THE PLANTS OUTSIDE MY HOUSE - LATE JUNE 2022

It's almost half way through the year. I've spent most of it either in hospital or recovering - first pneumonia, then with a broken hip. (I now have a metal one.) So . . . I have little energy and can't walk far. On the other hand, I am grateful to be alive, to be breathing and able to walk at all.

Last July, I pottered outside my house and took a look at the plants growing either side of my front door. I can manage that I thought! I'd say 'hello' and do a repeat - hoping you can't remember what was there last time because although plants vanish or die back over winter, they tend to reappear the next year - except just at the moment it isn't as sunny as it was then. In fact, this year has been pretty cold for the season and my plants have been objecting.

One of the reasons I'm glad I live where I live is that no-one minds that my plants are a mixture of recognisable garden varieties and wild plants. What counts as a 'weed' varies from location to location. At my allotment, foxgloves are frowned on. But I love foxgloves so I collected seeds from a hedgerow - and grew them on outside my house. Bees agree - they are a 'good' thing.

Most people would accept the little 'Sweet Dreams' rose to be a 'garden' plant. It's colour is fabulous but I wish it could have a less drippy name. Last year the clusters were larger but individual flowers were smaller. Perhaps there is a reason for doing the same post a year apart. It means I note these things. The colour of the light is different too.

For Christmas a year ago, I was given wild flower seeds in small clay pellets. That spring I carefully planted them in the small amount of earth I have available beside the pavement and added labels to say which insects or creatures would be likely to be attracted to them - bees, bats, hedgehogs etc. (Hedgehogs? Am I right?) None grew. But I also pressed some into pots they could share with other plants - the rose, bamboo, a little bay tree. These pellets lay inert for a year then decided to follow the example of Jack's beans in the beanstalk story. Who knew clover could be so huge? Not me! I had to hack it back before it enveloped everything. The pretty white flowers tangled in with the rose can stay for the moment. I don't know what they are but they seem to complement it. Next year I'll return to the less cluttered 'look'.

The aquilegia 'Red Hobbit' isn't as dramatic as in previous years. Fewer flowers per plant and they seem to be smaller. However, there are more plants so I'm not too disappointed.

Candytuft has self-seeded. Some white. Some purple. I shall encourage more to grow next year. It slips in happily below the tall alliums which used to be purple . . . 

. . . and which have now turned into fireworks on stems. A bit in the way ivy does. I'm enjoying the way autumn is already beginning - before we've even got very far with our so-called summer.

At this point it started to rain. The wind sprung up and all the geranium plants began to fall of the walls and the pot with a rosemary bush began to roll lopsidedly down the street. Photography session over. This is one of the challenges with mini urban gardens. Plants which don't like too much water get too light too easily and a few gusts can rearrange the whole thing. I put away my camera and packed the pots into a cluster along the foot of the wall - stable. All colour had gone from eye level. Tomorrow, I'll put them back again. Can't think of a gardening book that mentions this.

Hi everyone!