"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you; possess you in a reverie of suspended thought." (James Douglas 1803-1877 British colonial governor or Vancouver Island, British Columbia)
If you were to walk into my garden, this is how you would start........up the stairs, past the lavender and curry, rosemary, and Buddleia, and watch the butterflies paddle away at blossoms.
Around the roses, cosmos, sunflowers, marigolds, geraniums....and yes, the weeds!
Through the gate into the back terraces.....
The grape vines hanging, not finished growing yet....
Cats from the hill, Smokey and Spencer, who visit and lounge and purr..............
Into the greenhouse full with ferns, Evergreen clematis , tri-fruit tree, vine geraniums, more ferns.....
The Rhodochiton , still growing, like the grapes...........
Baskets hung at every turn.......
And the sweet peas...............always sweet peas.....
strung along the fence in troughs.
Past the Campanula Takesiana and native cranesbill....
To the bowling green............
Looking back you'll see the patio ..............
Completely covered in pots and pots that overgrow to form hedges of flowers....
Colour everywhere. Naturtums, verbeena, marigolds, petunias of as many different hues as I could find, Sweet peas, roses..........I got the idea from a gardening show, to use as many seeds as possible. To ram in as much as was able. And it worked. I think.
Lady's Mantle growing wild between the pots. Along the concrete......
Cordelia from the hill. Hidden in the shadow of the Katura..........
From the second terrace I stuffed in more sweet peas in an old broken legged chair.....under the cherry tree.Sweet pas at every chance.
On the old apple tree at the top hangs baskets. Mostly because I didn't know where to put them. The Moai did not seem to mind.....
And plums..........
Gold plums ripening in heavy bunches underneath branches that fall low....
On the top hill this year, I decided to stuff in as many things as possible into the small patch of dirt. . Auburn sunflowers, Yellow sunflowers, yellow and green beans, nasturtums, sweet peas climbing, knee hi sweet peas in front, not quite ready to flower, Centaurea, blueberries, Campanula.............
And the Verbascum. Tall and huge. Not ready to flower yet. Once it does, bees will be sleeping in the flower heads.
Last look..............the porch......small and shady......
"Today is for itself enough." (P. B. Shelley 1792-1822)
While the cats sleep. While the flowers grow.......
"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. "
(Lin Yutang 1895-1976 linguist and inventor)
