A few minutes ago, I went out into my front yard to take a picture of the blooms on my tree peony, somewhat battered with rain. It’s been pouring with rain for several days here and consequently everything is lush and green, with, in my case, the promise of bumper crops of dandelions and poison ivy to come.
I’m contemplating paying huge amounts of money to get my large and overgrown back yard cleaned up because I don’t have the time to do anything about it. Before I wrote, I used to garden. I enjoyed it. Most of the gardening that has to be done, here, however, is of the defoliation variety and after that I want things that will look after themselves. I’ve pretty much tamed the front but the back is a disaster.
I harbor sentimental feelings about gardens and particularly English gardens that have been cultivated for centuries. Here’s a shot of the gardens at The Vyne, a National Trust property I visited on my visit to England last month. It all looks so beautifully harmonious, the yellow of the daffodils floating above the blue of whatever the other flowers are. I believe the building in the background is a Tudor summer house.
So it’s something of a regret to me that I no longer have time to garden, other than the odd bit of mowing or pruning, maintenance that absolutely has to be done. I enjoy seeing the bulbs I planted come up and one day I hope to be able to look out onto the back yard without wincing.
One day, even, to go out into the back yard and not be bitten by rabid mosquitoes and without the fear of poison ivy. If only I had a sunny spot to grow tomatoes and basil. I’m ready. Here’s my pedicure, ready for summer living. Note the impeccable tidiness of my desk.
So what’s going on in your garden? Do you have time to garden and what are you growing? Go on, make me jealous.
And please come on over to Lucienne Diver’s blog where today I’m blogging about the judicial use of history in historicals.
Sadly, I have blackberry bushes, from which I make low-sugar blackberry jam. Delish! The ‘sadly’ part is that it has grown too hot too fast, this year, so though the berries look fabulous, plump and dark, they taste green, green, green. And trying to wait for them to ripen is useless, as they’ll become raisin-like before they lose that bitter flavor. Just sad. Hopefully, next year will be better. The perils of farming. 🙂
Well here in Australia it is getting cooler so my garden doesen’t have much going for it at the moment I need to mow the grass this weekend and then that should be it for a few weeks.
I too love a great garden but unfortunatley don’t have the time to spend in it doing the work I would love to get someone in to give it a make over maybe someday. I would love a nice place to sit in the autumn or winter sun and read a great book my dream
Have Fun
Helen
We have been having so much rain that I haven’t had the chance to get out and do anything in the garden. It has rained so much you are lucky to get the lawn mowed, which it needs right now but is really to wet to do so. I think when the rain stops it will be really dry here this year. I hope I can get to it next week!
My husband is the gardener in our family. He has a container garden on our deck where this year he’s attempting, IIRC, beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, green beans, sage, rosemary…and the white whale of Seattle gardening, tomatoes. (Our summers are too short and cool for tomatoes to thrive, but every single vegetable gardener I know WILL plant the things every year. I don’t get it.) So far just a few things have sprouted, I think the beets and turnips, and I doubt the plants are loving the cold, wet weather we’re having this week. It feels more like November than May out there.
Purty toes!
Which reminds me my legs are far from shorts-ready. Oh dear.
I long to have a magical, stone walled garden. Alas, I’m down to a few pots on the porch, fortressed against critters and drought. (columbine, lambs ears, campanula, jade plant and assorted others)
“Which reminds me my legs are far from shorts-ready. Oh dear.”
Oh no! I really need to run out and buy a bottle of self-tanner. And get a pedicure. Ack!!
It’s been rainy here for the last 2 weeks, too, so my back yard is a soggy swamp. I was going to start putting in the vegetables this week, but may wait until it dries out. Ditto cleaning out the weeds in the flowerbeds. On the plus side, my trees are lovely and green!
And I wish I could make my yard look like some award-winning English cottage garden. That would be awfully nice…
I am not a gardener. You’d think it’d be in my genes as both my parents had the magic touch. My father had three vegetable gardens. My mother only needs to water a plant once a week and it looks like it’s been fed manna from the gods.
No, my yard looks like Mordor on a good day. My DH claims he was scarred from too many years of weeding at his mother’s knee. Poor dear.
Sorry I’ve missed most of the days here at the Riskies. Such fun blogs, books and visitors – as usual.
Back to the grindstone. Lovely toes, btw, Janet.
I’m with you, Santa. My mother and aunts could name every flower in the universe. Now when someone asks me what flower is that, all I can think is, my mother would have known. My mother in law works hard at keeping house plants alive. You know those little rose bushes that are supposed to die after a while? She keeps them alive.
Janet, I, too, have no place for tomatoes unless I want them in the front yard, which in my neighborhood is probably against the rules.