Aquilegia 'Crimson Star'
At last, I saw a toad in the garden. He was staggering awkwardly across the lawn, so hopefully he was bloated from eating all the slugs on my veg patch.
I left my spade lying on the ground while I had a break (yeah, I'm very slack like that) and when I went to pick it up I suddenly saw it had a slow worm draped over it. I managed not to startle it too much and it came sauntering right over to me to have a good look. It's the fifth one I've seen this year, although there may only be two or three different ones. This one is a shiny dark brown, just over a foot long, with black speckly markings. A beautiful looking thing. (Although I don't think my mother would think so. She'd probably run away screaming.) It had a wide black forked tongue which was darting in and out and licking the surface of the soil.
And the blackbirds on the patio have babies. I can hear them all squeaking whenever a feast of worms is delivered to the nest. I notice it's the female who does most of the work. The male just sits on his backside most of the day staring through the rose bush.
I planted out Mr Bethell's Purple-Podded peas today under a rather eccentric structure of twigs.
Also sowed some carrots in a trough. They won't have room to grow to full size, but that's OK. I planted alternating rows of Chantenay, a French variety of 1830 which has short wedge-shaped roots, and White Kuttiger, a 300-year-old Swiss variety with white roots. The soil medium is mostly coir with a few shovels of sand mixed in (and some blood fish and bone meal). It's very light so the roots should whizz through that.
Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site. Keep working. Thank you.
ReplyDelete»