The best of the flowers in my garden this May

This month my garden seems to have burst into colour, which is a good thing, and so to capture the moment I'm sharing flowers from around the garden during May. Its purpose is two-fold, as well as documenting our garden progress I'll also be able to retrieve it the next time MOH proclaims our garden as "boring" or "too green"

Let's start with the succulents, which I grew most of from a single, discarded leaf. Haven't they done well? 

They are gradually filling their small trough and having their own babies. It makes me so proud!

Our dogwoods have also grown considerably and are flowering. Their flowers are similar, but flatter, to a white allium I have.

So detailed aren't they?

My alliums are all but done, but they are such dramatic flowers. I've shared this photo here before, but I think it's a great example of an allium and a photo I love, as much as the flowers.

Since I moved my Gertrude Jekyll rose, it's flourished. Clearly now it's in the right place, and brings a burst of colour to the patio. In the really warm spell we had, you could see the flowers wilt before your eyes. I think the key to keep this flowering will be dead heading and I've a post to come on how I've tamed my patio plants next week, assuming the weather plays ball.

I learnt the name of this plant this month - it's Jerusalem sage - and it's been in our garden since we moved here. At one point years ago, I thought I'd lost it, but it seems it's more resilient than I thought.  And it is a furry as it looks.

This year for the first time I've had success with foxgloves, and I'm so glad I have. I'm hoping that they'll self-seed now and, as long as I can stop MOH pulling them up as weeds, I'll continue to have them in years to come. It's easy to see why they could be weeds, I have another one growing in pot which even I thought could have been a weed. Turns out it wasn't and so I've two of these beauties this month. 

I'm hoping to move the potted foxglove into my new gabion basket planters, and it seems our garden likes the woodland kind of plants.

Roses. The pink one is Gertrude Jekyll in full flower, when it's like this it's easy to see how roses are related to peonies, or the other way round, whichever it is, with all the petals folded tightly into each other.

The raindrop shots were taken the weekend of my birthday, just after the sleepers were installed - the flowers were beautiful before, but with some raindrops I think they're even more so. Sadly the Canterbury bells have been blown over this week in the wind, so I'll be adding a stake and tying them up this weekend.

Peonies. They are such lovely flowers, and always bring back memories of my wedding bouquet. A few years ago we bought three peony plants and this year is the first time they've really flowered. And I mean really flowered. They look great with raindrops too, but also coped less well with the wind, with a couple of stems breaking under the extra weight.  I've seen many pictures of pink peonies on Instagram and if I'm honest, I've been enjoying them and glad I could join in too.

This photo is the odd one out in this post really, as there's very few flowers in it other than the hardy geraniums on the right of the photo.  I'm including it as it's another of my mini-projects undertaken this spring. I've reused all of our old patio slabs that I'd saved and 'paved' an area in a staggered form by our cherry tree and by the bamboo. 

I'm hoping that it will deter the bamboo a little, as well as provide a place to store pots over the winter. The fern that is looking so glorious is only in the pot temporarily, as that too is destined for the gabion planting area, but more on that in another post. It'd recently been dug up to make way for the gabion baskets and it's another of my free plants. Ferns seem to grown in a old unused stairwell by our outdoor tap, which I regularly scrape out and pot up. The fern in the pot is the result. 

I really do love free plants.

Talking of which, my yucca which was one of the few plants I brought from my old house was also free. I had it in a pot on my porch, but it outgrew that a good few years back, and it's survived a location move when we moved where the shed is.  During the month I wrote about how it was repaying some love with flowers, and there's still a way to go, but it's getting there.

It last flowered in 2013, so it's a plant that doesn't like to be rushed. But it's worth the wait.

So looking back at these photos my garden has been quite colourful, and I think it's one of the garden's best months. Remember that MOH's overall view of our garden is that it's "too green" and I think that at least for the past month, I've disproved that.

How's your garden been over the last month?

Container living, but not quite what I expected

As we wandered around Grand Designs at the start of last month in the distance something gold and a bit bling caught my eye. Wondering what it could be, as we were in the more functional area of the show, I steered MOH towards it.

You can see why it caught my eye, can't you?

Intrigued, we headed around the front of the structure to discover it was a rather fabulously converted shipping container. Yes, you wouldn't know from that outside.

I know that there's some innovative ways of using shipping containers, but this is the first that I've seen close up, and definitely the first I've seen of this ilk.

Inside it didn't look like a shipping container either.

It looked like any plush interior would. And like the many shows you see on the TV now, it had outside space too that folded up on itself to offer protection.

We got talking to the people from Reluxe, and were totally converted. I think MOH would have signed up for one if, as ever, we had anywhere to put it. That and he was still angling for his very own pizza oven (and yes, he got one of those)

We jokingly said, ah you'd have to winch it over our house and the reply was, yes we quite often have to do that. And thinking about it, not many people have side access that a shipping container can slip down do they.

I dread to think what might happen if we move house and find we have space in our garden.  Hopefully there'll be the next new thing and maybe we'll go straight to that...

What do you think about converting shipping containers as living spaces (and yes, I know this isn't a true living space, but it'd make a great home office, man-cave or she-shed)?

A year in Greenwich Park: Meadow-like and an increase in volume

I'm a bit late with my May edition of a year in Greenwich Park, most likely because for me, May is always a social month with a busy end as I celebrate my birthday. There's also less photos in this update, and I'm not quite sure why. It could be that even more than usual I was rushing through the park trying to be somewhere five minutes before I left, yes that happens a lot more in May too. Or because May is the month I enjoy and so want to savour it all for real, rather than from behind my iPhone, who knows.  

The one thing that struck me about Greenwich Park this month though was how it adopted a meadow-like look and feel. Not something I expected, or ever noticed before. But now thanks to my walking commute I have the time to take in my surroundings, and see them change almost day by day.

There's been some rain too this month, I've avoided most of it including the heavy downpours in the latter half of the month, but sometimes my feet have got wet as I've crossed the dewy grass on my more direct route.  

With rain, the trees have grown - something I've noticed in our garden too - in Greenwich Park, it wasn't so much how they'd grown, but how the canopy had spread. On the very dampest of mornings you couldn't help but notice a dusting of heaviness and almost oppressiveness. 

In the Flower Garden the rhododendrons have been catching my eye as they've developed from buds at the start of the month to full-blown blooms now. Long may they continue!

The increase in noise has come from a steady increase of people using the park. Not a bad noise but just the hubbub of life in London, culminating in half-term last week and nice weather. It was great to see friends and families enjoying the sun.  The boating lake, which I walk past each day has different occupants in the morning to the evening. 

The mornings appear to be reserved for dogs, sticks and balls while later the clientele changes somewhat and the boats come into use. I do wonder if the afternoon clientele realise the boating lake's morning exploits. The dogs are funny though as they bound in, as they do, except for one morning there was a smaller dog looking none too sure. Meanwhile the larger dogs got out and left a puddle on the side of the lake, which the smaller one promptly rolled around in.  Seems the perfect way to fit in, I guess.

It's looking as if it could be just the day for messing about on the #boatinglake in #greenwichpark #yellowboats #yellow💛

A post shared by Stephanie Robinson (@lifeat139a) on May 16, 2017 at 3:13am PDT

And yes, I'm not sure I'd go in either.

This wouldn't be a proper monthly update without a look at 'my tree' would it, it's filled out rather nicely again hasn't it?

It's quite apt that I've posted this update today as it was the day that for one of the few times since last August the walking commute was rained off, but just a single bus journey reminded me of just how lucky I am.

Do you have a place that you visit and notice how it changes month by month?