Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.
Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!
Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.
We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
We’ve had those seed spuds for a couple of weeks now and they ain’t half burning a hole in our pockets. We’ve an egg box with a handful of them chitting away by the back room window, a couple went in in the cold frame (an old window frame found in a skip, balanced on bricks) and we’ve just put two in each raised bed down the side even though it’s a liitle bit early to be putting in Maris Pipers.
Yesterday the weather forecast on the telly said it was officially the first day of spring even though we thought spring started around the (spring) solstice but what do we know? We’ve just looked online and here’s the official line: “
In-between the rain and sunshine yesterday, we got out into the garden and sowed some seed in the raised bed at the side with some transparent plastic tacked over the top so to create a cheap mini greenhouse. Those pallet box collars we were given a few years ago have had a good life, the polythene on the top don’t last sadly and needs replacing every year but they do work. In these “poor people’s greenhouses” we sowed some beetroot, the Lldl lettuces we purchased last year and some parsnips. Parnsips are funny anyway and need fresh seed but these seeds were bought last week so touchwood should be okay if the soil gets warm enough in there. Fingers crossed we will get some germination out there.
And the other day we were complaining that we weren’t getting much action from the courgettes (zucchini) in the raised beds until we moved a leaf and found this giant in hiding.
And in the tiny bed at the bottom of the garden there is some sort of melon (we think) and some peppers and chillies. Now it looks like there’s a self seeded 
The back garden path was looking well worn what with weeds growing between the 1970’s inspired crazy paving, very loose slabs and all that combined with a sinister lean towards down the hill. Let’s say it wasn’t the most safest garden path to walk on so the other weekend we made a start on trying to improve it.
Weeds up to me knees 