A Good Morning's Work

Well, I have had a splendid play in the garden this morning.  Also, I think I might have to re-name this blog my House and Garden Blog because I can't seem to resist talking about things I've cooked.  As I write this - freshly showered and glowing with righteousness and the Watermint Scrub/Spritzer set that Mum bought me for Christmas - there is what will hopefully be a splendid lunch of cod baked in chorizo and tomato sauce in the oven.  I did start out following a recipe, but ended up making it up.  I've posted about it in a separate post, it was in this one but it got too long! 

Anyway, back to my garden.  I ventured into the world of garden design this morning.  This is not my natural habitat, as I have the aesthetic sensibilities of Ghengis Khan.  However, I'm quite pleased with what I've done.  I've had so much trouble in the past visualising what my garden would look like with things in it (you've no idea how I agonised how one planted bulbs for the spring *and* summer-flowering plants in the same space without digging one, or both, up at some point), and I decided only recently that the best thing was to imagine it as a series of little projects rather than one big one.  In this I was inspired by Cherry Menlove's lovely blog which I shall probably be mentioning again as I am a huge fan and my blog is by way of a tribute to the lovely lady.

I decided to deal with the corner near the buddleja today (who, you'll notice, is sprouting out nicely after his slash-and-burn style pruning the other week).

I do like the euphorbia (I think it's euphorbia), especially its glossy dark green leaves and its acid-green blossoms, but it doesn't really go with the cottage-garden look that I'm going for, and also, digging it up fits in with my plans to slightly reduce the size of the flower border and give us more room for growing veg (I'm addicted).

I marked out a new shape with some random string I found in the shed.  The whole bed should be a (rough) semi-circle when I've finished.

Then I divided the geraniums!  These geranimums have sentimetal value for me as they come from my mum and dad's garden, so I really, really hope they don't die.  I think they needed to be divided though, especially the purple ones, as the big clump hardly flowered last year.  I re-planted them along the new edge of the border, so I should have splashes of pink and purple by May (if they grow, fingers crossed!).

Then I turned my attention to the veg-beds - this is the before and after shot.  They were covered in bits from the conifers that we removed in February, and the weeds were doing very well. 

As you can see, it was warm enough to take my coat off after a few minutes of digging geraniums, and it stayed off!

After the veg-beds were tidied up, it was time for a cuppa, a biscuit or two, and to think about seedlings.

Some, like the spinach, rocket, peas and carrots, will be planted straight into the ground when it's a lot warmer, but I dealt with the sweet peas, courgettes and cauliflower today.

I hope they grow!

Incidentally, you will notice that they are not on windowsills.  This is due to the feline contingent, which will almost certainly knock them off.  Instead, they are temporarily occupying our coffee table.  As you may have guessed from the piles of books, Alastair is currently building us a new set of bookshelves, so the dining room table is being used as a work-shop and now the living room is being used as a greenhouse!