shopping

the mail order stuff has not proved to be a good idea this year..........i guess it was worth a try but i don't think it's really any cheaper and the quality wasn't good. i've been waiting months for the stuff from the herb farm which still hasn't arrived. i should maybe just have got the book.........what do you do with lovage, exactly? i've got a huge clump of it, and a huge clump of salad burnet........make it into salad, i suppose.........a mysterious feathery thing also came up which turns out to be caraway.....the leaves don't seem to taste of anything but it looks pretty........the borage will flower very soon and i've just put in parsley and a marjoram that i found in the "search and rescue" bit at Hopetoun.........
..........Hopetoun. my favourite garden centre of all time, i love it. it's not quite as nice as when it was in the walled garden of Hopetoun House, but it's still pretty nice, i love their display gardens and they have the biggest stock of plants of anywhere i've ever seen. it's not the cheapest........when i want lots of cheap stuff i go to Dobbies or Klondyke, i hate "plant supermarkets" but like any kind of supermarket, they're cheap. i usually go to Hopetoun when there's something specific i want that i know only they will have. their alpines are fantastic........i seem to be developing a small obsession with alpines......having discovered that my cold and windy front garden will actually support alpines rather well..........in winter and spring it's the "bulb garden" as all the mini-bulbs come up under the tree, but once the tree was in leaf there used to be nothing under it, i couldn't get anything to grow in the beds because they were too dry and dark..........but actually it does get sun in the morning, and i've worked on it a bit......so the side bed contains lots of little low-growing alpiney things that seem to be doing rather well. i've also planted some into the gravel, most have taken and are spreading just like i wanted them to...........once the bulbs die down then the best thing i think is to wood-chip under the tree, cocoa-shell round the carpeters, and shift the focus to the alpine tubs and little rockeries.......
........one heather has survived for some reason, the others didn't make it........bits of catmint are coming up from where i took it out and moved it to the back......i've put in a couple of cyclamen and the anemone bulbs that came in the pack.......the wood anemones i bought in Kendal flowered nicely and have gone to sleep, hope they spread like they're meant to and appear next year......
.......making the weeds and bulb vegetation into liquid compost.......i.e. a big barrel full of water......it smells to high heaven so i guess that means it's working and the pansies seem to be liking it...........none of the things at the front have ever been fed, or even watered, but now that i've got the hose extension and figured out how to work it they can get both fed and watered which will no doubt help..........
....Phil the Delphus seems quite happy in his tub.......at the back he grew enormous (so much for "dwarf".....) and put out loads of leaves but no flowers............most of the stuff at the front got there by itself, the vinca and the winter jasmine and that yellow thing......no idea where that came from it just appeared.....the biennial poppies are back this year as well....the honeysuckle is growing away by the drainpipe, even the clematis is still alive though looking a bit hesitant..........the rose took as well, no flowers yet but it seems happy..........