Reaching for the sun

We've had an extremely chilled day, mainly in the garden. The sunshine was full on this morning, although a light cloud cover came over as we were sitting out in the front with a cup of tea. That's when the sight of the honeysuckle reaching for the sun above the wall got me my blip. The honeysuckle was one of the first plants we put in the garden. In fact, the very first. It is the top right photo in this collage from 9 April 2023 and it can be seen flowering here in June 2024. Oh, how things have changed.

Various other things have been sorted out. We had an old terracotta pot with lilies, which came up from Edinburgh in 2023. It had suffered frost damage over the two winters here, so we emptied it out, broke it up, and kept the bits to put in future pots for drainage purposes. The lilies have gone into the side garden, next to the two clematis climbing the side wall of the house. One of those seems to be doing quite well. The other doesn't look so healthy. We also put in the plant support for the ever eager side garden peony. Another major undertaking was sorting out the herb garden, ready for the herb growing season. We took out a couple of things which were spreading much too rampantly. In and amongst, I made three trips to the garden centre. First, on foot with Mr A, when we bought mainly herbs and another plant to go in the front garden to replace one of the periwinkles (a snowflake...I'm not sure about having snowflakes in my garden). Second, on my own, with the car to get compost and soil improver. And third, once again on foot with Mr A, to get a second Vietnamese coriander plant and two jalapeño pepper plants, to put in the herb garden as an experiment. If they work out, we might be able to eat them with the two garlic bulbs we are hoping to harvest in mid summer....

We finished the day with an excellent roast chicken supper after a beer in the back garden. The cloud is a lot thicker this evening than it has been for days. It's really quite dark of 8.20pm. There were even a few spots of rain. But the garden is very dry and I've spent a considerable amount of time heaving watering cans around today. It probably would have been more efficient to get the hose out.

One of our very enthusiastic hellebore plants is in the extras.