Almost daily diary!

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Small Pleasures

When I moved in here about 15 months ago the garden was pretty much empty apart from weeds/wild flowers - depending on perspective, and a few survived, the Chamomile, Love-in-the-mist and Violas are still nestling amongst the more cultivated plants. 

It has been an unexpected delight creating a small garden, and although there is still lots to do, I realised, this week, that I have already fulfilled one of my goals - to be able to pick flowers from the garden to bring indoors.
Roses and lavender.
The lovely thing about gardens is the way you gather the plants. I have bought a few things from the garden centre but have been given far more plants from friends and family; unwanted plants from overcrowded boarders, cuttings taken with care, presents for birthdays, seedlings, all have their own story which I can tell myself as I wander around checking on growth and progress (I am quite an impatient gardener) and hunting for slugs!


 


So here are some photos of flowers recently cut. Now I can't cut swathes of beautiful bunches yet but I can pick poesy's. The red rose bush was a present from a good friend for my birthday last year and were in full bloom on my birthday this year. Somehow it felt very indulgent to cut them, place them in a vase that belonged to my Granny and put them on my bedside table on my birthday.

 The sweet peas seem to have taken ages to bloom - see I told you I was impatient - but I guess the weather hasn't helped, there's not been a vast amount of sun and if I was a sweet pea I think I'd be reluctant too. Anyway, so far only a handful of buds have opened but there are masses yet to come so loads to look forward to.
I have planted quite a few nasturtiums over the spring bulbs which faded back in May. They too have loads of buds but not many open flowers yet.

So there you have it. I love to go out every day and see what changes I can see in the plants around, it cheers me up. Each little  bright bloom..small pleasures indeed.

10 comments:

Steve said...

Gardens are wonderful things... they grow with us and offer us solace when we need it.

Maggie May said...

I particularly love sweet peas and of course roses are beautiful, especially if they are scented.
Your posies are really lovely. Its wonderful to bring a garden on from scratch the way you have done and taking others' cuttings is a lovely way to fill in the borders.
Maggie X

Nuts in May

Tattieweasle said...

What wonderful flowers. Really I should look harder among my weeds because any I do find would be far more apprecaited inside in a lovely bvase than hidden by 6ft high nettles!

BS5 Blogger said...

Lovely! One -)

Kitty said...

My garden is so slowly coming together. It was put back a whole year when next door built their extension and dug up the area between our houses, which also involved digging up bits of my borders. Well done for cultivating such a lovely place in so short a time. x

nick said...

Some beautiful flowers there.

When we moved into this house three years ago, the garden was already fully planted, mainly with all sorts of lovely bushes, so we just sit back and enjoy the fruits of other people's labours! The only real chore is keeping the bushes pruned, as most of them grow like the clappers.

NitWit1 said...

I once was like you, but old age and infirmatives have garneed their toll. We reworked our landscape to be somewhat grass and annual free. Whe have to add losts of mulch, and occasionally put weeds or spray killers.

Nearly no mowing and we have a neighbor teenager that wants money for chores. How convenient.

I have planted knock out roses which reqire much less care. I two varieties of roses which were here when we bought the place. They must bve very enduring as I do nothing to help the be beautiful. Both are climbers. One id Blazing Red Climber which is an old variety. The other is a smaller pimkish variety that really puts out the climbing vines.

But enjoy while you can.

Anonymous said...

Having a garden is becoming a bit of a privilege in the UK now. We cherish our little garden very much :)

Rose said...

This is just how I started gardening, Suburbia, just a few years ago. My little flowerbed has now turned into 6 ever-growing ones, but it's still those simple pleasures that you describe that make it all worthwhile. I've found that working in the garden is cheaper than going to a therapist:)

Liz Hinds said...

They are very lovely posies.