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...

 

Tresco Island East and Southern fringes

 
One of our first walks was across the 'waist' of Tresco from our base at The New Inn in New Grimsby to Old Grimsby.

 Not surprisingly we had to make the detour to The Old Blockhouse, and the views from the high points across to smaller islands  were breathtaking. With steps within to take one higher to be amazed by the bright white beaches on this side of the island.

Some more pebbly parts were equally interesting and finding some worn pebbles I tried balancing a few to try to emulate the blocks of granite standing up above the beach further along. 

The Sand dunes were interesting, and many plants looking like Tresco garden escapees flourished amongst the grasses.

There weren't any rock pools to explore but none the less a little walk along the seas edge was interesting, and I understand that these are just sun bleached seaweed. They looked in all other ways healthy, pliable and attached to rocks undamed and intact.

Yes this  is a truly wonderful island with excellent uncrowded, dare I say it 'deserted' beaches.

Tresco Island - The North and North West

 After time on the delightful island, one of several inhabited and the second largest of islands in the group called The Isles of Scilly, it is time to post a few pictures before I launch into the delights of the Tresco Abbey Gardens, for which other posts will follow.

Tresco is a small island, measuring just over 2 by 1 miles, and a saunter out each day means that most paths can be taken very easily in every direction.  The north of the island has a completely different feel to the luxuriant semi-tropical gardens which are on the southern side of the island.  The waved maritime heath at the northern end of the island grows on shallow soil on top of the coarse granite, of which there are some dramatic exposures.  

The area is strewn with the remains left behind by the last retreating ice sheet some eighteen thousand years ago,  and the strong northerly salt wind leads to tight undulating heathers, through which from time to time tell tale stones from Bronze aged cairns, flint works etc stand out above the vegetation.

Here Plantago coronopus, a plantain commonly known as the Stag's-Horn Plantain, is growing in the shelter afforded between two lichen rich granite boulders, together with Rock Samphire which grows more prolifically near the sea along edges of cottages and walls. 

For any lover of lichens there is plenty to see both on stones or any wood that happens to be even just a few years old. 

If you want to see lichen encrusted benches then Tresco will delight you.

I believe this to be Teloschistes flavicans,  this intricately branched golden yellow lichen is very sensitive to sulphur dioxide, so its existence here growing on the north west of the island about 20 metres above sea level.

Teloschistes flavicans growing on Tresco

Lower down the wild flowers such as gorse, honey suckle and on more open sites thrift were in full early summer bloom.

At low tide one distinct type of thickly growing sea weed rings the coast and here looking towards Cromwell Tower you can see its tops floating sideways on the retreating tide. I know virtually nothing about sea weed but their different forms and colours are fascinating and there were many different ones to amuse me in particular during walks on rocks or the more sandy beaches. 

Sea Thrift carpeting the slopes facing Bryher

In a Vase on Monday - Parrots and Wisdom

 After all I said last week, I have gained inner wisdom for a little time, and realised that IVOM has so much to offer, too long to list, with connections to people. to thoughts and to plants.  Here I am again! Joining in and supporting Cathy in this weekly get together.  I may come and go, and falter, but Cathy despite everything is here.

For the first time however here are Parrot Tulips of great beauty and intricacy which almost all of nature exhibits if one looks closely. I've also learnt from Cathy that these Parrot Tulips can come back the following year, so I shall be looking for a place to plant these in the garden.  Foliage are the largest of leaves produced of the Arum Italicum.

I had a second pot of these and having picked them all will be able to replant the pot ready for Summer.

The arrangement is on the dining room table with my two parrot pictures behind the Parrot Tulips.  

Wise words are written on the picture of  The red-tailed black cockatoo which I often ponder over.  Whether it is written or thought, there is no dishonour on leaving those behind, moving on, and finding new ways of achieving a balance. 

When I walked passed a Charity Shop in Kenilworth and spied these two prints on the floor, I hardly thought they would be gracing our walls all these years.  Its a trick of the camera but our walls are the pale green rather than the acqua.

Six on Saturday - 13 May 2023

We have had deluges of rain, but also a couple of days of sunshine. Already the Holm Oaks are starting to go through their summer moult, as evergreen trees do and this is when I hope that we don't have too many easterly winds as we did on Friday as they shed over on my garden rather than on the other side of the wall where they are growing. 

Here are my Six this Saturday:

1. The Nemesia Vanille Fraise was left in situ over the winter with just a light prune and just look it now, growing in the 'Willow Pot' in full flower and filling the garden with its scent. 

2. Another plant which I hope will flower year after year is the Choisya 'Aztec Pearl'.  It is somewhat dominated by the Persicaria Red Dragon that seems not be at all snuffed out by the huge amount of rain, in fact the converse is true. It was just a small new plant last November.

3. One of the plants in full flower and much admired was again a white:  Centaurea Montana Alba.  Over three weeks I have had requests for this plant and having divided this and positioned it at various points in the front garden over the last couple of years, was able with my trowel to provide some good plants straight away to friends.

What is so good about this silver leaved perennial cornflower is that as soon as a flush of flowers is over, I cut it right back to the ground, and it spring back and flowers again.  I get at least three repeats, and this year I shall monitor this clump to see how many regrowns I get.

It  is not just one way with plants: this week I received a piece of Brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream' from Brenda,plants were exchanged when we visited Batcombe House, this week. That has been planted in a shaded area.  Once it grows and I can judge its habit here in the garden, it will be a good one hopefully to place in different areas. I've visited Batcombe House previously but went mainly to meet up with gardening friends.

4. This is the view of looking towards Gooseberry corner but with the planting and with the fruit trees growing on nicely. It was looking at this border which featured in May 2021, early this morning, which illustrated to me how worthwhile taking a weekly overview of the garden is.

5.  Always a favourite area of the garden, the gravel garden is looking fine and for the last couple of weeks the creeping thyme 'Jekka' has been attracting pollinators. It easily roots along its long stems into the gravel and I have been placing 'new' plants to start to give the front Mediterranean themed garden some early carpeting cover and colour.

I've read that it is a good culinary thyme, and I really ought to put that to the test.  Also I understand if you cut this one back it bounces back with perhaps another display to follow.

6. Another little plant which has given pleasure since first planting three years ago is the heart leaved globe daisy: Globularia cordifolia.  Batcombe House also have this trailing off a short brick wall to great effect.  It was obviously very happy there as it had been in for years as seen from it thickish woody base. Here it is just starting to flower today:

Globularia cordifolia

Finally: 

Since high profile people can made a U turn, I hope readers won't be dismayed that after writing recently about my decision to temporary halt my weekly posts linking in to memes, I feel it important to return at the very least to SOS which is hosted each Saturday by Jim. 

For one I won't be silenced:  after receiving

 'Your post titled 'Apple D'Arcy Spice' has been unpublished' Your post titled 'Apple D'Arcy Spice'was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have unpublished the URL

I have no idea what caused an infringement, but I have removed the links to apple suppliers to the RHS and others, and now it is accepted. How those links were an infringement I do not know, however on resubmission it was 'uncancelled'!

Secondly I had some friends round for a Book Club and luncheon, and their comments regarding the garden and some of the plants made me look at the garden with fresh eyes.

And looking back at my post in May 2021, I realised that these weekly posts allow me to note my feelings and also views of the gardens and plants which I enjoy looking back on myself. They give me so much pleasure....