Jardinerie

Another nice day in the garden. I reek of wild garlic: I've been chopping down a climbing rose which I underplanted with Ramsons. It's a not unpleasant smell. Mind you, this is a single male household.

The hardy geraniums and euphorbias are full of buds, promising a good display in the next week or two. In the sunny parts of the garden (and throughout what should be a paved walkway) G. macrorrhizum and G. oxonianum have seeded and spread their way with gay abandon. The former's a tatty-looking evergreen with smelly leaves; tough as old boots and smothered in bright magenta flowers all summer and well into autumn. The latter is just erupting soft green leaves; in a few weeks' time they'll be a sea of silvery-pink flowers. I've rather lost track of things in the shady part of the garden. I started off by planting a few of the mourning cranesbills (G.phaeum). I followed on with a couple of wood cranesbills (G. sylvestris), some white G.ph. alba and a job lot of the "Splish Splash" meadow cranesbills. They all have a tendency to be overly-friendly with each other and I've now got a mixture of mongrel seedlings under the trees, all rather pretty in shades of purple, mauve and white. The star of the show is just showing itself in the sunniest part of the garden by the living room window. Geranium palmatium has big, lime green glossy leaves and spends the summer throwing up huge clouds of big magenta flowers, sometimes four or five foot high.

While I'm doing all this there's a flurry of activity in the garden. The starlings are dead busy feeding young and come in twice a day to fill themselves up at the fat feeders. So intent are they that they're not fussed that I'm an arm's length from them thoughout. No sooner have they gone than a pair of long-tailed tits turned up; they don't give a monkeys anyhow so I spent a delightful five minutes watching them up close before they decided to go and look for greenfly in the roses.

The one disappointing note is that I've spotted another couple of casualties of winter. One of the brooms has snuffed it comepletely. Next to that I've got a good-sized Olearia, which I know is only semi-hardy. It's formed a natural standard, forking for the first time about four feet up the trunk; one fork's apparently dead and gone. The other half looks perky enough: shiny grey-green, holly-like leaves and quite a few small buds forming. In a couple of months this will be covered in small, silvery-grey daisies, which is a pleasing sight on a warm day surrounded by geraniums and marjoram. Fingers crossed.

Ooh... ooh... five baby figs (figlings?) on the tree on the patio. Hope I get more than just the one this year!

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Postscript: no, the bastards cut them down