Plant me now drop

A bit of a family crisis whizzed me away for a few days.  I suppose this will happen from time to time now with my father's illness.  It is always hard to know whether the right thing to do is to drop everything and go or whether to sit it out up here.  This time I did drop everything and went and that was undoubtedly the right thing to do.  I ran around sorting things out and sat around keeping both my parents company and my sister and I shared some of the problems and felt, as always, how lucky we are to have each other.  I left still feeling I could stay and that there was more be done.  And now I am home again, feeling torn as ever, and also feeling out of touch with my normal life.

Time to take stock of what has been happening in the garden.

Just before I went I received another load of plants from Plant me Now, the online garden centre which has been asking me to test and review plants.  This time it is bedding plants, something I don't normally use a lot of.  It does however include pelargoniums, which I do use in pots in front of the holiday cottage, and dahlias which I have started to use in the cutting garden.  They really work well there.  I can feed the soil enough to make them much happier than they are in the garden and I can grow them in enough  profusion to cut them with abandon.

I had three forms of Geranium Maverick, red, white and star.

 

I shall use these in pots of a single colour.  As usual the plants came well packaged and well watered.  I potted them on as soon as they got here and they are currently in the wooden greenhouse and growing by the day.  They come as large plugs and put on a lot of growth very rapidly.  I have been overwintering my geraniums for a few years and it is only now that I see these new cuttings that I realise quite how tired looking my older plants had become.  I will take cuttings from these later in the year and make an effort to replenish my stock more frequently I think.

The other plants in this month's delivery were dahlias:

 

Dahlia Labella Piccolo Lemon

 

 

Dahlia Labella Piccolo Coral

 

 

Dahlietta Rachel

 

 

Dahlias are fabulous hardworking plants which flower and flower but which aren't easy for me to incorporate into my foliage heavy, naturalistic planting in the side garden.  This way I can have them as a big burst of colour.  Again these were good sized plants, beautifully packaged as always, and growing away strongly in the greenhouse now they have been potted on.  I will try to get these out over the weekend. 

 

All these photographs are from the website.  The plants are still quite small.  I have tried various internet based plant buying and I am really impressed with Plant me Now.  They won't wean me from my love of nurseries and it remains as true as ever up here that plants which I propagate myself from stock which is already growing up here cope best with our conditions (altitude, stony soil) but for bringing in a boost to the garden or to containers they are really good quality plants.

 

 

 

This is my photo of some of the plants which came earlier, in April, as very small plants, now producing a pot full of sunshine.

 

I really need to get out into the garden.  I need to spend quite a bit of time on my Welsh.  I need to walk up some hills in preparation for the week of dry stone walling which is coming up fast.  I need to stop thinking about what is going on in Devon and be here, now, in my own patch.  I need to clone myself.  But the sun is shining and I am looking after our daughter's dog while she goes for a job interview.  I think I will take the dog to the beach and throw balls.