Subscribe     Basket(0)     Terms
"Pure style is my way of life... a blueprint for living in the 21st Century"
April garden
29 April 2019

Tap tapping at the key board has a feel of the siesta hour, window blind not pulled completely shut allowing a sliver of sunlight to burst through the darkened inte rior. The mind wanders up here but then flying is mind bending, the turbine hum reality of being 12,500 metres somewhere over Iran, looking down on countries of puffy meringue clouds. 500 km per hour for almost a day, en route to Melbourne via a two hour stopover in Kuala Lumpur. A second visit to check out the down under life of my almost Melburnian son.

My travels are all happening at once it seems. Arriving late home last night from Easter in Olhao (feasts of grilled fish and chocolate eggs) I was up at dawn to re-pack and see what had been going on in the garden: an explosion of blossom and pink tulips and everything infused with spring fever. Have the slugs decimated the young sweet peas in my absence? Yes, they’ve had a damn good try but most seedlings are pushing on upwards, in little spurts of green curling around the hazel peasticks. There are instructions (daughters are minding the fort) for the tops to be pinched out from time to time to encourage stronger growth and more flowering.

Too much in a rush to get to Heathrow on time to identity all the tulips, apart from the obvious raspberry ripple markings of Rems Favourite. I know that I planted 80 Violet Beauty, 50 Bleu Amiable , 50 Jackpot and 50 Blue Heron. As I’ve explained before. I don’t lift the oldtimer tulips- partly laziness but also because those that do come up again are a bonus, like fluttery eldery aunts to the generation of bright young things planted the previous autumn,

Expectation versus reality is the downfall of over optimistic gardeners (most of us) and it is what can make one want to give up when an event such as cherished box hedging is annihilated by box blight almost overnight. Yes, it happened to mine last summer. So I have been guarded in my anticipation for the apple tree buds. But there was no frost or fierce storm. The apple tree has burst forth in a vsion of Van Gogh’s French orchards in spring , a delicate fluff of petals in white and pink. Looks like we’re going to get a big crop of apples this year – cautiously ’maybe’ of course.

Most lawns have been silenced by the regime of a lawnmover says Alys Fowler in the Guardian and reflects on Margaret Renkl who recently made the case for neglecting lawns in the New York Times. The scientific thinking is that scorched by weed and moss killers lawns are drained of their bio diversity.

I mow some of the grass , but don’t use chemicals, and keep it rough around the apple tree, a little bit of wildflower meadow, already with spring dandelions, bluebells, and forget me knots and food for bees and other insects


So goodbye fresh buds and petals, it’s been all too fleeting, and hello to the falling leaves of an Australian autumn….






Tags: springgarden, tulips, blossom, pink, ecogarden, londonreatreat, countryinthecity, simplegarden, outdoors,


 
Categories
 

autumn
frost
garden
homecooking
recipes for every day
scent
simple
simpleliving
spring
valentine
winter
alliums
apples
archtiecture
athome
autumn
autumn crabapple jelly resourceful
baking
barbados
basil
blankets
blankets colour texture roses
blossom
blue
bluebells
books
bulb
bulbs
butterflycakes
cake
chocolate
christmas
coast
colour
colour
colour band
comfort
competition
coronavirus
cotton
country style
countryinthecity
covid
covid-19
crabapple jelly
danish design
decoration
domestic bliss
ecogarden
everyday beauty
fabric
fabrics
floral fabrics
flower power
flowerpower
flowers
frost
functional
garden
garden
garlic
get crafty
golden
green
growing
hazelsticks
holiday
home cooking
home cooking
homecooking
homemade
homesewing
interiors
interiors. decoration
lido
lilac
lime green
linen
lockdown
lockdowngarden
londonreatreat
londonretreat
market
market
marmalade
melbourne
narcissi
natural
natural fabrics
olhao
olives blue summer
onions
orange
outdoors
paint
painting
pandemic
paper borders
pink
portugal
puglia
pumpkins
pure style borders
purecolour
purestylecolour
purple
rhubarb
rio
roses
runnerbeans
scent
september
sewing
shed
simple
simple decoration
simple decoration
simple design
simple update
simple-eating
simple-living
simpledetail
simplegarden
simplegardn
simplestyle
simplestyle
spain
spring
spring
springcolours
springgarden
stockholm
stripes
style
summer
sunflowers
sweden
swimmming
thrifty decoration
ticking
tidy
tiles
tulips
tulips. japan. location shoots
verbena
wallpaper
white
white paint
white rooms
wigwams
wildflowers
winter
winter
winter simple decoration white retro vintage
winter. home cooking
yellow
yellow

Archives
 

I like
 
Website design by ph9