Six on Saturday

We had had hot days(for early June), sunny days and dry days all week, often with gusts from the East.  Come to think of it it has been dry for some weeks now.  The water butt is dry, but I am sure those of some of the other SOSs including our leader Jim will be reaping the benefit of their expanding installations.  For maybe far happier items do join the boat, or look on,  and find out what other contributors have to add this week. Also I am pleased that Jim has called us his 'Motley Crew', I was fearing I would need to just slip overboard, but with a bit of bailing out of my own ship I promise to stay afloat. 

For my part I am working on my state of mind, and I do believe that my memes do benefit so after a hiccup and a holiday, here I am with this week's six: 

1. I was never really a buyer and eater of many sweeties, but I can't say the same for plants.  Visitors in the know often arrived with little offerings, as yesterday when my fifth visitor arrived to share in with some divisions of Iris, came bearing a few little treasures to add to the garden. This year I am working on filling tubs with plants I carried on from last year, cuttings etc.  

However, this week when I was at the Bishop's Palace for coffee with friends, I picked up two little seedlings with just Gomphrena on the label, a plant I have never grown before and they went into the top from which I removed the tulips. 

Then on the same day doing a little shopping whilst the car was being washed, I found a little Fuchsia: La Campanella for sale for the very modest price of £1.30 in Morrisons.  That will add the trailing bit.

The taller bits will consist of lovely blue flowering Salvia African Sky, thanks to cuttings taken last summer, and carried on in the unheated shed with just the one window on the south side. This will be my £3.30 pot for the summer.

It is amazing how doing a little arrangement like this can take my mind off the piles of leaves that have to be cleared and are yet to fall with more clearing following on. This is what the pot looks like now, in my imagination it will be wonderful.  I'll come back to it in a couple of months time and assess the results.

2. I am trying to focus on the positive.  On our return after just over a week in Tresco, the garden here was looking in a sorry state, covered in  hard brown leaves that constitute the discarded older leaves from the Holm Oak, with sticky green pollen, lots of green fly, ants farming them, and now the spent catkins are adding to the mess which I will spend most of the week clearing. I am clutching at straws making up that tub, but it was a respite from my fed up feeling.  Then I found my cousin's wife posted a saying which has somewhat helped me: 

"In case no one has said this to you today, you are doing your best, and you are going to be O.K." Thanks Sue, to whom I am dedicating this week's SOS who relentlessly offers support with shares of excellent sayings on her Facebook Page.

Also my dearly beloved is helping each morning for an hour or so and picking the leaves, using a kneeling to remove the debris from the gravel paths.

3. In the small vegetable garden an even smaller patch has now been planted up Dwarf French Bean Annabelle. 

I suppose my 'narky mood' is not helped by the feeling that the new composts are not up to grade, and that I didn't plant some of the seeds quite at the right time as I knew I would not be around to care and look after them, plant them on, and then transplant them.  Am I sounding peevish?  Anyway, I decided to soak the beans till they were plump and plant them straight into the ground behind the lettuces.  And yes on a more positive note, I have started to pick the Mangetout Norli which are delicious. Yes and the lettuce are yielding delicious leaves that I am removing from the base, rather than cutting the whole head.  That way the fridge is not over stuffed, and the lettuce keeps on growing.

4. Rosa Grace is looking a little better after a hosing down to clear some of the oak leaves and pollen. And for those wondering that is Rosa Open Arms along the fence in the background.

5. I was reading my WI Life and an article called 'The Peace of Radical Acceptance' seemed to be 'of the moment' helpful. Often gardening is written about in terms of being ever so good for one's mental health, has anything been written about problems that gardeners can feel, ie their ' challenged mental health' resulting from over idealistic views of their own garden.

I'm going to try to use these to help me with my current 'troubles' and mood and see if I can turn this around.  My garden, which as my friends know is as vital to me as my right arm, is causing me to feel less content that I ought to.  

'Accept the things you can't control and focus on changing the things you can.' is one of words of wisdom from Heidi Scrimgeour

10 Tips: 

1. Accept yourself  your garden. (yes and myself and my limitations and my overidealised view of the world)

2. Observe-rather than fight-reality. (ie take time to look around the whole garden: there are still some good bits. Accept that each June is there is an easterly wind the leaves that are shed by the Holm Oaks will be all over the garden)

3. Welcome discovery. (Clear the leaves and find special plants happy for their release.)

4 Expect some pain.(...too true! It is normal for some plants to disappoint, after all the weather and soil is not within your control.)

5 Let yourself be lazy...really? Well after a morning's work in the garden, you deserve a rest. There will only be more leaves to clear tomorrow. Got to work on this bit, as I went out again after a rest.

6. Face the fantasy of control. (It only result is feeling flattened and crushed by the size of the job and must face my limitations.)

etc...

Three steps towards Radical Acceptance: Speak to yourself in an accepting way, Visualise how you will feel, Picture a fork in the road.  The last was too deep for me, or at least the ground is too hard to take that analogy any further.

Thanks to Heidi Scrimgeour and apologies for extracting bits of the article written for Mental Health Awareness for WI's Make Time for Mental Health Campaign.

6. The front 'Mediterranean' garden which is amazingly hot and dry for early June and unwatered so far, is in the lee as regards leaf litter is concerned, and some of the Mediterranean Plants are doing rather well, without any recent intervention, and even with a severe cut down last year Phlomis fruticosa 'Bourgaei' is rising to the occasion this June.

Phlomis fruticosa 'Bourgaei'

Thanks the lot for this week, except if you want something before next week I am hoping to post about Tresco Gardens which was a short walk from our Inn, and was visited each day...