Hawthorn’s Garden

Saturday 3rd. Warm, sunny/cloudy.

Went to the local Cottage Garden Society’s annual plant sale today. Had an ace time - each of the kids tooka few pounds, and came back with some treasures. Myself, I spent about £10 and bought a pile of things which I think will work in various parts of the garden. One or two experiments and random straggly items which I felt sorry for too, of course.

T managed to mend the lawnmower (by the simple but slightly worrying expedient of turning the key-hole casing with a coin, which apparently is enough to engage the starter motor. The wonders of British engineering…) and mowed the lawn. I planted some of the stuff I bought today (geum, lychnis, aquilegia, irises of various sorts, viola) and weeded a bit more of the bank of the beck.

Also cleared a bit of the brick patio at the side of the house, and prepared the kids’ flowerbeds for planting some of their purchases from the sale.

Bank Holiday Monday 5th. Warm, sunny.

A lovely early summer day. Planted some more of the stuff I bought at the plant sale (a kaffir lily, more aquilegia, an arum lily) and then turned my attention to the kids’ gardens. M planted her sugar-snap pea, a tomato, four honesty plants, a wild strawberry, a viola and a creeping jenny. O put in two rows of the carrot seedlings he has raised, but he also has a lot more plants to put in his garden (he rather lost interest after the carrots). C created a lovely portable garden in two plastic trough planters, with a tomato, a cerinthe, two honesties (sp?), a poppy  and a linaria. All three of them also planted bean seeds as a school project, to grow for the village show in September.

I still have a load of stuff to find a home for, and I’ve also started transplanting stuff from my pots into the garden. Today I took T’s rose bush from its longtime home and put it by the beck - it may not be sunny enough for it there, but at least it will have water which it often didn’t have in its pot (my watering schedule is erratic at best).