DIAMOND JUBILEE

Firstly, a few words of thanks to Her Majesty for giving us an extra day off this week to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.  Cheers Queenie! 

God Save The Queen - Sex Pistols

We’ll be toasting your good health next weekend with our very own garden party to celebrate the royal birthdays, diamond jubilee and arrival of summer.  It’s basically an excuse to pig out on pork pies and cake which are never far from my thoughts these days.  (Only 3 lbs to lose for the 2 stone award!)

However, a royal afternoon tea feast needs a garden fit for the queen so we’ve spent the last 2 days sprucing up our bit of little Britain.  If she happened to be passing through Charminster and decided to drop in for a cuppa then at least the place would be looking half decent. 

One's Garden

I’m sure she’d love a tour of our garden and a nice bit of tea and cake especially the yummy Victoria sponge I’m planning to bake with fresh cream and strawberries.  She could stop to admire the lovely white frothy flower heads of the Valeriana now standing tall at the back of the flower beds.  It’s grabbed the attention of a very hungry Emerald beetle who is positively hoovering up nectar from all the tiny flower heads. 

Lovely green beetle 

Heard it on the grape vine

Perhaps she’d prefer to inspect my collection of charity shop ceramics or the new grape vine kindly donated by my son’s girlfriend’s dad who is also a fellow gardener.  Naturally we’d put out a bowl of water for the corgis. 

As the kids had gone to the Rugby Sevens Festival, we popped out to Upton House for a quick butchers round their annual plant sale.  I was a little disappointed to see fewer sellers than usual and stalls featuring only run of the mill plants that you can normally buy in B&Q or other garden centres.  No specialist, unusual or rare specimens this time round.  I was almost on the point of going home when I spotted something hidden in the midst of the tomato plants that caught my eye. 

Cynara Cardunculus - cardoon or artichoke thistle a tall, silver leaved plant related to the globe artichoke.  I first saw this plant in some public gardens in Edinburgh and fell in love with its violet purple thistle like flower.  They grow over a metre tall and are stunning. 

I picked up the pot to head off to the checkout but then a bumbling old dear in a floppy linen hat clutching a mug of tea ambled over.  “Like artichokes dear?”  He enquired displaying a set of yellowy-brown gnashers that would require a scale and polish with an industrial sander.  “Would you like to come to my greenhouse to see the big one?” he mumbled.  Well I guess it would be rude not to.  The other half and I trailed along following our green fingered guide into a large roped off enclosure to emerge minutes later with a cardoon the size of a palm tree which we bought for £4.50.  Who says the milk of human kindness has curdled?

Cynara Cardunculus - artichoke thistle

Happy Diamond Jubilee!

THE NAKED AND THE DEAD

That made you look didn’t it?  But I can assure you that there is no naked gardening going on down here in ‘sunny’ Bournemouth, well at least round our house – I can’t vouch for the neighbours round these parts.  There is however, plenty of evidence to suggest that my blueberry bushes are dead! 

Looks like a goner to me

At first it looked like a bad case of over-sleeping vegetation.  Let’s face it, I’ve only just switched the heating off thinking that spring has finally arrived and thought that perhaps blueberries also waited until warmer climes too before bursting into growth.  However, looking at the sorry state these bushes are in, no amount of TLC is going to resurrect them from what appears to be an early grave.  I think a trip to the garden centre for replacements may be on the agenda (no change there).

Loch Maree blackberry plant

On the other hand, my blackberry plants are certainly not letting the grass grow under their feet.  The Loch Maree variety is already covered in flowers, a good sign that fruit may be on the way later and the Oregon Thorn-less is pushing out new branches all over the place.  Father-in-law’s raspberries are also reaching for the skies. I definitely feel a fruit salad coming on.

Now that the drought has been officially declared as over in Dorset, we’ll either be facing monsoon conditions or an incredible heatwave for the rest of this month as weather never seems to do anything by halves.  Thanks to the ‘drought’ my garden is lush.  Vibrant azaleas are peeping out between the rhododendron bushes, many of which are preparing to flower and the aquilegias are like a miniature rainforest.  Next door’s passion flower which I’ve trailed along the top half of the wall is an explosion of pale pink blooms.

Lush vegetation

Passion flower power

 It’s all coming up roses as they say – in fact, I noticed that the climbing rose I bought last year has a few pink buds forming and is already twice its size without any intervention from me.  Amazing!

My collection of charity shop ceramics

HACKED OFF

It’s a sad state of affairs when the everyday things in life you tend to take for granted get suddenly violated for reasons best known only to the dear Lord himself.  Whilst some people may be anxious to protect their privacy, I’m completely at a loss for words over a different kind of hacking that has taken place under my very nose.

Behold what’s left of a beautiful variegated holly tree in our neighbour’s front garden.  

Tree killers!

There it was minding its own business, innocently swaying in the wind and providing food or shelter for the birds then wham!  Brutally butchered.  Why oh why?  It wasn’t particularly large or bushy to be blocking out a great deal of daylight from the nearest window.  Its leafy crown could easily have been pruned down into a smaller more aesthetically pleasing shape but no, years of painstaking growth thoughtlessly hacked off in seconds. 

I appreciate it’s not my garden so I wouldn’t have had a say in the matter but it pains me to look upon that gaping wound in what was once a lovely holly tree.  

How would you like to have your head chopped off?

We are the only species that will ultimately be responsible for our own extinction since we show little regard for anything else other than our own selfish, greedy and mindless ends.

McTWITTER CELEBRITIES

Rain has certainly not dulled the appetites of our feathered friends as McTwitters has had a constant stream of visitors swooping in for snacks.  Regular pigeon parties, a pair of nesting blackbirds, a couple of sparrows and even the occasional magpie have been seen foraging for bread and seeds.

The other morning, I was amazed to see a squirrel leap from the top of the garden trellised arch onto the roof of McTwitters so that it could dangle upside down to reach into the sunflower dispenser. 

But just as Jamie Oliver is concerned about fat children, shouldn’t there also be someone to champion the plight of overweight birds?  I mean, think about it.  What if all the birds got so fat they couldn’t fly?  Then they’d all be eaten by that peckish fox from number 91 and what starts off like a well-meaning gesture ends up being avian Armageddon.  Are we really doing birds a favour feeding them up?  There could be much more at stake here than getting rid of stale bread.

In fact, I’m now so traumatised at the thought of being a potential bird killer that I’m off for a cup of tea to soothe my nerves.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the photographic evidence that proves birds do not diet.