Down The Garden

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Patio

As it began to rain whilst they were finishing the painting yesterday, Clare and Andrew had placed the garden chairs under the wisteria arbour. This morning, Aaron carried them to the patio.

The day was overcast. Jackie and Aaron spent the morning on garden maintenance, now at its most pressing. Aaron also filled his truck with our pruning and clippings. From the patio I continued on a perambulation with the camera.

I took my usual route along the Kitchen Path, passing the rose campion planted in front of the lysimachia firecracker with feverfew to the left.

At the corner by the iron urn, in view of the geraniums and verbena in a planter above the Dragon Bed with its pink snapdragons and prolific marigolds,

I made my way along the Brick Path, past the grass patch with its bed of bright pink begonias,

taking a rest on the Westbrook Arbour bench, and looking down the Phantom Path to sculpture Florence. Penny Lane is making her way up the Gothic Arch, opposite clematis Star of India.

Campanula persiciflora

The campanula Persiciflora stands at the south end of the Brick Path, beneath the dead snake bark maple.

It normally takes me quite a while to make inroads into a new book. “Pilling Always Pays’, by Thomas Armstrong, which I finished today, was no exception. My post-operative lethargy probably contributed to this, but I did also think that the author’s painstakingly thorough method of introducing his cast of characters may have played a part. Nevertheless, I will not hold this against him, for he proceeded to tell a carefully crafted story with numerous apparently disparate strands skilfully knitted together in the final pages. The setting was a provincial town in 1936, with its closely interwoven upwardly mobile community. Β In ‘Auntie Ivy And Sir Edmund Hillary’ I featured what I had found inside my copy.

This evening we dined on succulent roast chicken, new potatoes, crunchy carrots and cabbage, and moist ratatouille, with flavoursome gravy.

Β 

62 comments

  1. I like those chairs and table. You seem to be getting about well now.
    I love the way your garden is designed with the paths, resting spots, etc.–as well as the beautiful flowers.

  2. Your garden is always so beautiful, Derrick. Are campion related to carnations? And I’m always amused by your menu at the end of each post!

    1. Hello Val, you are right, they are a distant relation to carnations, I had to look up the family name of Caryophyllaceae , that divides into Silene and Lychnis, campion is a Lychnis, I have learnt something today!

      1. Thanks, Jackie. πŸ™‚ (I love carnations and your flowers there have that same sort of look about them.

  3. The garden setting looks perfect in its new home and the garden as always, is a burst of colour and interest.

  4. Garden maintenance time! All is looking very neat and tidy after Jackie and Aaron’s hard work. The flowers are beautiful and the table and chairs look great on the patio.

  5. Is your garden that beautiful all summer long? Oh, I’m sure it does where as here the heat decimates most of my pretty babies until autumn when a few are revived before winter finishes them off. Enjoy your Eden! I am from a far, a far a far at that. Love and blessings, N πŸ™‚ <3

    1. Very many thanks, Natalie. Jackie aims for all the year round colour. This is, I think, the best time, but it holds out, beyond Autumn, until winter with a few flowering blooms.

      1. I try for that too and have a little luck but certainly not on the scale you do. So much as do I succumb to the blazing sun’s rays and we all wilt and fade in July and August especially. Thank your ancestors that they unlike mine didn’t leave your island and move by covered wagons to this dreadful summer climed place. ???❀️

        1. I do thanks my ancestors, Natalie. A very nice way of putting it. My son, Sam has married an Australian, so two grandchildren are being reared in the heat of Perth, where mother-in-law’s roses were frazzled in 2007/8

  6. Your garden is pure joy, Derrick, and I’m mightily impressed that know the names of every plant. And a book that I’ve not read – it sounds rather fun!

    1. Thanks very much, Sandra. I do have to check plant names with the Head Gardener πŸ™‚ The book is very much of its time – with passing references to the abdication and the Berlin Olympics

      1. It sounds just my sort of book, Derrick. It’s added to the interminably long list of books I’d love to read – I just need a few more lifetimes to work my way through it!

  7. The garden looks great, and what a charming set of chairs and table. Perfect for tea, drinks, or whatever in your oh-so-lovely place.

  8. My love is like a beautiful garden
    Whose flowers spray the fragrance of my love
    Where blooms the rose- of priceless golden
    But the gardener’s worth is all above!

  9. I always feel like I’ve come home when I see your beautiful garden photographs – this years flowers are just brilliant, elegant and inviting. It’s a quiet organization of these meandering pathways. Lovely Derrick, hats off to the Head Gardner, Clare and Aaron. I’ve fallen behind, I hope you are mending well and will be up and about joining in gardening.

      1. Isn’t that always the way it is – still you are one step ahead of where you were in your recovery last week. Best wishes as you continue the recovery process.

  10. It truly is a balm to the spirit to take a wander with you and your camera around the garden. Many thanks, for all the posts and all the flowers, to both the Head Photographer and the Head Gardener. πŸ™‚

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