I’ve done it again. After promising to write more often, I’ve neglected this poor blog for three straight months. Whoops.
Setting aside the reasons for my absence, it’s suddenly the end of May. This time of year is so beautiful – it’s no wonder this is the month people start arriving in camper vans, driving very slowly along the road so they can catch the view.
Hey, I get it. It’s gorgeous out here.
It’s prime gardening weather, too. I spent last weekend turning a bramble forest (literally) into a habitable patch of garden again. Previously hidden behind a fallen gate and an enormous New Zealand flax plant, it’s now accessible without a machete in hand.
Here’s a before photo.
Then I broke out the electric hedge trimmer and began slashing my way through the brambles like Joan of Arc (incidentally my namesake). By the time I got to the butterfly bush, I began thinking, “Ah – this must be what it feels like to be a swordsman. I bet their shoulders hurt after a battle, too.”
In total, it took me three days to shear the entire area (carefully avoiding bluebells as I went along) and coppice the willow hedge enclosing two sides of the area.
Here’s what it looks like now.
There’s the polytunnel on the left: beloved by some and hated by others. It’s been a great place to grow plants that don’t appreciate the changeable Scottish weather or need extra heat. At the moment, it’s filled with flowering sage, onions, accidental romaine lettuce (I let a plant go to seed last year, and now its babies carpet the gravel between the raised beds), potatoes, strawberries, spinach, random calendula and various types of pepper, including the infamous Dorset Naga. That’ll blow the top of your head off.
I digress.
There’s still work to do up in the “secret garden” – I’ve exposed several metres of cliff face on the right there, and now have summit fever and want to tear the canes off the rest of it. More fool me, as I react badly to bramble scratches and thorns. Clearly I’m a glutton for punishment.
This project hasn’t been the only one I’ve plowed through recently. A couple of weeks ago, I turned our pond area from this…
…into this.
The five or six canna lilies I’ve had languishing in the greenhouse for a couple of years now have a new home on the edge of the water. I’m not sure how they’ll cope with limited hours of light, but they’ll love the boggy soil.
That’s it for now. I’ll leave you with a photo of what neglected sage and self-sown calendula look like in a vase. Rather pretty, actually.
