The Home Garden

Turns out it wasn't the weather that thwarted all my allotment plans this weekend, but various other matters including Eddie recovering from a week of nightshifts, church band rehearsals, plain boring old housework, and Eddie slicing his hand open (not at the plot, I might add, but performing that most dangerous of household tasks - washing up). A morning in A&E and three stitches later, he is unable to dig, paint, plant, or do much at all really. And only a few hours of weekend remained anyway. And then it hailed. *sigh*

All was not lost, however, and I did manage to spend a bit of time in the home garden. It's a bare concrete yard about 3 metres by 7, with two nasty little concrete sheds jutting out into the middle, some extraordinarily unruly shrubs, and very little sunlight, but this year I'm determined to make something of it.
I got permission from the landlady this week to remove the shrubs and put in something less voracious, so I've now chopped them to pieces and pulled up the stumps. There's a tiny strip of flowerbed along the bottom of the garden - only about 40 cm wide - and I've put in some edging and built the soil level up using some old growbags. This bed is a blank canvas except for a few tulips which were there when we moved in. One end doesn't get any sun at all, but I think I'll try some foxgloves there, and bluebells. The other end gets a few hours in the morning, and I'm going to try a climbing rose across the wall. In between will be more bulbs and... a blackcurrant bush! I know; I'll have to keep it cut well back in such a small space, but I really wanted to give it a try.
Since this is all rather experimental I didn't spend much, though I had to make a tricky decision in Wilkinsons between the £1 range and the £2 range! (Do you think a £1 fruit bush is only half as good as a £2 fruit bush??) I got my rose from there too, along with two others to go in pots (3 for a fiver!) and hopefully I'll get them planted one evening this week, hurricanes allowing...
We're going for a sweet pea arch between the two sheds, so I sowed my sweet peas along with some wild pansies and cornflowers to fill out the pots. And I'm planning a herb garden in a big container (far more useful to have herbs outside the kitchen door than fifteen minutes down the road I think), which I need to start planting soon. So much to do!