little magical one

Little Magical One, is the beautiful and poetic Arabic name for Alchemilla Mollis.The leaves of the plants collect sparkling jewel-like beads of water which were considered by alchemists to be wonderfully pure and containing great healing properties. It is perfect for edging paths, it likes the shade and makes wonderful ground cover, is amazingly resistant to rabbits, and the frothy chartreuse green flowers make the most fantastic and long-lasting cut flower filler. Known here I'm afraid by the more prosaic nickname, Alcoholic Molly, notice how the glistening beads of water cling to each point of the serated edged leaves. Delicious and yes, magical!

raindrops keep falling on my head...

No wonder the British are obsessed with the weather; last month was officially the wettest June since rainfall records began in 1910. But as Sir Rannulph Fiennes said, ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing,’ and I’m afraid we gardeners just have to agree; we never know what to expect, and we just get on with it.......

My favourite colour combinations this year are purple mauves mixed with the purest of greens. This year I've grown beautiful purple podded peas, vibrant fresh parsley, exotic fast growing kohlrabi, and purple veined brassicas. And what could be more romantic than stepover apples, interplanted with lavender, carpets of fragrant thyme, and soothing spreading sage, easily achieved within a border only 2’ wide. Absolutely perfect for edging paths or lawns, productive and pretty, what more could anyone want?

happy days

What a wonderful day, not sunny but soft, damp and warm, the most perfect growing weather. A beautiful day to be in the garden, don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t possible to move peonies, it is! These came from the long border last year, to be looked after in the kitchen garden. Bella has been sorting out the compost for me, and look who I spotted in the orchard! Oh and it’s a wonderful day for a birthday!! Picnic anyone? Xxxx

border control

Gorgeous weather today; summer has crept up softly, warm and fulsome, smiled all day upon us, and I have spent hours in the long border pulling out the sweet rocket which is going to seed, and planting the last of the potted dahlias, more cosmos and pink verbena. I staked everything earlier this month with lengths of hazel bent into arches over the young plants, and the taller things seem to be largely still upright, so it seems to have worked. Alongside the rocket which comes back every year, however ruthless I am, there are masses of lovely tall white agrostemma, Swanlake, also self-seeded from last year, rubbing shoulders with cerinthe, foxgloves and galega, all back without anything to do with me. It is beautiful.

it must have been an angel

Well, there was hardly time for it to become a raging debate here, and now it doesn't matter if they were red or grey squirrels, because Angel has eaten them. I wasn’t the only one to be transfixed so compellingly by my little squirrel friends. I have to report, to my horror, I have found three squirrel tails left at the back door and I’m afraid all blame for this is levelled at our beautiful tabby cat Angel, mostly because I caught her eating one of them. She’s normally very good at feeding herself on rabbit, although maybe she was bored with the same food, and thought, oh no, not rabbit again, and maybe it is easier to catch a squirrel than a rabbit! Although I would have expected a squirrel to put up more of a fight than a rabbit might. A quick word of caution here. While it is lovely to have a cat and then have kittens, and we had all the fun of playing with them until they went to good homes, it leaves the mother constantly wanting to provide. So Angel decided to hunt then not only for herself, her brother Dipstick, and Uncle Mo, but us too! Her mother Millie was the same. In one memorable week she caught the complete range, rabbit, mouse, rat, mole, squirrel, blackbird, all neatly presented to us on consecutive days, fortunately outside. But today Angel is now officially the smuggest and fattest cat possible, and there may be strawberries after all.

strawberry roan perhaps

There should be a bumper year of strawberries at The Old Vicarage this year. Unlike last year, there has been more than enough rain, I've managed to organise the runners I saved into sensible rows, I’ve netted them, and laid the strawberry trusses onto straw. All we need now is some sunshine to ripen them. That’s if there are any left to ripen of course, because they are disappearing fast! And the culprit for this, for once is not the chickens, or the dogs, or opportunist blackbirds or even the numerous jackdaws, but squirrels. Every time I walk down to the kitchen garden I see three squirrels. Every single time. And every time they are either eating a huge unripe strawberry, or flying back to their tree house with the biggest one they can carry stuffed hard into their mouths. And the awful thing is, I don’t mind. I don’t think they are very old. It’s almost as though they’ve just worked out the whole business of survival.  And while I see them all the time, they are really hard to photograph, but after HOURS of trying, here are a few pictures, and although my friends tell me there are no red squirrels on the mainland south of Northumberland, to the untrained eye, these are the reddest grey squirrels I’ve ever seen. Hmmm what do you think??

This little one is very grey, and very cute, but there go the strawberries.....

gardener required

The Old Vicarage is in disguise. Roy, our wonderful lovely postman, tells me if we aren’t able to trim the yew trees by the gate we should perhaps rename our house through building control.