Katy's Garden

The ground for the future blue border is now done and ready for improving and planting. It was horrid, full of stones of all sizes, two tree stumps buried under the grass but far from rotten, and the usual rubbish. Some people grow flowers in their gardens, my landlady's family grew rubbish. To each his own! I removed various old beer bottles, some whole, some broken. I fear by now they will not germinate any more, and the beer tree will remain a dream.
Well, I piled all the smaller stones in one heap, and by the end of it I had so many that I thought I could as well "gravel" the new path and steps with them. I scraped off all the topsoil from the path then scattered the stones on it and "set them" with some of the horrid yellow clay of the subsoil.It ain't pretty but it will serve, for the time being. At least I can walk on it withoud getting all muddy. In autumn I will transplant two plants that are in the ways on top and finish the path there. I am not sure what to do with the steeper part of the bank, may be I will cover it all with thick black plastic sheets, and plant something evergreen in holes. Something like cotoneaster, though, thickly covering and undemanding. A few gardens away there is a whole bank covered with it, but full of weeds, therefore the plastic idea. Weeding in there could become terribly difficult once it is planted all around.

The ground has been fattened with compost, and seing the results of other gardeners, I also burie all our old newspapers in it. I was never one for using paper in the garden, I thought I should give it a try. Prejudice never did any good to anyone. Now it all sits under a thick mulch of grass clippings. This border is in full sun until 1 pm, and dappled shadow until 5 pm, then full shadow. It is very sheltered from the wind, and I am wondering if the oakleaf hydrangea should be moved down here. It surely suffers from the rough exposure ofits current place. I think I will give it one more season to adapt, and see how it does. It han been pruned back now, all its beautiful flowers battered from the wind and faded before time.

The brugmansias are growing at an amazing rate and three of them have already been repotted.

Keeping the seeds from "Moulin Rouge" is proving a race against the greedy birds. I arrived too late at the first seedheads and found only a heap of empty shells on the ground. I am more wary now, I just hope that cutting the flower heads earlier does not compromise the seeds future.

When I planted the squash seedlings in late may, I had two left over that I did not feel like killing. They were planted near the fence, in a part of the garden still quite messy, in somewhat poor ground. I did not expect a crop of Jack o' Lanterns from them, just a bit of greenery. The whole fence length is full of nettles invading from the other side, the pumpkins would sure look better. They did very well, even if they are not as huge as those in the kitchen garden, and they smothered the nettles for a good length of the fence. They proved invaluable, because when the female flowers started opening on the "official" plants, there was not a single male flower available to pollinate them: luckily there were a couple already in the fence plants and I was able to hand pollinate with a small brush. It is a curious feeling to know that I have been the mean of conception of my 7 nicely growing squashes. I hope they will refrain from calling me Daddy. Now the fence plants have counterattacked the nettles on the other side (a wild meadow) and there are long vines weaving here and there... and two nice Jack o' Lantern are growing amid the wilderness.