Amaryllis in the Shade

The difficulty with propagation is that sometimes it works. You then end up with hundreds of young plants and no idea what to do with them.  Our Amaryllis bulb produced seeds a couple of years ago, so just out of curiosity I tried to grow them to see what would happen, by the "California method" i.e. Soak them in a bowl of water. To my amazement most of them germinated, so I potted them on, and loads of them came up. So we now have a windowsill full of baby Amaryllis. I believe we may need to wait seven years for them to flower, but after the Paeony Sulk we are prepared for anything. We also still have Mummy Amaryllis, just rescued from a corner of the greenhouse where she had been languishing over the winter and growing strongly. Hope she'll be proud. 

And here is the rosary vine, descending from the third floor and bidding for freedom:

Nice Lady Gardeners

All the things I bought at the Hampton Court Flower Show last year have died. And the cold frame, although it looks very nice, has not survived the first attempt to actually use it......it sat empty through the winter looking very nice, but when we tried to move it into position to put some plants in it, one of the panes of glass fell out and shattered on the ground. So I am beginning to realise that our efforts to be Nice Lady Gardeners are not going to work. We are not the right sort. 

NLG's wear floral print dresses and broad-brimmed straw hats. They do nothing more strenuous than potter round the garden carrying a dainty pair of special lady secateurs designed to fit their tiny lady hands (with pink handles of course). They occasionally lightly snip a rose or scented herb of some kind. They do not dig over the compost heap, dredge the pond, or stamp on slugs. Their gardens do not have slugs....or centipedes, or anything horrid like that interesting flatworm we found last week. Their Burgon and Ball comfrey bucket does not smell like a comfrey bucket. They are not reduced to tears of rage and frustration by going to the Royal Botanic Gardens shop and finding that it doesn't sell anything you might need to actually garden but is simply designed to soak loads of money out of the tourists like everything else in Edinburgh. NLG's would feel right at home there, since there are lots of pretty plants and twee things to put in your conservatory, but none of the equipment required to actually maintain them and nothing that will break your nails or dirty your hands. 

So thank you Fiona and Kendall for the lovely Burgon and Ball gardening gloves, which were really useful when we started the weeding and clearing and it was still very cold.......but I think thetorn gardening   trousers and ancient T-shirt I've been wearing along with them do not quite fit with the rest of the NLG uniform.....the lovely cold frame is now getting a Carrie Gooch bodge to replace the missing bit of glass, and we feel much more at home with it now that it's all bashed and not quite normal like everything else in this garden. NLG's eat yer hearts out. 

Mexican stand-off

So it is a lovely warm sunny day, and Monte thought he might like to sunbathe on the roof of next door's shed, there was just one tiny obstacle in the way....

The Lost Gardens of Tregaminion 2016

How wonderful to be back to Cornwall this year, and how well the garden seems to have managed without us. Especially the brambles. Good weather mostly occupied in kayaking, but still time for the Battle of the Buddleia down in the sitootery to make room for a new oil tank. Also lovely to see how nice the front rockery now looks with all the things we planted two years ago established and looking really nice - a fitting backdrop for the traditional "Behold! The SEA!!!!!!!!!" Moment......

RIP Zam

For some reason, just about everything we're growing or planning to grow this year seems to be purple. RIP Zam Walker and Helen Steven, watch out Heaven.....

Equinoctial frolics