Getting Fruity!

Laburnum in the mist.

Chores've slowed down in the garden, but the lack of rain means walking slowly among my plant buddies on a daily basis to give them a drink. 

A great time of year for this, with everything coming into bloom, then blooms turning to fruit.  I love my ornamentals, but man, I adore my edibles.

Take a look at them all.




1.  The race is on.

I bought 3 berry plants last year, the labels of which have walked off into the sunset.  None of them bore fruit last summer, but this year, 2 of them are popping out red all over.

So on the race to fruition, who will get there first - us or the birds?

Breakfast waiting to happen.

2.  Peas in various finery.

It's our first year for blauwchokker peas & I'm loving them in all their stages.  We grew ours from seed planted in April.  They now stand taller'n myself & have great broadly veined leaves on nicely thick stems.

The flower is originally 2 tones of purply pink but then go blue as they wither.

Rampaging pea plants.

Then the blue tissue falls away & these black-purple pods slip out.

Pods jumping the fence.

3.  Today's flowers are tomorrow's sauce.

Slightly behind their pea friends are our rosella cherry tomato plants, but we got flowers!

Looks like a good crop coming.

I'm a fiend for eating most of our cherry maters before I make it back to the house from the garden, but these are feted for having a smoky flavour, so we're hoping to experiment with cooking a few.  Too bad for future sauces that our onions did feck-al this year, but we've got plenty of . . .


4. Garlic, garlic & more garlic!

Inviting vampires to dinner.

Our early purple Wights didn't clove, but these fellas . . . well, you can see it yourself.  Smashing. 


5.  Bean brigade.

We've 2 varieties of dwarf French this year - yin yang & fire tongue.  The yin yangs went in first & so, of course, are the first to bean up.

Yin yang beanies.

As you can see from the smudge in the photo, these guys have a white blossom.  The fire tongues have small pink flowers that hopefully will produce red speckled pods.


6.  Happy surprise.

You may remember my spring angst over my Louis Bonne pear tree.  While it bloomed to high heaven & beyond, its mate, the Asian pear, had no blossom.  Since I'd been told by the nursery that my bloomin' pear didn't self pollinate, I feared no fruit.

The Asian pear, which'd been given to me by the nursery to replace its dead predecessor, gave us great foliage then died.  Louis Bonne did this:

How'd it do that?

Such a shame that I'm the only pear eater in the house (har har har).  Do you know how many amazing pear recipes there are out there?  Come on, Louis!

Rebel Woody.

So while I'm dreaming of fruits to come, take a gander at my woodwardia. 

It was supposed to frond out scarlet, unfurl bronze, then green.  The colour in this photo is pretty accurate, so not what advertised, but I'm not complaining.  Loving this fern.

There's my #SixonSaturday.  Make sure you drop by The Propagator who's our meme host.  You'll get a gander at his six, & links to SoS-ers from all over the globe.

See you soon!

. . . we have lift off

Time for another Six on Saturday.  For me, that means six things in the garden that grabbed my attention sometime during the week, not necessarily on Saturday.

For the proper way to do Six, run over to The Propagator who not only has guidelines, but links in his comment section to all sorts of other Six on Saturday bloggers.

At last.

So, on with my week.

At long last, the rains have ended.  Or taken a break.

Yes, it's true.  We have sun.

<= <= <= Unlike Mr BigNose, we couldn't spend the week basking in its glory.

Work awaited us.  And OAP Fairies.



1.  Keeping up appearances.

You may remember that an OAP Fairy Person lives next door.  Once the sun came out, she mentioned some of our neighbours use a lawn mowing service.

Now me, I like a bit of a length to my lawn, enough to let the dead nettle & escapee grape hyacinth & teeny lawn daisies flower.

The Butcher of Lanfranc.

But it never pays to cross the Good People.  Mow my lawn?  Indeed I did.


2.  Feed the trees.

The potted forest began to wake up after the Beast, & its rumbling belly could be heard inside the house.  Fairy Person appeased, it was on to feeding & repotting.

New big pots.

Like someone with a dozen chillen, I use the hand-me-down method - buy a few new pots & hand down the old ones to the smaller denizens.

Oak planted by a squirrel 4 gardens ago.

The oak tree's pot'll go to the rhododendron.


3.  More daffs.

Last year, I got free daffodil bulbs for buying something else that I didn't need.  I was tickled pink when my first daffodils opened last week.

But this week . . . well, just look at this fascinating thing.  White petals on the outside, then a layer of yellow petals, & finally a tight ball of white on the inside.

Surprise beauty in the crooked cherry tree's pot.

The next day, it unfurled all of itself.

Look at that face. Not Mlle Doodle. The daff!

Can't really count the layers in there, but I'm quite liking it.


4.  I forgot about these.

While gadding about the garden, I noticed some speckled leaves in a pot shoved onto the terrace.

Well, hello there!

Fortunately when I planted them last year, I also tucked the label inside the pot.

White dog tooth violets, o my!

How many weeks you reckon before they open up?


5.  Spider's web Fatsia.

After all these lovely finds, I got enough courage to cut back the Beast damage on the fatsia.

Looking a bit bare.

As Fred the French Gardener predicted, there's new growth on the stem, including something quite charming.

Little white leaf.

This is my first spider's web fatsia, so I don't know why this happened.  Think I'll take it as a good omen for the growing season.


6.  Germination.

With our move, I decided not to do seeds this year, but couldn't find everything I wanted as plugs.  Even in years we don't move, I've learned not to plant seeds before April.  This was the week the germination factory got up & running.

Germination factory.

And Houston, we got lift off.

Peek-a-boo pea.

Which rounds up my Six for this week.

Time to put my feet up.

So isn't it time for you to join this blathery of gardening bloggers?

Yes, you can still do it this week.  Out you go, take your six snaps & post a link.  We'll be very glad you did.

See you next week!