We booked a day off work yesterday so in the morning popped down Shannon’s to get some seed compost and whilst we were there picked up a delightfully named dahlia called Hollyhill Spiderwoman. It’s a mad looking “cactus” variety with blooms that can grow up to a whopping six to eight inches across! How good is that? Flowers “as big as a dinnerplate” as it says on the packaging, brilliant!

We returned home happy with our purchases but after being indoors for about ten minutes we spied out of the kitchen window an unwelcome visitor to the Weeds garden, the Lewisham Heron (we’ve had trouble with it a couple of times, see here and here.) The pond has netting all over it now so hopefully the winged beast didn’t have its way again but the water is dark and murky at the moment and no fish were to be seen after we shoo-ed the monster away. Go back to Ladywell Fields Pterodactyl-features and leave our goldfish alone!

After we got over the shock of seeing our pond’s sworn enemy the rest of the afternoon was spent with a bit of bed tidying and inspecting the dahlia tubers that are plonked under the stairs in a blue builder’s sack. Any excess soil was knocked off and anything that looked a bit mushy or mouldy was chucked into the bin. If you like dahlias like we do, a couple of good resources are The National Dahlia Society Facebook page here and Dahlia Divas have a long list of varieties here.

No matter how much we love the plant we wouldn’t eat them. But some people will, dahlia Rosti anyone? No thanks, we’re not hungry.