Tag: poppy

The Gauntlet

When I read Baroness Orczy’s timeless novel, ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, I had a vague idea that this was a flower, but didn’t know what it looked like. We have a lovely little orange weed, rather like a forget-me-not in size, that crops up all over the garden. I haven’t been digging it up, because I find it so attractive. I was rather pleased, then, when, this morning, the head gardener informed me that this was scarlet pimpernel.
Different coloured poppies continue to bloom, if only for a day.
We also have nasturtiums, to which snails seem rather partial.
Different hued antirrhinums manage to hold their own with strident pelargoniums.
In the last of today’s plant photographs we have pilosella aurantiaca, otherwise known as orange hawkweed, a plant that in some parts of America and Australia is considered as an invasive species.

Today I completed the clearance of the right hand side of the front driveway that Jackie had begun yesterday.

I uprooted the last of the brambles and pruned most of the shrubs very severely, revealing more flowers, such as the day lilies. Jackie, who embellished the wall with a window box, assures me the heavily pruned growth will burgeon again next year. I certainly didn’t rival her treatment of the mahonia.
Painstakingly, I conveyed to a convolvulus that was making its way up an ornamental cherry tree that its presence was no longer required. Maybe I should have waited for a flower. It may have been a morning glory. I tied up the white rose that had taken to the ground in its bid to escape the other thorny rambler, which has torn holes in the fingers of my gardening gloves and left its mark on those inside.

A new pair, or at least the right hand gauntlet may be in order.

An attractive clematis now quivers in the breeze above the roses on the archway through to the front garden.
Fortunately, our guests of yesterday evening left enough of Jackie’s delicious beef casserole for us to finish it today. Strawberries and ice cream were to follow. I drank some Yellow Tail shiraz 2013, also courtesy of last night.

Painted Into A Corner

While we have been working on the main garden, the back drive has taken advantage of our negligence, and become rather out of hand. Jackie has decided that, far preferable to getting down on her hands and knees to weed it, she will apply a weedkiller. Since this area is the size of a large town back garden, the task will require goodness knows how many trips from the house to the undergrowth with a small can of diluted poison.

In the photograph she is seen making her way to the far end. At least a start was made.
The front garden has also rather burgeoned. After transporting a few more sets to finish yesterday’s border, I made a start on that.
After leaving off the poisoning, Jackie set those last few blocks of granite, and continued planting and watering.When she called me for lunch,

I had not even finished clearing the brambles breaking through the trellis by the entrance, and clambering over any plants in their path. As the second picture shows, it became apparent that I had painted myself into a corner. I found another way out.
This afternoon I managed to clear the trellis area, and heavily to prune a sloe tree that was encroaching onto the footpath outside our property, and putting unnecessary pressure on the latticework of the trellis. I had to sacrifice nascent fruit of both the brambles and the tree, but I can live with that.
Before I could put my feet up at the end of the day I needed to clear the severed branches and uprooted blackberry bushes from the garden and the street outside. It was then my turn to make long treks down the garden path. The vast pile of cuttings that all the clearances are accumulating, lies at the far end of the main path, near the gate in today’s first photograph. Backwards and forwards, knackered, I tramped. Adding material to the heap is rather like tossing the caber.
Afterwards, I had a wander around with my camera.

A new variety of poppy has revealed itself in the bed I weeded yesterday, and a pink climbing rose has taken off since we gave it more space and light.


We have a number of varieties of verbena which are seemingly happy with life. The tall stemmed bonariensis blends beautifully with the clematises on the new arch, and the surrounding geraniums. Its shorter, scented, cousin, aptly named strawberries and cream, makes a welcome companion for diascia and pelargoniums, especially the nutmeg flavoured one. That is why Jackie has placed their pot alongside the bench.


Petunias, such as these in a hanging basket, come in a variety of colours, as does the mimulus, nestling on the margin of the tiny pond.
For dinner, Jackie produced gammon baked in a nest of whole mushrooms; swede, carrot and potato mash; cauliflower; and a positively piquant melange of onions and tomatoes for    a sauce to provide juiciness. I didn’t drink any of her Hoegaarden, or anything else for that matter.
For the onion and tomato sauce:
Take four medium onions, finely chopped. Fry them with one clove of garlic in butter with a little oil to stop the butter burning.
When they are well done, add a can of chopped Italian tomatoes and gently fry until blended in well.
Try it. It’s delicious.