Well, I missed last week’s new blooms because mostly they are the same blooms as the week before and new blooms are slowing down. My goal has always been to have something blooming in the garden from March ’til October and it is usually possible with slight variations. Four months of cold and snow give us pause for planning! Up by the house and in very sheltered spots it is possible to push the limits a little further with Snowdrops and Roses. There are waves of bloom through the seasons, mostly spring bulbs, flowering shrubs, into high summer perennials and annuals followed by the fall asters, daisies, a few late roses and good old Snapdragons

The vegetable patch is similar with spring spinach, salad leaves and peas, then summer garlic beans, brassicas and berries , followed by root crops and squash.

There were a few new this week. I am including some of my cut flowers, not because they were all new to bloom but because they were so slow this year and have all finally bloomed some better than others. I also grew some Woad this year to experiment with the indigo colour dye it produces. It will not bloom and seed ’til next year as it is a biennial but I will harvest the leaves to play with. Eucalyptus was another I grew out of curiosity – more on those later.

This week’s mixture of old and new:

Then this! My posting was late once again due to the mayhem caused by my Yorkshire Terrier who told us loudly and repeatedly this morning that, “THERE’S A SQUIRREL IN THE GREENHOUSE’ and there was and he was reluctant to leave and there would be no peace until he did! In the end he did leave. I think he was so terrified, no grapes were lost but we don’t like the grapes so he is welcome to them. How do you tell a squirrel to only come at dawn or dusk when the dogs are sleeping?! We are entertained regularly by our squirrels so I am loathe to make them unwelcome. This Spring the family had young whose antics were always so much fun to watch. The garden is rarely quiet these days with dogs seeing off squirrels seeing off the Blue Jays. We do our best to limit the noise pollution I hasten to add.