welsh hills again

I am keeping the project up but with a lot of time spent with older daughter and family and younger daughter and hers  I need to catch up with documenting it! It is an amazing day here in North Wales.  This was the view when I opened the kitchen door this morning and it has stayed pretty much like this all day.  The forecast for the rest of this week is similar so this is a time to appreciate how beautiful it is and to sit on the sense that everywhere needs watering!  Of course it does, we can't have everything! Today's task was just a little one: to cut down the sweet cicely before it seeds all over the place.  Sweet cicely is a  very beautiful thing and while it is flower I love it for the foam of white and the scent.  The plant has a sweet, faintly aniseedy flavour to my palate, and can be used in cooking instead of sugar for things like pies and tarts.  But when it finishes flowering and goes to seed it will seed itself abso...

The project is going well.  Even on the days when I don't get time to document what I am doing I am managing to do something, somehow, somewhere in the garden. Today I have been admiring the way the sweet cicely has chosen to sow itself in amongst the peony.  They are such a happy partnership.  I have also been potting on my seedlings from Sarah Raven. I decided that the answer to my cutting garden conumdrum this year would be to buy in some annual seedlings for the squares which I haven't yet filled.  I have twenty seedlings of four different varieties of cosmos: Dazzler and Double Click Cranberry, both carmine pink, one single flowered, one double, and Purity and Psyche White, both white, again one single and one semi double.  As usual I have bought far too many so these will do my cutting garden, the gaps in the side garden and should still leave a few left over for my daughter in law who is starting a brand new garden in their new house. I also boug...

I haven't had such a long break since I started blogging.  I would be hard pushed to explain why it is several weeks since I blogged.  Nothing terrible has happened.  I haven't moved house or continent.  I have just been ridiculously,overwhelmingly busy, rushing up and down the country and, for the first time since my mother died, having a serious go at falling back in love with the garden. That has meant hours weeding and cutting back and trying to uncover the garden again after a year of neglect.  I even went to the Chelsea Flower Show, thanks to the kindness of a friend in sharing some corporate hospitality with me.  There has been a funeral, time spent with all four of our children and our grandchildren, time spent with my father.  Hours and hours in the car.   Whizz, whizz, all a blur. Time to slow down, time to reflect. This is The Beauty of Islam garden by Kamelia Bin Zaal.   Interestingly, when I saw it, although  I was st...

Growing herbs is one of life's great unsung pleasures: it is easy, it fills your garden with bees and pollinating  insects, it transforms your cooking.  Once your herb garden is established it doesn't need a lot of your time either.  I have been giving my herb garden a bit of attention today, pulling out the odd weed, discouraging the mint from world domination, potting up new seedlings to give to friends and family.  The chives in flower are as lovely as any border plant. Here they are jostling with culinary mint.  I grow all sorts of mints: lime, lavender, apple and spearmint as well basil mint.  You would hardly believe that the leaves really smell of anything other than menthol but they do.  The basil mint in particular has taken off. Some are more vigorous than others.  In our garden it is the culinary mint and the basil mint which are romping all over the place while the others sit more decorously in their slate lined boxes. ...