In which we come Face to Face with an Orange Trumpet

I had some fun in the garden over the week-end so I'll share it with you. This embankment is mostly wet, sticky clay which is gradually being furnished with a layer of garden soil by way of mulch, even rotting pine logs will do!

Would you believe the last leaves are still falling off the pin oak while the ajuga is pushing up flower spikes? Yes, I know it's a primula veris, the ajuga "Catlin's Giant" is poking through the leaves. One of the down sides of winter here is that it doesn't really happen. We kind of go straight from autumn to spring.

 Saturday was generally fine but with the occasional opportunity to get wet, which I avoided,. There has been no such opportunity today so as the lawns were dry I gave them a hair cut. In New Zealand the grass grows year round and is especially rampant for the next few months.

What I love about gardening is that it is just simply the best occupation I know for pottering. Pottering in the garden offers such tremendous rewards.

You don't need to plan your day, simply walk out the door and start - anything. It might be pulling up a weed (active pottering), admiring a flower (passive pottering), taking a photograph or simply thinking about the garden plan (procrasterpottering) but whatever it is that one does, one thing always leads to another and by the end of the potter you've done masses of work in the garden and forgotten all about lunch!

NZ Tree fern (no idea which) with flowering acacia behind

I started my pottering yesterday morning by noticing a delphinium shoot in the tulip patch. This lead to wondering where the rest of them were, digging in the leafy mulch, finding shoots eaten by slugs, laying slug pellets, deciding I needed more delphiniums planted, doing that, slug pelleting them, noticing some red leafed geraniums needed weeding (everything always does) and getting carried away and weeding for ages.

A New Millennium Delphinium showing the way

After stopping to allow myself time for another sentence I then found some night scented stock (matthiola bicornis) seedlings that needed planting and so on and so on and it got dark.

Today I paced myself, after all it is Father's Day, and the main activities were mowing lawns and tidying and then allowing myself to be drawn to the nursery and into some of tomorrows work - fool!

I returned, took some photos and checked on the vege garden, having a close look at the peas.

Lastly I took down the dead hanging baskets and fed the dog.

Right now I'm finishing this blog and getting ready for our usual Sunday dinner with friends.