Here's another one!

Yes, another new garden bed. Well, not altogether new - more an extension to an existing one. Richard needed somewhere to bury some rocks, so they became the base of a new part of the garden. They're somewhere near the centre of the earth now, buried under many layers of pebbles, topsoil and compost. It's a real rainbow-sandwich!

The next question was what to plant in it? It's hard to decide on permanent plantings until the rest of the area is developed, so we decided to have a bit of fun with it. This morning I planted 11 red salvias that I had propogated from an unkillable plant in another garden, as well as 3900 flower seeds. TRUE - I kid you not. 3900 is a lot of seeds. How long did it take me? About 5 minutes. Just open the lid of the can and shake them onto the ground. It was a cottage plant mixture in a can, which had been mixed with vermiculite to make sowing easier. The mix included Achillea, Antirrhinum, Aster, Centaurea, Chrysanthemum, Clarkia, Cosmos, Dianthus, Gilia, Candytuft, Larkspur, Lavetera, Lunaria, Virginian Stock and Phacella. A couple of them I've never heard of so I hope I don't pull them out thinking they are weeds.

The icing on the cake was that it started to rain as soon as I finished and has continued all day. Thank you to all those who have had too much rain and decided to send it our way.

I'm thinking of digging up a few dozen self-sown gazanias to plant on the bank of the garden to hold the soil in place.




See, the green is coming. It's coming up faster along the brick wall due to the heat generated by the bricks.


There is a little story attached to this azalea, which has never flowered so well as it has this year. In 1994, after our return from England, we bought Sara a little rabbit for her birthday and she named him 'Charlie'. He was the first and only pet this family has ever had. Three years later this much loved pet fell victim to a large dog and died. Richard, Sara and I, all in tears, buried him in the garden. I called at the plant nursery on my way home from work that day to buy a plant to grow over Charlie's grave. I wanted a miniature rose, but they were a tatty looking lot, then I spied this azalea and would you believe, it was actually called 'Charlie'.