welsh hills again

Since I got back from Oxford I seem to have spent as close to every waking hour in the garden as possible.  Yesterday was another glorious, hot, sunny day, a day for suncream and gardening (a la Sarah Raven) not in jeans and boots but in an old skirt and flip flops.  But today has been grey and cool, oddly pleasantly so.  I have been moving ground cover plants down to the native tree walk, things that get out of hand anywhere that you want to cultivate intensively but are gently green and satisfying on bare soil - tellima grandiflora, alchemilla, self sown forget me nots.  They have been wilting and sighing in the heat but today they settled back softly in the grey green light, last night's watering still keeping them green and full throughout the day. I went seed sowing in the greenhouse again.  Ian has a big birthday coming up in the summer and I have become obsessed with having a celebratory garden.  I think this needs a blog to itself, or more, I co...

I seem to have been away for most of July, what with Oxford and daughter visiting, Dartmoor and parent visiting and Austria and puffing up mountains.  The garden has a dip in early July when lots of things get cut back and it all looks a bit bare and sad.  I know this is my own fault for letting oriental poppies take over and for loving the rush of spring and early summer so much that later summer gets neglected and I am trying hard to balance out my year a bit better.  I chopped back the hardy geraniums and the alchemilla and they are filling out again and there is a lot of cosmos grown from seed quietly filling in the gaps, but not yet really flowering. Here is the side garden with the hens on the march in the bottom of the picture.  I often wonder, when I find a patch of scratched up seedlings or a flattened plant, how much better my garden would be if I didn't let the hens roam in it but I do think they add their own special something to the place.  They a...