Monthly Archives: May 2025

A pictorial gardening report from near Coventry

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A big thanks to Mike & Julia from outside Coventry for some snaps from their great garden. As before we are going to let Julia’s brilliant pictures do the talking, and there’s some wonderful stuff here as ever. As Mike said in his email “Things are happening in our garden”. They certainly are!

Cheers for sending these pictures over and may your garden carry on looking great for the rest of this year!

STOP PRESS: Julia has just come back with the plants featured in order as in the blog post. Thanks Julia!

Allium
Salvia – hot lips
Alstroemeria
Geums with wallflowers in front
Geums with a lupin type bush which I have never seen before and am not quite sure what it is
I think it’s a penstemon
Yellow poppies and geranium

More from north London

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Thanks to Debby H for sending us an update today. Above are the Marconi Red peppers and the dwarf sunflowers (below). “These are the plants from the house in the next street to ours” and the plants looks healthy. The peppers have a few flowers on one of them as well.
Below are the peonies in her garden (below) which have great looking flowers! We’re only at the start of the growing season and the garden can only get better. Cheers Debby, thanks for sending the updates!
The weather looks like a bit of rain later this week by the way so they’ll be another growth spurt out of our plants in our gardens we reckon.

Radio connects us all

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Cheers to Kit, G0JPS presently on a boat on the Grand Union Canal who told us earlier he was listening to the “Alt Universe Top 40” on 9670 kHz on his XHDATA D-808 portable. As he reported: “Lovely reception. Hot Butter’s seminal track, “Popcorn” is currently playing.” Brilliant stuff Kit!

Then around the same time we heard from Debby H who picked up a couple of pepper plants from a few streets away (there was a mixture of plants on a wall with a sign “please take me” on it) and guess what one of the varieties was called? Marconi Red. Radio (and gardening) connects us all!

Top buzz

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We were watering the garden early this evening (we know morning is better as those later waterings bring the slugs and snails out) and at the bottom of the garden heard the loudest humming and buzzing sounds from the flowering pyracantha. Looks like the bees love those flowers!

North London news extra

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And we mentioned, here’s a part two from Debby H. She wrote “Here’s a photo of our tomato plants in our little Lidl greenhouse (above), plus one of a couple of them that we planted in a “Grow Zone” that we bought last year, also from Lidl (below).”

“Regarding indoor plants, I have attached a picture of my cactus which blooms every year with dozens of little red flowers, and also one of a flower that has appeared on a succulent that we have had for several years but of has never flowered before.”

Brilliant stuff as ever Debby! Thanks again.

North London Report

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Thanks to Debby H for sending us some recent pictures of her garden. This may turn into a two-part post as she sent us some great images.

We must start with the cosmos (above) that have been planted out and you can see still in the cardboard toilet roll inners. As Debby said “(it) makes the planting much easier, which is good when you have dozens of plants” and she’s right. The loo roll inners look like a part of the display too. A winner all round!

Here’s a couple of pictures of French lavender (one under the netting protecting some strawberries). We bought a plant of the same a few months ago and we do love the overall look of it.

And we love the blossom on her red robin tree (below). She said that it seems to have more blossom on it than previous years this spring.

“The peonies are doing well (above). Here’s a picture of one of the flowers just opening (below).” Great stuff!

Thanks again Debby and we’ll post your other pics later this week.

Please no frost now…

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It look’s like everything’s on its way now what with the good weather we’re having. We’ve got some different coloured love in a mist up at the top of the garden alongside some tomatoes and whatever else that came out of the packets of seeds we regularly randomly sowed.

There’s a self seeded hollyhock that is really giving it some at the side bed where there’s a load of different stuff growing in a small space, tomatoes and potatoes and random wild flowers. The veg bed at the bottom of the garden is starting to grow now after the cats kept away what with the trick of random twigs and sticks. How’s your garden growing? Pictures to one deck pete (at) gee mail dot com.

Tunes for a Thursday night

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Thanks for Vintage Obscura Radio for putting this up on their bluesky feed and what a tune. It’s from Fadoul aka Bob Fadoul and it’s called Fi Jamique. Yes it is a familiar rhythm (None Escape the Judgement) but it’s a lovely take on it! And there’s more!

More from Tallinn

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We’ve just heard from The Rhythm Doctor who sent us some pictures of wild garlic last post. “We saw this strange flower the other day in the same area as the garlic”, it turns out to be the common toothwort.

Turns out the plant is a bit of a parasite “The genus produces no chlorophyll and parasitises host trees, often hazel, beech and walnut, to acquire nutrients” more here. Cheers RD that is one strange looking plant!

World news

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We venture firstly to Tallinn, Estonia for a few pictures from our good friend The Rhythm Doctor. If you remember we mentioned wild garlic a few posts ago here after a pic by Mike and Julia. Well near The Rhythm Doctor’s abode there’s a lovely woodland area that has lots of wild garlic (above – here’s one big clump of it) and some great woodland plants.

We’ve done a plant.id on this pic below and this is coming up 77% as a dwarf marsh violet or one of that family, lovely picture by the way!

And this one below is a geum rivale (AKA water avens, purple avens but not richie avens), thanks to plant i-d. Cheers for the pictures RD, brilliant to see your locale there in Estonia.

Also cheers to Rich R from the Lake District for sending us a couple of great pictures this week.

He had a trip up the coast last week (above – it looks lovely and in the distance is Scotland) and found these lovely Sea Pinks AKA Thrift (Armeria maritima) (below). Cheers Rich!

That’s all for our reports this week but do send us some via one deck pete (at) gee mail dot com.