Tag: Poppies

Plants in pots

Sexy Rexy
Precious Pet
Violet Hit

These roses are doing well in pots. The Sexy Rexy was in the garden, but was not thriving. It didn’t take long to recover once it was in a pot. I have a watering schedule: the pots are watered twice a week and fed on alternate weeks (roughly). The liquid plant food smells rich and pungent; the prolific flowers suggest it is doing them good. I’m hoping a Spiced Coffee rose, also rescued from the garden, will do well in its pot. The Violet Hit, which has always been in a pot, was not thriving, so I moved it last summer into a more open position and it is steadily improving, despite the fact that an aquilegia has taken up residence in the pot and will not be budged.

Sweet peas
Poppies
Daisy

A mass of sweet peas is growing in a barrel. They have simply come up by themselves this year. Popping up amongst them are self-sown poppies – including some fluffy ones – and underneath a little daisy is struggling for light.

Yucca and lobelia
Mother of Herbs out of its pot
Violas in pot

The potted yucca is hosting self-sown lobelia. The Mother of Herbs has been removed from its pot as it was taking over the kitchen windowsill. It is now beside the sage barrel and a basil plant has taken its place in the kitchen. Tiny viola pop up around the garden, and these ones are with self-sown poppies in a daffodil pot – with a background of geraniums grown from a cutting given to my mother years ago by the Avon lady.

Lime Tree with companion plants

You can hardly see the pot this lime tree is in; the companion plants of alyssum and silver thyme are thriving – a sign of good soil health, I hope. A previous lime tree died, so I decided on a pot for this one, beside the house for shelter. So far so good – and the lime tree has lots of flowers. As with all the pots, I use food suitable for container plants – either liquid or slow release – so that the soil doesn’t build up toxicity, a tip picked up from a television gardening show.

Sweet endearments

Let’s start with a tiny egg. What had popped into the nesting box and produced this?

Some research told me that these tiny eggs are called, variously, wind eggs, fart eggs, fairy eggs and witch eggs. Here’s my delightful source.

Another cutie pie thing landed on my kitchen window the other night.

It may have a limb missing, but with the help of my sister and brother in law, we identified it as a katydid. I’ve seen a few in the garden and found a dead one inside the house.

I noticed something strange happening to the swan plants. I thought a dandelion clock had latched onto the plant, but my sister told me it is the swan plant producing its fluffy seeds and this is how the plant got its name.

People across the country stood out at the gate to remember Anzac Day this year. Mum went out before 6am, and I joined her in case she fell into the garden in the dark. We heard a bugle call nearby. Later, I saw creative art work adorning fences, such as this one I photographed on a walk to St Albans Park.

Our display was a little more modest, and there were real poppies in the garden. I made Anzac biscuits and there a few left today in the RSA biscuit tin.

Today, I came across these two trinket boxes which my uncle had sent home from Egypt where he was stationed in 1942. Inside was a letter he had written on tissue-thin paper.

Here is his grave at Cassino in Italy, photographed with my cousin and his wife last year.

My brother thinks it is poignantly fitting that my uncle, who was an accountant, died on the last day of the financial year.

Shakespeare’s tragedies, performed during his lifetime, would end with a boisterous dance to cheer up the audience, and so we remember important people – and the little things which are given to lift our spirits. My boisterous dance, is simply to recount that, as we began our dinner tonight, there was a thud of something hitting the floor. I looked at Mum to see if she’d lost her knife again, but she was firmly gripping both knife and fork. She reached down and retrieved the top set of her dentures which had shot out when she found the cauliflower too hot. As Mum would say, “Happy days!”

On a final endearing note, take a look at this thank you video made by Laura Mucha for the people who help us, which I found on Poetry Roundabout this morning.