I think I'm right in saying that Foxgloves don't flower in the first year, they'll die back in winter, then produce flowers next year.
Hello John. I'm not sure they were taking earth from the big pot with the nasturtiums. I think it more likely they were taking the little pots of vegetables I was 'growing on' and using them as missiles. There were so many for a while I wouldn't have missed a couple and I imagine there is a limit to the number of pots of earth, or even handfuls of it, that you can throw at the police without having to stop!
Re. the foxgloves. I was hoping they would flower mildly in the first year, with bigger, stronger spikes in the second. Meanwhile, the leaves are really dramatic and huge and green. Everything green is refreshing.
If I want foxgloves every year, I suppose I should collect more seed and sow some in the autumn. There's a beautiful white foxglove that has sown itself in the cooler of my two greenhouses. I'll take some from that.
Lovely post and pictures. I like the colour of the roses, and good for you for growing candytuft which is a much under-rated flower nowadays. Take care. xx
Oh, that rose, Lucy! What beauty. All of the photos, actually, are just perfect. I am so glad you're back to occasional blogging. I missed you.
Hello Mike. The rose sort of chose itself (with helpful advice from a David Austin assistant) because I had to have something small enough to grow in a large pot in that particular spot. Candytuft . . . I saw some in a garden last year and thought it so pretty I reckoned I'd grow some too. Interestingly, it seems to be a magnet to very tiny hoverflies.
Hello Granny Sue. The rose is a great hit with local children. It's just the right height for the blooms to be face to face with eight year olds. One little boy wants me to save him a hip (a 'seed') so he can grow one too. I tried to explain that isn't how we mostly grow roses but eventually agreed reluctantly, saying that even should it work it is unlikely to grow true to what he is seeing now. "Even if it does grow," I suggested, "it will probably just grow a long strand, not into a neat bush like this."
"To the moon?" he asked.
Lovely pictures from your garden and I just love that rose! Beautiful colour!
Have a great sunday...
Titti
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