Plodding Along

At this time of the year I find that I hit a wall, its when I have lots of plants in pots that need to be planted out and are becoming dangerously pot bound, yet some how I can not find or sustain the motivation needed to get them all into their optimal growing conditions. This normally means by the end of June I have way to many plants going into the compost heap.

So far I have been able to work through this mental barrier of sorts and have just about kept up with what needs to be done but it is a struggle and I find that although I'm getting things done, I'm still not accomplishing as much as I could be on a day to day basis.

Well before this becomes one of the most depressing posts I have ever written, let me fill you in on what I have accomplished over the last two days.

Sunday - dawned very hot and sunny but I spent the early half of the day on mummy duty and took my youngest to the swimming pool as a treat because her older sister and playmate was away for the weekend on a sleepover.

When I returned and got out into the garden I started sifting a mound of soil removing any large stones and weed roots and begun filling some containers to finally begin planting out the oca and ulluca which have all definitely out grown their 3" pots.

This was extremely hot work and my energy was soon sapped. So after filling and planting two of the containers I stopped and moved to a cooler part of the garden and proceeded to plant out the last lot of sweet peas I was growing, these I planted out by the picket fence bordering the lawn area. I had six plants but found three of them to have some sort of stem rot at the base, these ended up in the compost bin.

With the heat up watering was a other task that got done.

Oh and look what has begun to flower, fresh peas aren't far away now :)

Monday (today) - was a holiday so I had my mum home she and a friend of hers proceeded to completely weed all the remaining footpaths around the vege beds that needed weeding YEAH!!!! thanks a bunch guys.

The weather was very hazy to start with so I returned to the boring task of sifting the mound of soil I started yesterday. I got another four done before stopping for lunch, the sun by this time had broken through the cloud cover and was beating down so after lunch I spent a lovely hour or so nattering with my neighbours. After we had righted the world of its problems I went back to the mind numbing task and got another two containers filled and planted.

The heap was now exhausted and I moved on to removing some soil from the front of the compost bins. This does need to be done anyway to level the ground in preparation for laying down some paving slabs. While doing this the heavens began to open slowly with great rumbles of thunder in the distance, so I put away the sieve and simply shovelled up the soil and placed it into a very large plant pot, covered it to keep out the rain, to be sorted out tomorrow hopefully if the weather is favourable.

After securing the soil I tidied up and retreated inside to let the thunder storm get on with it.

Wildlife up date - On Sunday five orange butterflies showed up in the neighbour's and my garden. They returned on today in much larger number and I counted eight in all. My neighbour helped me id them as Painted Lady butterflies. They hung around for hours in the mid afternoon sunshine visiting a wide variety of flowers; chives, nigella, flowering purple sprouting broccoli, pansies and flowering shrubs next door, etc. The were quite placid at times and with the aid of a butterfly net my older daughter was able to catch two quite easily.

Having so many butterflies in the garden was magical and reminded me of what it use to be like when I was small before the use of pesticides had make an impact on the environment insect population, in the West Indies there is also a terrible reduction in the number of butterflies, etc due to these poisons.

Sunday into Monday was also very noisy with the influx of starling fledglings screaming and begging their parents to keep on feeding them, the sky was busy with their flight. Other fledglings I saw were song thrushes, see picture.

Do you remember the exquisite water aven flower I showed you about a week back well its developed its seed head check it out now.

Monday on the aphid infested living willow bench I observed some hoverfly larva enjoying the feast and there were two ladybugs yeah!!

A toss up between a UK 13 spot ladybird / a Succinea Harlequin ladybird.

A UK pine ladybird.

Nice beetle not sure what it is I'm awaiting correct id from a entomologist.

Whats blossoming -

Bladder wort

The water lily is getting there:

and I'm sorry our computers don't let us smell, as these roses have the most divine scent.