Today I have my gardening hat on. I've been reading my birthday present book 'The Flower Expert', and putting little slips of paper in the pages with flowers I fancy for our garden. I've been looking out for two groups of flowers - some for the raised rockery/pebble/alpine type bed that we'd like to put at the bottom of the garden and some quick growing TALL flowers to fill in our flowerbeds at the sides.
Following my research, I watched Friday's episode of Gardeners' World (had recorded it because we were watching the finale of Grey's Anatomy) and happily looked up in my book the plants the people were talking about. I know. Such a geek. But I really don't know much at all about plants and I'm desperate to learn so our garden can become more colourful and beautiful.
Now I've just had a DELIGHTFUL time ordering thousands of seeds!!
I have ordered some...
Acanthus (Bears Breeches - don't know if they belong to one bear [Bear's Breeches], or if there are several pairs of breeches belonging to several bears [Bears' Breeches])
Some Agastache - the Navajo Sunset type. I really wanted the Firebird hybrid, but it doesn't seem possible to get them in Britain - worse luck. Still, this one is ALMOST identical!
Some Alyssum - although the ones I've ordered are more multi-coloured that this:
Some beautiful multi-coloured snapdragons (Antirrhinum). I used to LOVE going round my Grandad's garden making these talk. And the type I've ordered even have little tongues!
Some Iberis - Candytuft. Hopefully these will spread around the edges of the flowerbeds and fill in all the space with bright colours
And finally some really tall cornflowers.
I can't wait for all my seeds to arrive now! This summer, I want our flowerbeds to be full of flowers as well as vegetables. It should also help in my epic battle against the weeds.
It will also be very exciting to grow flowers from seeds - other than sunflowers, I've never done that before! I really hope I manage it!
We have recently bought and attached a water butt in our garden - something we've wanted to do for ages - but we had to wait for the slimline ones to be in stock. I have to say, it was a pain in the bottom to attach. You are instructed to cut out a 2.5cm section of gutter, which, what with the gutter being attached to the wall, it pretty trick to start with. Then you have to slide in the bit that intercepts, but that is at least 4cm high!! The instructions suggest that you "push down" the bottom part of the gutter. I dont' know about you, but I don't have a massive ravine under my gutters to push the gutter down into! We had to hack the thing apart to fit it in! We couldn't take it back, because as I've mentioned we had CUT OUR GUTTER APART!!
Anyhoos, once it was attached we eagerly awaited rain. That day there were only two short hail storms. After them, I padded out in my slippers to see how much water we had collected.
How excited were we, eh?
However, the next day it rained on and off a lot, so I though there would be at least a bucket load of water in the butt. Imagine my surprise when I peeped in and saw...
I couldn't believe it! It was full and had been overflowing onto the pebble garden! That's 100 litres of rainwater....from one rooftop...in one day! I thought one of our neighbours must be playing a trick on us, and had maybe snuck in to fill it with a bucket. But then Rachel and I did some mental maths and worked out that actually, for one rooftop, that's not an extraordinary amount of water.
Fantastic! With this, the hosepipe ban won't hold us back at all! As long as it keeps raining a bit every now and then, this is.
P.S. The crotcheted chickens have feet now!