Things in my garden which are not dead; in which I just about get the May sowing done.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I noticed earlier that chamomile needs to be sown by the end of May, and that it is May. So the children and I have just done that, covered the bare section of garden in lawn chamomile. That also ended the dithering of lateral thyme or chamomile - sure, thyme might be slightly better, but either is better than nothing, and in any case I was probably going to decide chamomile anyway.

We also planted some purslane seeds, will have to see how that goes.

My pepper plants are tiny, but living, and everything else is thriving. I've a tiny fig and a diminutive almond, three growing currants and a blueberry, a happy looking fuchsia (before its sibling was stolen, this was a miserable fuchsia), a rosemary, a handful of raspberries and strawberries, one potato and a lot of Jerusalem artichokes. Two clumps of rather downtrodden clives. Also, on the other side of the path, a Mirabelle with rather fewer aphids than before I put a lot of mail-order ladybirds.


In other news, I have new glasses which always makes life easier.

Watching: some kind of Lego superhero thing, because we're excited about the Lego Batman movie which we'll watch later.
Reading: Death's end by Cixin Liu which suffers somewhat from being the first thing I've read since Ninefox Gambit but is otherwise rather lovely
Eating: a lot of veg and hummous, in a tomato sauce with soft cheese stirred in at the end, served on spaghetti with garlic bread and salad, and a fruit salad made by chopping all the most attractive fruit in the shop, adding chocolate covered raisins and chopped dried apricots and leaving to soak with vanilla sugar and apple juice, and then serving with creme fraiche mixed with more vanilla sugar.
Playing: lots of lovely bridge!
Making: working on a sleeveless dress in bronze and black stretch velvet.

Comments

[conuly]

Purslane is the most vigorous plant I know of that's not a mint or invasive. It should go just fine.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I didn't manage to keep mint alive; it got eaten by a hedgehog. But that is reassuring. All I knew of purslane was that it's delicious.

[conuly]

You didn't manage to keep mint alive? Huh. Maybe the problem here is we don't have enough hedgehogs to keep the mint down.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I am a special kind of hopeless-at-gardening. But the Jerusalem artichokes I missed last year have turned into a reasonable crop again this year, so hopefully I'm almost at 'completely self sustaining' in what the children call the 'growing garden' (the front - the back, which has too much tree coverage and nothing else, is the 'playing garden').

[gwendraith]

The fruit salad sounds amazing!

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

It was. The chocolate coated raisins were a brilliant touch, which I thought of only because there were fewer apricots than I was hoping for.