I mowed my lawn for the first time this year and while I was out there, noticed how garden plants are waking up and those that should have perished, are hanging on in. For example, the pelargoniums that I left to their fate in a tub, have overwintered and show signs of new leaves. If we can just continue with this mild weather right up to summer, they'll thrive. Today the weather has been sunny, not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain to damp my spirits, and the temperature has reached the 20s in the sunshine. It's always a mistake, for me anyway, to get carried away on days like this when I haven't done any gardening since the previous autumn. Even so, I took advantage of digging up poor old Zephirine Drouhin and replacing her with the loganberry that I had in a tub. It seems cruel, doesn't it? It's such a pretty rose, quite thornless, but so prone to disease. I barely had a single rose from it last summer.
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| Zephirine Drouhin |
Zephirine didn't look as if it would ever be much of a rose, it looked sickly. The loganberry, on the other hand, deserved much better treatment from me. It used to be planted in that self same spot in the 90 degree angle between two fence panels, until I dug it out and stuffed it in a pot. I am hopeful that it will provide some fruit this year, and not sulk or be resentful. Plants can be so temperamental if you don't treat them well - a bit like people. It wasn't happen in the tub last year so I'm trying to do it a favour here.
Gardening is often, if not always, a case of moving things around until they are happy although some types of plants resent being moved at all.
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| Loganberry - June 2012 |
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| Loganberry - April 2012 |