garden in Fife | Pining for the West

I took the photos below earlier this month in my garden, just at the time whem we were all thinking – what has happened to ‘flaming June?’

But it just kept getting wetter and I had to rush out whenever things dried up a wee bit. Then came days of high winds and everything flattened, especially the lupins.

They continue to fight back though and new spikes are coming through.

It looks like we will have a bumper crop of raspberries and Tayberries this year, if all the rain we’re getting doesn’t bring the dreaded botrytis fungus. The pears which were growing got blackened in a May frost – such is life, I can’t see any pears on the tree now.

If you click on these photos it’ll take you over to Flickr and you can click on them again to zoom in to see the details better.

Since I took these photos I’ve been out cutting back and dead heading and more roses are coming out.

We’ve been promised decent weather over the next few days, although wouldn’t you know it – it’ll be much better over in my beloved west of Scotland where it’s supposed to reach 25 Celsius.

Apparently that’s 77 Fahrenheit, I’m just glad that I’m not with my brother in Holland at the moment because it’s going to be seriously hot there. Global overheating is definitely in mainland Europe.

After suffering a winter which was about seven months long featuring several large dumps of snow, it seemed like we were never going to get to Spring, but when we got a few good days of weather everything began to come to life again, well almost everything, there were a few fatalities.

The result was that everything seemed to be flowering at once, as soon as the snowdrops stopped flowering the tulips began, and normally there would be about four months in between those varieties being in bloom. So below are a few photos that I took of my garden over the last week or so.

I’ve been amazed that the harsh winter doesn’t seem to have been a problem for the insect life. I think I’ve already seen more butterflies and bees than I saw all of last summer. These red admirals (I think that’s what they are anyway) have been enjoying the heather in my garden.

The ornamental cherry below is a recent purchase so I can’t claim any of the kudos for its lovely flowers, it’s called Brilliant and is a slow growing one. I’ve put some seeds in the bare ground in the photo, eventually I hope that all of the soil will be covered with plants, apart from anything else that should stop so many weed seeds from germinating!