My garden in Fife, Scotland

The yellow rose ‘Golden Showers’ at my front door has started to bloom again. I had intended liberating it from the large tub it lives in, hoping that it might flower for a longer time if it is in the earth, but never got around to it, also I have no idea where I could shoehorn it in!

Rose , Golden Showers, my garden

Golden Showers Rose, my garden

The video is of a bit of my back garden. It’s very short and I did it mainly to capture some of the birdsong that fills the air most of the time.

Bird song video, my garden

I’m not great at recognising birdsong, I’m a bit better at bird spotting, but one day late last week I was sitting reading in the sun room when something brown flew past accompanied by a lot of screeching from the ever present sparrows. When I looked out the window I saw that some sort of raptor was sitting on the grass, it was Jack that realised that it had something in its claws. I suppose we now have one fewer sparrow around the place, slightly upsetting but I tell myself that the kestrel (?) has to eat too. This bird was like a much smaller version of a female sparrowhawk, I suppose it may have been a very young one, but I suspect it was a kestrel – whatever – we hadn’t seen one in the garden before.

Hawk , Kestrel

Roses and Poppies

arose 2

I know we’re all supposed to love red roses but yellow roses have always been my favourites. This one is a cracker, it’s a climber and it’s very easy to take cuttings from it. It smells lovely but unfortunately it doesn’t have as many flowers on it as I would like. I’m sure that it would do better in different soil. As you can see the foliage is lovely and fresh looking and it’s always disease free. I believe it’s called Golden Showers!

apoppy 6

I’d like to be able to say that it’s only the morning dew on this poppy but it is rain. Still, every cloud and all that, I think it looks even more lovely with rain drops on it.

arose 1

This rose is a low growing bush one, but I can’t remember its name. I’ll have to look through my plant labels. Anyway, it’s a really lovely rose and there aren’t all that many which are happy in my very light, sandy, free-draining soil.

As you’ll have gathered by now, the rain is back and it looks like it’s going to be a weekend just like the last one. Horrible on Saturday and a bit better on Sunday.

One good thing is that the local library booksale is tomorrow and it’s starting even earlier than usual, so I’m taking myself off to bed now so that I’m bright and bushy tailed for the melee tomorrow.