Darling buds of May

Wisteria and euphorbia

As a very dry May draws to a close, a few warm and sunny days are being followed by a couple of duller, cooler and extremely windy ones; the "rough winds" are indeed shaking the darling buds of May.  There was a welcome downpour last night, welcome not only to the gardener who has been carrying watering cans round the garden recently but also to the plants, many of which have been blooming strongly this month as the garden gets into its stride.

It has been the best year I can remember for the wisteria; it looked great, and at its peak the scent could be detected all over the garden, even at the other side of the house.  A Euphorbia characias has seeded at its feet and has been providing complementary blooms; no scent of course, but a great attraction for visiting bees.  (What it means for the nerines, which are also growing at the base of the wisteria and which are completely swamped by the euphorbia, may be another matter.)  There are already new tendrils curling out of the wisteria; I must remember to prune them this summer, as correct pruning really makes a difference to this plant.

The cistus is also blooming well, but I'm steeling myself to remove it soon as there are all sorts of nasty weeds (couch, ground elder, self-sown cotoneasters) in there.  I've been trying to take cuttings from it so that it can be replaced (it's a fussy plant, and digging it up and replanting is not a safe option), but the strike rate hasn't been good, and I'm not sure whether the sole survivor in the cuttings pot will make it through.

This is 'Angelique' ...

... and this isn't!

This year's tulips have been a bit of a mixed bag.  As usual, I kept some of last year's bulbs to plant for this year, but it's clear that putting old bulbs in pots doesn't give good results; of the oldies, only 'Orange Emperor' turned out well, with the rest either not flowering or producing a few poor-quality blooms and unhealthy-looking leaves.  Nothing looks good with tatty leaves.  I'm discarding all of last year's bulbs, and will try some of this year's ones in the ground (if I can find a place for them!) for next year.  If they don't flower, nothing will be lost.  A few old bulbs from previous years still flower in a corner of the veg plot - mostly 'Couleur Cardinal' and a single 'Angelique' - and this proved instructive, because I also grew a bagful of new 'Angelique' bulbs in a pot.  At least these were supposed to be 'Angelique', but instead of the lovely clear pink and white I was expecting, they were an apricoty-yellow; very pretty, and I liked them, but I'm convinced they weren't 'Angelique'.  I had decided to broaden my horizons a little when buying bulbs last autumn, rather than just keeping to my old favourites, and bought some 'Artist' to try them, but I'm afraid the flowers never developed properly and they've now fallen; I wonder if they got too dry?  Interestingly, I had failed to clear out one of last year's pots and, to my surprise, up came a clutch of 'Silver Parrot' which I had planted last year but which did nothing; they did quite well this year.  Maybe I'll put 'Artist' out in the garden and see if it will do likewise next year!  The tulip highlight, though, was a potful of 'Ballerina'; I'm still unable to detect its alleged scent, but they were tall, graceful and long-lasting.  They're supposed to prove perennial in the ground; I'll give it a go.

Tulip 'Ballerina'

Other May bloomers include the aquilegias (including a few squatters in the veg plot, which I really must move this year!), the choisya, alliums, Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve', Centaurea montana and a whole host of minor but very welcome players in the overall picture.  The first rose in bloom this year was the pink rugosa at the bottom of the garden, narrowly beating the usual winner, 'Mary Queen of Scots' (which is still too big and which I intermittently try to cut back).  The creamy-white Rosa altaica has also put on a good display, and 'Gertrude Jekyll' is just coming into flower.

The variegated dogwood (Cornus sibirica 'Variegata') is also coming into bloom.  It's a beautiful shrub in almost all seasons, and I find it difficult to be sufficiently strict with it by cutting it back, for which I'm paying the penalty.  I had intended to give it a hard prune this year but have failed to do this.  The old advice was to cut it right down in late winter, to allow it to produce the new shoots that give the lovely red winter stems, but in recent years it has been suggested that that should be left until March, or staggered across a couple of years (to give a mix of new shoots and old stems with the variegated foliage).  As a result I did nothing for a couple of years, and it has become much too big; not only does it grow long stems but, where those stems touch the ground, they take root and the result is that the plant spreads too widely.  It has swallowed two rose bushes and the peony, and was shaking hands with 'Mary Queen of Scots' across the narrow path between them.  My plan now is to try to remove most of the plant entirely, leaving a couple of the layerings as a replacement and being much stricter about their management.  I started by taking out the branches reaching across the path, thereby liberating the Rosa gallica officinalis and some of the R. 'Alfred de Dalmas' next to it, and a couple of branches that were smothering the peony (which should soon be in bloom).  I then noticed something dark in the centre of the bush and, on closer inspection, this turned out to be a very young blackbird fledgeling, the first that we'd seen this year, sitting waiting to be fed; so the dogwood got a stay of execution!  Another day .....

Homemaking

Is it really so long since I posted last?  The weather has been mostly warm and sunny (apart from a brisk and chilly easterly wind for a few days) and has encouraged me to spend time working outside rather than blogging.  The last week or so has been cooler, especially out of the sun, and this week we've had some cold winds and low temperatures by day, with very chilly nights; the wind yesterday was positively icy.  This means that I have to find homes under cover for plants that are ready to go outdoors but need warmer conditions.  There are two rather large courgette plants, too large for the windowsill, currently living on the dining room floor (by the window); I daren't put them in the greenhouse, where nighttime temperatures have been down to 6C.  A third courgette and a winter squash plant, both much smaller, have a home on the windowsill, as are the pepper and chilli plants.  There probably wouldn't be room for them in the greenhouse anyway; I'm struggling to make homes for all the plants and seedlings that are in there already.  The aubergines are hogging the best spot (I don't suppose they're enjoying the cold nights either, but needs must), the tomatoes, already nearly a metre tall, are in place on the ground and the dahlias are under the staging by night and being taken outside during the day on milder days.  Remaining space is full of seed trays, at various stages of growing on/pricking out.  The brassicas and lettuce have been turfed out into the veg plot to look after themselves; I've run out of an under-cover home for them.

The other thing I'm running out of is potting compost.  Garden centres are reopening from today, but until now I've been eking out my last bag of peat-free and making use of whatever I can lay hands on.  I found an old bag containing used compost at the back of the greenhouse, and have pressed that into service with a few handfuls of 6X fertiliser; it looked in reasonable condition, with good structure and no obvious weed contamination.   I was also reduced to scavenging compost from currently unplanted pots, again with some 6X.  The aubergines got mostly new compost, but the tomatoes (seven of them for the greenhouse, plus an eighth which is destined for an outdoor pot) are homed in what is basically a second-hand mix with fertiliser.  In milder gardens, they would grow in garden soil, and I reckon that what they've got is no worse than that; we'll see!

Outside, the wildlife is busy homemaking and raising young.  The sparrows and starlings are in their usual homes under the roof and in the leylandii hedge, there are at least two pairs of blackbirds gathering food for their nestlings and a pair of mistle thrushes nesting somewhere nearby and coming to our garden for nesting material and food.  A song thrush has been singing lustily in the trees.  Goldfinches drop by for a quick drink, a pair of nuthatches have been about, at least one marsh tit has been at the seed container and of course there are robins everywhere.  One pair of robins seemed to have a nest in the ivy very low down at the foot of the big ash tree, judging by their to-and-froing, but activity stopped about ten days ago; we hope they've decided to move to a safer place.

It's not always clear, however, just who is nesting where.  Who is using the nestbox on the summerhouse wall?  We first saw bluetits checking it out, but then a pair of great tits seemed to be taking moss in.  The bluetits have still been showing interest in it, but it is becoming clear that it's the great tits that are in residence; they're taking food in.  Then there are the eight neat little holes in the grass alongside the path leading down the garden.  I've seen both bees and wasps going down into them; mostly bees, so it's possible that the odd wasp has just been checking the holes out, but it would be interesting to know just who is living in there.  They are presumably solitary bees as there has been no mass activity.  They're not causing a problem - they probably find it nice and dry under the flagstones - and it's nice to think that they find our garden a good place to live.

Whose home?

One bird who clearly isn't much interested in homemaking is the female pheasant.  She and her gentleman pheasant have been around the garden quite a lot and are fairly tolerant of our presence.  This evening they drank together at the pond and fed a little underneath the peanut feeder, but then she beetled off to the edge of the damson thicket at the bottom of the garden, sat down on the grass and spent a few minutes squawking there while her mate strutted around a bit.  Eventually she got up and they wandered off.  A quick inspection of the area showed that she had laid, and abandoned, an egg.  In the past I've found pheasants' eggs left lying around, and this confirms what I had long suspected - that pheasants take a rather casual attitude to the nesting business.

Woodpigeons do build nests, but not very substantial ones, just a loose pile of sticks.  Our elderly lame pigeon Lefty, whose mate was killed last year and whom we've seen this spring sporadically in the company of another pigeon, does indeed seem to be in a new relationship; he has been collecting twigs.  It certainly explains his increased belligerence towards any other pigeon who approaches his territory; age has not dimmed his feistiness.  The question is, where is his new home?  There's no sign of a nest in the holly tree, which has been his favourite place; presumably his new lady has ideas of her own as to where their home should be!