A foxtail lily and New York City

We’re expecting some cold conditions this weekend in London town (with a possible low of 1 degree) so the cloches and covers are still in place in the garden. The terrarium found in the street many moons ago is nearly being lifted off by the foxtail lily growing inside it (post from February here). We don’t want to take it off yet just in case. Look closely and you can even see the flower stem ready to reach up to the sky, and it’s not even Easter yet!

Now here’s a mad tune for a Friday night, very New York 80’s sounding, think New Order, Jah Wobble and ESG. This is one big tune! It’s off the Poli-Ritmo E.P. (available here) by Internal N.Y. Rhythms on Optimo Music and a belter it is, tribal with some added dubwise goodness! One for blaring out loud while hunting down that horticultural fleece!

Under starter’s orders

We popped into Shannon’s yesterday morning for some seed potatoes and more seed compost. It was great even though it was well grey outside to see it busy with gardeners ready at the starting blocks for the new season.

There’s more seeds to start off this weekend and we can pat ourselves on the back that it’s March and we are now just starting to thinking about sowing some tomatoes as we usually do that in January and at this time of year have a mountain of leggy tomato plants on the kitchen windowsill (above pic from a few years ago in March!)

Things are starting to wake up outside now, look at that foxtail lily go (above pic, please ignore the penicillin growing on the inside of the terrarium cloche).  And wherever you look in the Weeds HQ there’s always something gardening-related, I mean look at the dahlia tubers hiding under the bed, strange goings on indeed. It won’t be long now…

The cloche is off!

Look at that foxtail lily. It’s been threatening to lift off it’s plastic cloche for days and it’s only the start of march. What a mad plant/triffid it is!

The plastic protector was put back on over it but it looks like Storm Freya has taken it on a journey half-way down the garden (remember when storms didn’t use to have names and we just used to say things like “The weather’s crap outside” or “It’s tipping it down out there”?). The lily it lives!

Seek, and ye shall find my friend

We weren’t feeling too hot over the xmas and new year period as another damn cold/flu struck, but as the garden was looking a bit on the neglected side an hour or so had to be designated to a bit of outdoor tidying up. This one was for the bed next to the garage that  earlier this year contained tomatoes, sweet peas and dahlias amongst other things (past posts about said plants in all their glory are in the links).

We dug up all the dahlia tubers carefully (some of them are the size of big spuds!) which are now drying out under the stairs even though last year we took a chance and left them in and they did wonderful this summer (post here). More on lifting the tubers here.

We even replanted a silver birch (one we found a couple of years ago in a Tesco’s bag with a note that said “Take me” on it outside a house locally see post here) that was originally by the pond but hopefully it will do better at the end of the bed. We’ll be probably moving it again as it’s so near the old garage wall but let’s see.

And as protection from forthcoming cold weather we stuck one of the plastic mini-cloches from another find, which followed the same pattern as before; left outside a house with a note with “Take me” on it (post here) over the Foxtail Lily that’s started to sprout a bit prematurely.

So wrap up warm, happy gardening and keep em peeled as Shaw Taylor used to say.

The plant that came from outer space

In celebration of buying another Foxtail Lily from Shannon’s this weekend Madtone & The Eremurus All-stars have composed a short piece of music called Foxtail Lily Dub influenced by said plant. To say that the root crowns are out of this world is an understatement and the blooms are something to behold!

The flower spike:

The mad as anything root crown: (about 10 inches across!)#FoxtailLilyDub #Itcamefromouterspace