Pining for the West

As you can see my orange oriental poppy has opened a flower at last. It seems to take forever to get to this stage and each flower only lasts for two or three days, but there are plenty more to come. I’ve tried to move this plant so many times but I’ve given up now, even although it’s taking up a lot of space in my herb patch. It’s one of those plants with huge tap roots and it’s impossible to get every bit out so they just grow back. It’s not one of my favourite flowers but the bees love it. I think the flowers look a bit wicked, which is quite apt I suppose when you consider that they make heroin from them.

I love this gorgeously rich red peony rose, unfortunately they don’t flower very well in my garden but at least I’m getting some flowers now. They had given up flowering altogether because of a virus in the soil. The solution to that problem was to dig them up and wash the soil off them and plant them in another part of the garden. I think I might have replanted them too deeply though which could be why I’m not getting many flowers.

This is a common lilac rhododendron but I love the flowers and the buds are even nicer, full of promise. But as you can see on the left side there is a big chomp taken out of one of the leaves. That’s where a vine weevil has been having a night time snack. My pink rhoddy is a lot worse, despite using a grub killer on the soil. The grubs are munching away on the roots and eventually the plants will just keel over. The gardening experts tell you to go out at night time as it’s getting dark and pick the beetles off the plants, but I’ve never seen any of them. The trouble is in Scotland we get so much light in the summer time that it’s probably way after midnight before they start munching. I’m annoyed with Marks and Spencer because I bought these plants there and they must have had the grubs already in the compost and now they are moving on to other plants.

Yes, I suppose it is a bit of a weird photo. It’s the bark of the silver birch tree which I planted at the bottom of our garden to commemorate our silver wedding nearly ten years ago. I love silver birches but now I’m thinking that I should probably have done the normal thing and planted a rose. Then we could have either taken the rose with us when we move or taken a cutting from it. I’ll never be able to take the silver birch tree and I don’t know how to propagate from it. The white flowered shrub behind the tree is a choisya or Mexican orange blossom. It was in the garden when we moved here over 24 years ago and although I like the leaves and flowers I’m really not keen on the scent from the flowers. I’ve heard people raving about the heavy spicy smell but I just find it too strong.

So that’s how my garden was looking yesterday. It’s all growing so lush now that I’m going to have to do some cutting back. I find that job almost painful even if the plant has already flowered. The good thing about it is that you quite often get a second flush of flowers afterwards.