At last I have managed to conjure up whatever it took me to empty the trough under my front window, pot up the three trailing pelargoniums and the ordinary ones, and discard the poor lobelia that could have gone on a bit longer if I had not been so cruel as to drag them out by their roots and throw them on the garden border where I will later chop them in. The pelargoniums will over winter on my kitchen window even though every spring I say that that is the last time I am going to have a load of pelargoniums on my kitchen window. I just cannot do it, sacrifice plants that serve me so well. I've thrown away all the ones that grew in the border in the back garden but the ones in the trough are my favourite colours - cerise, vibrant red, and shocking pink. They have been spared because of my colour prejudice in their favour! They are such undemanding plants, you know. All they ask when in the garden is a bit of sun, a drop of rain, and to be left alone to get on with it.
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| What a pity that they are now gone, to be replaced by bulbs. |
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| Vibrant reds and pinks - pelargoniums. |
Once the trough was emptied - and it's quite a big one - I put in
the bulbs. Hyacinth bulbs (Carnegie), Iris (Reticulata 'Harmony'), tulips (Johann Strauss), and narcissus (Minnow). My idea was to grow winter flowering violas in the trough over the top of the bulbs while they come through, but I think the roots of the violas will ruin the bulbs so I changed my mind. Clearly I have no idea what I am doing and in the typical way I have learned to garden, I shall learn as I go along. What I did do, though, was to put some small flat stones on top of the trough, protecting the bulbs from the local, rather voracious, squirrels. Bless them, they can eat the maize kernels I provide for them, raid the neighbour's bird food, or go without!
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| Iris Reticulata 'Harmony' |
Autumn leaves, while beautiful, are a pain when they fall from my neighbours many trees and land all over my garden. Two days running I have spent sweeping them into piles and stuffing them into a strong, plastic bin liner. I won't complain, of course, if those leaves turn into something fine and crumbly that I can dig into my borders. I will complain now my gutters are blocked when the rain comes cascading down into my hanging baskets! Ah, well...
