After the wettest April in 100 years, and the coldest in 23, May was not much better either, until 10 days ago. Then, temperatures suddenly jumped to the upper twenties, and the clouds vanished - and all the plants suddenly burst into life again!

More sowing!

Spring has most definitely sprung, as evinced by the cheerful yellow daffodils and scented pink hyacinths in the front garden. Unfortunately, they are poking through last year's weeds so I haven't taken a picture! I foresee a busy weekend...

Not just with weeding and pruning the front garden, but finally planting the first of my square foot garden. My wonderful SO has made the frame from untreated timber, and we filled it with a mixture of bought potting compost, vermiculite, garden soil, and our own black gold - the garden compost. Look how rich and dark it was, under a layer of still non-decayed garden and kitchen waste. We removed the top layer, used the well-rotted compost to fill the square foot bed, then put back the rough stuff and mixed it with even more peelings, grass trimmings and such.

I have also sowed two more batches of seeds, mostly a variety of herbs (2 types of basil, hyssop, borage and winter savoury) and some bright annual flowers (zinnia). It is still early to sow warm-loving plants such as French beans and courgettes, but more resistant veg such as radishes and carrots can be sown directly into the soil of the new bed. Something else to look forward to, this weekend!

Square foot bed:

Compost:

New Season

Happy New Growing Year, everybody!

Today, I sowed the first seeds of 2012.

Chillies Serrano, small (3-5cm) and hot

Chillies Anaheim, milder and up to 20cm long

Tomato San Marzano, plum cooking variety

Finally, a highly scented Sweet Pea Beaujolais

The above pictures were all Google image searches; fingers crossed that the seeds I sowed today will result in similar (or better) yields!

The colour pink

... and a little bit of purple as well! ;)

In addition to the soft, blush pink colours of a couple of rose bushes, some sweet peas and trailing geraniums, there is also some stronger colour in the garden.

The new oleander shrub - very short at present, but they tend to grow quickly. In a few years I expect it to be taller than me.

The pink Zephirine Drouhin and striped Ferdinan Pichard roses next to each other, showing off the limitations of my phone camera.

Foxglove. I like the little blotches, like freckles on a fair maiden's cheek.

Two tall herbs - angelica already going to seed, seen through a mist of bronze fennel. OK, they are not actually pink, but there is a purplish quality to the tips of the fennel fronds and the stems of angelica.

Bank Holiday!

Perfect time to do some gardening...

In addition to planting a new bright pink oleander and blue hydrangea, we (well, really my SO) put up a new trellis on the patio fence. The troughs contain (amongst tobacco flowers and catanache caerulea)cream-coloured sweet peas that will, I hope, scramble up the trellis and surround us with a beautiful scent when we start having breakfast/coffee/meals on the patio.

The rose pics are just a bonus! ;)

More roses!

The old shrub is taller than me at the moment, and the blowsy flowers are bigger than my fist:

Another leftover, a small rosebush that didn't flower last year. There goes my "no yellow" rule! :D It's too beautiful to dislike...

The first stripy bloom of Ferdinand Pichard - and it's facing the garage! Still, plenty of buds on there to look forward to...

Late Spring Blooms

In addition to the roses from the previous post, there are a few other flowers currently on show.

The rhododendron, underlined by the new door paint:

Strongly scented pinks:

And a close-up of a Zephirine Drouhin rose:

Roses - First Flush

Four of our rose bushes have already burst into flowers.

The unknown large shrub, left over from the previous owners:

Heavenly-scented Gertrude Jekyll:

Thornless and sweet-smelling Zephirine Drouhin:

Another leftover shrub, from the front garden:

Those flowers are perfectly velvety:

Monet's Giverny

The second guest garden featured in my blog is the stunning Giverny, belonging to and immortalised by the great impressionist painter, Claude Monet.


The little town of Giverny is a stone's throw away from the Seine, roughly half way between Paris and its Atlantic coast mouth. Monet's house with the formally divided courtyard, as well as the stunningly informal water garden, are open to visitors every day of the week. We were there on a Sunday, and it was almost too busy; I would recommend a workday if you don't like crowds. However, the plants are so colourful and fragrant that I soon stopped noticing other people and got completely immersed in the beauty of nature.

There are a couple of round beds in between the house and the courtyard garden, with a formal planting of pink tulips through a sea of forget-me-nots.

Next to the house, which has quite a Provencal country cottage vibe, the planting was more random in form and colour.

The courtyard was divided into narrow rectangular beds separated by gravel paths, some of which were inaccessible. The beds were of different lengths, some running through the whole of the garden, and others only a metre or two long. Some were dedicated to a unifying colour scheme, like this one with blue iris, cornflowers and pansies.

Others were full of clashing colours, like these pink parrot tulips with yellow and purple pansies.

To be continued...

Purple

Both the door and alliums. Garden bluebells too, though they appear somewhat bluer in the picture. Some interesting textures of green - fennel, Japanese maple and rose leaves together.

Indoor Garden

OK, it's not one of those huge planter boxes you see in large hotel lobbies.  Nor is it a hanging garden of Babylon that stands in for a real, outdoor green space.  But, two of the three tropical looking plants are in flower (though the largest and most colourful structures are actually spathes) and, IMO, lookin' good! ;)
In addition to this arrangement, which is next to my desk in the living room, we also have some plant pots on the kitchen sink, a purple zebrina in the entrance window, and a temporary scented pelargonium in the front room.  That poor plant is not doing that great indoors, but we don't have a greenhouse and it would have died outside.  Can't wait for the last frost so it can go back out!

White crocus

This is the second plant to flower this February.  A little white crocus.  I planted the bulbs in a terracotta pot which also contained a tiny evergreen foliage plant, and some winter-flowering cyclamen. This winter has been so harsh here, that the hardy cyclamen died.  Still, spring is inexorably on its way, as evidenced by other bulbs shooting up from the earth towards the sky.  Those in the pot behind the crocus are Dutch tulips.

Uplifting

This cheerful primrose in our front garden has been planted by the previous owners of the house.  I'm not much into yellow (nor orange) flowers, but even I have to admit that they help lift our spirits in this miserable post-winter/pre-spring season.

Winter Blooms

Some of the early bulbs have recently shot up out of the ground (including pots), but no buds are yet visible. There are absolutely no flowers in the garden except for my namesake, witch hazel Jelena, which is already in bloom. If that is the right word for the weird, spider-like, burnt-orange flowers covering the twiggy branches:

Winter basket

The petunias in the summer basket died even before the first frost, which appeared quite early this year. Here is the winter basket, containing pansies "Purple and White" (yes, that is the name of this variety. Profound.), ivy and a small photinia cutting.

And this is what we came back to:

Beautiful cherry tomatoes! I'd say we harvested about 50 from 3 plants of Gardener's Delight, and there's still maybe a dozen that I've left on, in hope of more clement weather. There is definitely a real sweet-acidic tomato taste (and scent), especially in those fruits that have at least started to go orange on the vine. I've picked a couple of green ones yesterday and left them to ripen on the window sill, as an experiment - I have a strong suspicion that all supermarket tomatoes are harvested when green and ripened indoors, maybe already in plastic packaging. No wonder there's hardly any taste to them!


The buddleja still has some wonderful honey-scented flowers. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to deadhead the spent blooms, but I have a feeling there is no need for that. It's really a tough hedgerow shrub, not needing much mollycodling.


Also, more clematis flowers. This one, Ville de Lyon, has now had 3 flowering flushes (the first one being rather minimalistic, very soon after planting). I'm afraid that the other clematis, Multi Blue, has not survived being placed in front of a north-facing garage wall. Although, spring can bring surprises, so I won't be that quick to plant something else in that space yet.