Cheshire Wife's flower show

My mission for this year is to get on top of our garden, which means that because our English weather is erratic and unpredictable I need to spend as much time as I can working in the garden when the weather is good, as it was until about a week ago. Then having spent all of that time out in the garden, I have to spend time catching up with the housework in the cottage. I wish that I could say that I am up to date on that score but there always seems to be something that needs doing. However, I feel that I have spent enough time on the cottage recently to be able to justify spending some time on my blog.

Here are the rewards of time spent working in the garden.These photographs were taken about two weeks ago when the weather was hot and sunny.

An azalea to the right of the front door

and an aquilegia to the left.

Then there is this weigela which is flowering for the first time since it was planted about six or seven years ago.

On the other side of the front garden bearded iris are in bud about to open .

A few days later they are open.

Next if we move around to the back garden we have allium

a rose

and a clematis.

Then moving on down the right side of the garden we have the first of the oriental poppies in flower.

Behind them is a rhododendron which we grow in a pot because our soil is too alkaline for its acidic taste.

Finally of the left side of the garden these lupins are holding centre stage.

Lastly, no flower show would be complete without a flower arrangement. Here is the most recent arrangement from my flower arranging class. My mother used to keep umbrellas in this pot by the front door.

Not all of my arrangements are worthy of being photographed and displayed on my blog.

More perspiration than inspiration

It is certainly looking more like perspiration than inspiration at the moment. My last post Inspiration or perspiration has disappeared. This has never happened to me before. I have sometimes lost posts while I have been writing them but a published post has never gone AWOL. Once something had been published on the Internet I thought that it was impossible to delete it, but that post is nowhere to be found. It must be somewhere out there in cyberspace. My clever husband did manage to find the post saved in the bowels of his laptop. However, I have decided not to try to resurrect it as it was the post only, minus the comments. Thank you to those bloggers who had commented on it. Your thoughts are much appreciated.

Perspiration or inspiration?

Formerly Inspiration or perspiration.

I had a premonition when I was working that when I stopped working my ideas and inspiration for blog posts would dry up and I am sorry to say that the premonition has come true. I do have a bit of a sixth sense. Not that I often posted about work. I think that when you are not working life takes on a different perspective. Most days at work I would come into contact with up to 200 people. On a busy day it could be many more. I do not miss them, so am unsure of the effect that they were having on my life. However, I do miss my work colleagues. Recently my life has not gone to plan and I wonder if that could be having an effect on my creativity or maybe I am just trying to do too much. When I first started to blog it was easy. I had a wealth of untold stories to tell. Now most of my tales are told and life does not seem to be so colourful.

My main aim for this year is to get on top of the garden.Consequently I am spending as much time as I can working in the garden, when the weather allows. It seems that too much time spent in the garden is making Cheshire Wife a dull girl but the rewards  from the garden can be wonderful. This stunning blue camassia and majestic yellow fritillaria imperialis are currently in flower.

I am struggling to get a balance. between work and play, as at the moment there seems to be an awful lot of balls to keep in the air. Maybe a holiday is the answer. Later today we are going away for a few days to somewhere that I have never been to before and that we have been trying to get to for a few years. I am hoping that the change of scene and fresh air will blow away the cobwebs and give me some inspiration. Otherwise it is going to be perspiration.

The wrong sort of rain

No doubt most of you are aware the a large swathe of the UK is currently experiencing drought conditions and is subject to a hose pipe ban. We are fortunate in not having a hose pipe ban here in the north west of England, neither do we have any flood warnings. For several days now it has rained stair rods and this was the scene at the end of our garden yesterday morning.

The farmer has ploughed all of his fields except this one, which is now water logged. About two weeks ago he fertilised it. The aroma was so pungent that I had to go out. It was a fine sunny day and I would have liked to be out in the garden, but even in our front garden the smell was to much for me. Just think yourselves lucky that I was not able to collect it and infuse my blog with it! Thankfully the smell has now gone. He should have some mighty good crops.

I always remember a conversation that I had with my mother-in-law, some time ago. I was telling her that I had a list of jobs waiting to be done on a rainy day. She said that they would not get done because it would not be the right sort of rain. I had never heard this before and assume that it must be an Irish idiom as both of my mother-in-law's parents were from Ireland.  But she was quite right, it never is the right sort of rain. This afternoon it was grey, miserable and cold and looked very much like rain. Ignoring the Spring cleaning, ironing, sewing, letter writing and blogging that could all be done in the dry and warm I went down to the greenhouse to sow the last of my seeds and to do the final round of the pricking out. I shall need to do some potting on but not a lot is happening in the greenhouse at the moment. The weather is too cold and wet. The plants and seedlings need more warmth and light which means sun. Not all of this rain, more of which fell whilst I was in the greenhouse. The water butts connected to the greenhouse guttering are probably the only things enjoying all of this wet weather. They are full to over flowing.

Getting into the groove

I have spent the last few weeks running around like a headless chicken, in order to just stand still. I had expected this retirement game to be easy, but already I am wondering when I found the time to go to work. I know that I spent too much time in the garden a few weeks ago when the weather here was warm, but with our climate you have to make the most of it when the weather is good and I do just love to be out in the garden. So since then, I have been trying to catch up with list of undone jobs in the cottage. Then there are the jobs that did not get done when husband was at home and  jobs that did not get done during the last eighteen months that I was working. The list seems to be endless. Blogging is somewhere on the list. I realise that in reality as one job gets crossed off the top of the list another jobs gets added to the bottom of the list. It has crossed my mind that if I leave something for long enough the need to do it may go away. Maybe or maybe not. Luckily the list is in my head. If I wrote it down I would frighten myself to death. Each Sunday night a blank canvass of five days lies before me, to do what I wish, as long as I do some housework and the food shop. But each week something gets in the way. Last week it was a trip into Chester to buy a birthday present for SIL and a visit to the hairdresser. This week it was a visit to the dentist. At the moment next week is looking clear.

For the first time in about five years I have managed to weed the whole of the 'woodland bed', which I mentioned in my previous post. Weeding that bed is extremely hard work. It is on a slope and contained millions of very small weeds. It has taken me two months of one to two hour stints to completely weed it and now I need to start again in the area where I began. It is like painting the Forth Bridge. My aim is to get more perennial plants and/or shrubs into it, to prevent the weeds from growing. I have now turned my attention to the rockery, which is another difficult bed to weed as it is also on a slope. When I am not working on the rockery I am in the greenhouse, which is bulging with plants - mainly seedlings and plants that need to be protected from frost. So that is where I am when the weather is fine and for when it is not good enough to be outside we have started to work on the one remaining room that we have not decorated. It is actually back to renovating as this bedroom requires more than decorating and will have a post of its' own. I know that it will be a slow job, but we shall be occupied whatever the weather does. I am never idle. I just wish that there were more hours in the day and more days in the week.

Our outside room

I have been making the most of the recent unusually good weather by spending as much time as I have been able to in our outside room, otherwise known as the garden. So, I thought that you might like to join me in a stroll around it. In addition to showing you our garden this has also given me the chance to experiment with the new camera that husband bought for my birthday last October, as there have not been many opportunities to use it over the winter months.

As visitors turn into our drive their first glimpse, of our garden, is of the 'woodland bed ' on their left. This is planted with Spring flowering perennials and bulbs, which are putting on a good show at the moment. The crocus, snowdrops and aconites have finished for this year. Now it is the turn of the daffodils

 

white  wood anemone
 

 blue anemone blanda

 hellebores

hyacinths - these have quite a pungent fragrance which I know is not to every body's liking,
 

 and it could not be a 'woodland bed' without primroses.

A few years ago I bought about six plants and now they have seeded all over the 'woodland bed'. Soon the bluebells, annual honesty and aquilegia will take over the show. On the right is the rockery where aubretia is doing well.

 At the front of the cottage we have a forsythia which is currently in full flower.

Then we move round to the other side of the cottage. Past the viburnum tinus with its' pretty white flower which  smells of honeysuckle.

 
 Through the side gate and round to the back.

The kitchen window over looks the patio with its' pots of pansies

and tete a tete daffodils.

There is not so much to see in the back garden at this time of year. However, over the last week or so our magnolia has come into flower

as has the damson

The apples trees are also showing signs of life. In fact the whole garden has burst into life over the last few days of warm and sunny weather. At the end of the garden in the farmer's field I found even more new life.

Unfortunately there will be no more scenes like this as the farmer is changing from dairy to arable. Somehow I do not think that staring out at a field of potatoes and leeks is going to be quite the same as a field of cows.