Garden centre time

The snow and ice have receded, the garden is slowly drying out and it's time to consider what to put in some of the bare patches.

We've lived in our current house for 6 years now, and it's fair to say I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the back garden.  It's broad and sunny, and these are lovely assets to have. It also sits in the right angle of high stone walls on its righthand side  (belonging to a neighbouring primary school), so there is plenty of warm shelter too.  The 'love' part is all of this, including the opportunity to train fruit trees against those sunny walls.

The harder part is down to the fact that the house was built on the site of two previous terraced houses that dated from the 19th century; these were demolished during local 'slum' clearances in the 1970s.  Much of the rubble from those original houses clearly wasn't taken away, but was piled up into  a high bank in the lefthand quarter of the garden.  It's a sort of giant rockery, in three broad and uneven terraces.  But there very little topsoil; you only have to poke down an inch or two to hit bricks, stone and broken glass (fortunately not too much of the latter).  Since it takes up a lot of growing space, over the years I've been tempted to put all sorts of plants up there that really haven't thrived, despite my efforts with compost and general soil improvement.   Lavender, thyme and rosemary are doing well; bulbs come and go, depending on how hungry the local squirrels get. Strawberries do OK on the lower levels, as do some currant bushes.  Three rose bushes have managed to get their roots down into the stony depths after an initial struggle.   Geraniums do OK in some parts, though fuchsias not so much. Some other experimental plantings have just disappeared and I've forgotten what they were.

So today I've stocked up on several colourful varieties of thyme and some saxifrage. Later I'll put nasturtium seeds in the sunniest parts, and we'll see how it goes.  Without Milly (pony) to look after this year, I should have a chance to make more of a difference to it.

And the main thing: it's just great to be getting out there again, what a pleasure (despite my gripes about the rockery).