My mum ….and more!

Here’s my mum when she was young and, certainly, before she had me! 

Yesterday, it was 100 years since she was born!  Sadly, my mum passed away in 2016 but 91 years is a ‘good innings’ as they say. And talking of good innings, I think that this photo was actually taken with the local cricket ground in the background.

This is one of my favourite photos of me with my mum, taken many years ago.

Yesterday, a trip to the cemetery, which is on the Totnes Road from Newton Abbot, was the first thing on the agenda and so I picked a lovely bunch of flowers from our garden to lay at the grave of my mum and dad. 

That done, we took the long route home via Longcombe. It was incredibly hot and sticky and I just wish that we could have a jolly good storm and a jolly good downpour! Neither has happened. 

What HAS happened is that Longcombe had plant pots reduced in price…very nice terracotta ones too!

Bargains! And I had some Thyme that needed to be planted in pots….and so I bought three pots.

I’m completely addicted to Thyme…(as well as English Lavender!) And I’ve been trying to add more to the garden over the last couple of years. What with these dry summers and my desire to plant more bee friendly plants, I’ve not only been buying a few more Thyme and Lavender but I’ve also been successful in growing Thyme from seed. I’ve raised these to plant between the cracks in our middle patio, which is a rather lovely little place…

For buying herbs, my ‘go to place’ has, for years, been Norfolk Herbs. They’ve never let me down and the quality of their plants is superb. In this pot below are Ruby Glow, Wine and Roses and Creeping Red.

We did inherit a couple of  large, Lavender plants when we moved here but they were very old and  woody; although I’ve kept them going for this season, I think it’s time to replace them. 

Meanwhile, the ones that I’ve planted myself have been wonderful! My favourite varieties are Bee Zee blue, Bee Zee pink, Bee Zee white and Bee Zee purple. These are planted in a large stone container and the position suits them perfectly.

In other news, it’s the Sweet Peas that are dominating the back of the garden at the moment. Bunches 3 & 4 were picked yesterday.

And finally, did anyone go to the new RHS show at Wentworth Woodhouse? Or maybe you watched GW on Thursday? I thought it was a delightful programme and a breath of fresh air as a new show.  There were various things that caught my eye. The first was the man propagating snowdrop bulbs; I wish they do more features like this on GW as it was very useful. And then there was this:

This delightful garden has been designed by Chris Myers and it depicts a place where miners spent their time away from the pits, i.e their gardens. They grew crops to feed their families and they grew flowers too. This garden also reflects on how pits, that have closed in South Yorkshire, have been transformed into nature reserves, which are incredibly beneficial to wildlife. 

I think it’s absolutely lovely! My kind of garden!