Lime time

Today it's glorious outside, it might even be warmer outside than in the house. I can even venture outside barefoot. It's the kind of day where we've opened every window and door to let the sunshine in. It really feels a lot like Spring already. An early Spring? That would be nice, a good way to balance out the early Winter! SP and I made a bit of a tour of MIL's garden, to see what may be seen out there on this radiant July day.

First up, I looked to see how all my propagation of four weeks ago is going. The raspberries I dug up don't look like much from a distance, in fact you could be forgiven for thinking they'd died, but up close their little green noses are poking out of the stems and soil. Yesterday I dug up half a dozen extras, hoping for a raspberry filled Summer;



The white Japanese windflowers are also doing well, as are most of the correas;



But the jury's still out on the penstemons. They're all looking a bit limp and wan;


We cut a whole heap of coriander, and I mean a heap! I chopped it all down and have frozen it in water to use at our leisure. There's still three times this again in the garden;


We found a splash of unexpected brilliance in the red leaves of a rhubarb;


And a sweet surprise from a ground cover pelegonium - or geranium - which has been hiding in the violets and soursobs, I didn't even know she was there until she showed her blushing face;


And lastly we looked at the lemons and limes.


SP helped me collect some of the 'balls,'


So expensive in the shops, and so abundant in MIL's garden! If there were ever fruit trees that paid for themselves in greens and golds, then citrus are it in our Mediterranean climate.



I hope you're all enjoying your Sundays. xx

Raspberries and windflowers

One of the really good things about staying at a house with a really lovely and full garden is that there is plenty of plants which can be divided and propagated and then taken over to our own garden.

Over the weekend I dug half a dozen Japanese Windflower plants out of the kitchen window patch. They're the white, single anemones and far too beautiful not to try them out at our place.
The roots are surprisingly thick and robust considering how delicate the leaves and stems are.



I've popped the whole lot into a couple of pots and they're staying outside in the rain and semi-shade. Let's hope they do well, I think they look a little seasick, hanging over the edge of the pots like that, thinking, what the hell just happened?


I also helped myself to some of the raspberries. Notice they all have leaves? It never really gets cold enough here for plants to go truely dormant.


Last year at Christmas we ate ourselves silly on the raspberries out of MIL's patch. I did plant some at our place last winter but they were eaten by insects so many times that they struggled and struggled and eventually died. I also have native raspberries planted and they are looking quite good but aren't known for an abundance of fruit. These raspberries have been potted up into a very sexy ice cream container, ready to be shifted later on in winter.


I might take some more over the week, I think, the more I have the more will survive? Right?

The last of the windflowers

I love Japanese windflowers. There is a large patch of white ones right outside the kitchen window. They are the most lovely flowers, swaying on long stems and somewhat serene. I have been meaning to write a post about windflowers throughout all of Autumn and yet I never got around to it, and now, in the kitchen patch, there is only one white windflower left. Given the way the wind is whipping and screaming around the hills today, sending not just twigs but entire branches flying, I don't expect the last lonely windflower to be there by the end of the day. But here it is, in perpetuity.


There are a few more pink windflowers left up in the back of the garden, but they're looking a little shabby and worse for wear at the tail end of the season.


But even though the flowers have gone, there remains dozens upon dozens of pea-sized fruiting bodies dancing in the wind.


All that, from all this. Beautiful.

I'll leave you on this stormy Sunday with some photos I've taken of these graceful anemones throughout the season.