Not about sparrows this time. :D

I took some photographs today just to prove that I have actually been doing some gardening over the past few months!

 Our resident duck

The apple tree ~ its first year. 

I don't really like those perennial cornflowers.  They were already there and I intended removing them until I saw a pair of goldfinches return to them time and time again for the seeds.  

Bob peering through the front gate, one of his favourite past-times

Benji participating in his second favourite past-time, sleeping.  His first is eating.  Hubby's in the photo too.  Can you see him?

Always blessed with fairies!

There are strawberries in there somewhere!

Bob being handsome

Bob being extra-handsome!

Come on in

Look, hubby's managed to get himself in the picture again!

It took a long time for me to settle in this house, but I'm glad to say that it now feels like home and we're happier here than ever.

p.s. I didn't take any photographs out the back because the grass needs cut! :O)


p.p.s.  Couldn't resist a small update.  Saturday, 23rd July ~ eating well and gaining strength

Whooooohooooooo, I feel good!

We had a dry day today and I spent from 1 o'clock until dusk out in the garden, yay!  I dug over the part that gets flooded (read about that here) and found that there were paving slabs underneath the soil with just gravel thrown on top.  I know that next-doors pipes will still cause problems until they are fixed, but at least with the removal of all the submerged slabs, the water will have somewhere to go and it mightn't be so bad, fingers crossed.  It was hard and heavy work, but I feel all the better for it and so glad that a start has been made.  It's time to stop feeling sorry for myself and just get on with it.

I also managed to tidy up a bit - when we moved in we had so much to do that the plants in pots were just littered around the garden.  I've retrieved the ones that haven't been squashed to death by Big Foot Benji and put them in an orderly fashion, somewhere out of his reach .... I hope.

Big Foot Benji (in our previous garden)

My next job is to prune the shrubs and climbers on the fences before the new Spring growth appears.  The garden may look like a disaster area just now, but I'm happy to see that there are quite a lot of good shrubs already here, ones that I would have chosen myself, such as pyracantha, buddleia and winter jasmine, etc. 

It's been such an enjoyable day and the icing on the cake was looking up to see some long-tailed tits feeding on the fat balls I'd hung out.  I also saw one of the wrens (hubby's seen two in the garden), bobbing about in amongst the shrubs, a blackbird winked at me from the fence (honest, it did!) and a collared dove sat atop next-door's roof calling to its mate, "Oi, it's Lesley.... we've found her, the grubs over here."

Illustration by Annette Abolins ~ to see more of her work, go here.

I'm back to being a happy gardener..... bring on the Spring! :D

Benji, Beatrix Potter and naughty seedlings!

This is my mini 'Beatrix Potter' garden. New additions are the houseleeks and sedum in the watering-can and some lovely Saxifrage (Arendsii pink) just beneath it. The canes are ready to support the Runner Beans when they're big enough to plant out. This little part of the garden isn't doing too badly considering the treatment it gets from the dogs, which you can see in the photograph below.

Benji Bigfoot chilling out. Does he think he's under an umbrella? The clown!

Aquilegia McKana, one of my favourite garden flowers. I love everything about them.... the ferny delicacy of the leaves, the pretty nodding flowers and the pastel shades are a dream.

Another of my favourite garden plants is the herb Angelica. It's a statuesque plant that can grow up to 6 feet or more. It produces many umbels of tiny frothy creamy-white flowers and the leaves are large and lush. It also is generous in self-seeding and sometimes the seedlings turn up in the funniest of places........

Tee-hee!