garden

This weekend the fore casted bad weather didn't make it's appearance until ...... 9am this morning after I'd unpacked all my gear at the market.
Blessings though, it started softly, I had hot coffee, talked with happy people and after I packed every damp thing back into the car the stall holder next to me who had packed up too, gave me this delightful bunch of peonies. Aren't they divine?

I made a foolish mistake when we moved into our house. It had been vacant for two years so the gardens were a weedy disaster, there was evidence though that the house had been occupied by a keen gardener. Wild pumpkin plants amongst the long grass where my garden is now, little paper bags of seeds in the shed and bulbs which were still trying bravely in long neglected gardens. I vowed to myself to not disturb the garden too much to see what came up. I hadn't yet learnt patience (still learning) so it wasn't long ( a couple of days) before I started clearing the small garden outside my kitchen window. I found what I thought were the roots of helebore's which I'm not fond of underneath the thick grass and ruthlessly hauled them out. It wasn't till I saw a poor lone leaf of a peony pop up the next year that I realised I'd slaughtered peonies not hellebore's. #1 lesson -patience. Learned the hard way.
I'm also learning a silverleaf lesson at the moment, I might have mentioned (moaned) that I got a greengage plum from the nursery which had silverleaf, anyway I didn't recognise it straight away. The tree got mournfully cut out of my garden but not before it had spread the dreaded silverleaf spores around. I thought I must have spread it on my pruners but I found that it spreads by airbourne spores getting into winter pruning cuts. Trees are especially vulnerable if the weather gets damp while the cuts are fresh. ARRRRAH so now I must decide if I should cut the infected cherry tree out. Ouch. Then what do I do if anything thing else shows up with it. Decisions, decisions. So that's hard gardening lesson # 2 -get rid of silver leaf quick. Oh and #3 might be don't be lazy sterilize the pruners between trees just to be certain.

Flower still life again cos I made a mistake uploading.