Never had help in the garden before it’s amazing jobs are getting done making such a difference to garden and me I am much more relaxed but still working when I can fit some in.

Daughters visit produced this new arrangement, getting them off the ground and scattered about makes the mini gardens easier to tend and look at. My OH said I thought you were going to have less pots this year!!

In the foreground is ‘Bloody Butcher” a heritage variety. I was given two plants and grew one in the greenhouse and one outdoors the greenhouse one has been the best. It produces all different sized fruits and these doubles were unusual, will grow this one again that’s for sure.

A redundant Hen Broody box Hubby transformed into a Hedgehog nesting box. the bggest Hedgehog we have around is obviously getting ready to hibernate the box is 13″ high and the straw etc is now piled to the top, do you think it will pull up the ramp when done. I think I feel like a thief when I very carefully and quietly lift the lid to view the progress.

Several weeks have been like this. The Brown bin only emptied once a fortnight can’t cope. Everything that can be filled is but my Garden magician has got on top of it. Now only the Pond area to reclaim then it is just general maintenance whoopee.

Why is it whenever I get my camera out the wind starts to blow and I dash in and out of the house checking the results and finding they are just not in focus! So this week they are what they are and if you drop in and are a bit disapointed then take yourself of to The Propagator at http://www.thepropagator.wordpress.com where there are some wonderful contributions of flowers and flora .

It has no name but should I think be called ‘Sugar Pink’ (beginning of a rhyming poem there)

You can see how much exercise I have not done on my turbo trainer. OH says it’s a trellis for the Hypericum. A self heal is creeping around it’s wheel to add to the I can’t move it!!, I shan’t be getting on it either as it all looks rather pretty and who would want to disturb it anyway.

Had two plants but one has disappeared, I expect I shall discover it sulking away under some more rampant growers in autumn, as you can see in picture I can’t get in this border to look for it, maybe a flower will suddenly pop up I live in hopes.

I do love them, especially as they are all self seeded and come from one apricot coloured plant, any variation is cause for excitement.

So named because it was given as a cutting by my husbands Aunt Jean, this year I decided to take some cuttings of it as you can never tell what may happen, I would hate to lose it having nurtured it for 11 years and only in the last two has it decided it will oblige me and reach the top of the arch.

Bit of cheating on the final picture, this caught my eye at Rosemoor, thought I would have to have it in my garden until I got up close and inhaled, my goodness what a pong put me off for life.

Just some photos from the last two weeks, the inevitable empty calendar says a lot as hubby is still shielding so I am not resuming normal activities.

Much as I would like to see my dentist she won’t see me, not unless I am in pain and of course I am not, so a loss of a crown is just bad timing.

A day out to visit my daughter was a great excursion, nice to take time to wander around her garden and enjoy a lunch in same.

I enjoyed a walk from home out and around fields and lanes with three friends, it really felt pretty to have all the varied conversation so long since we could do that.

In six days time I will be visiting my hairdresser a real cause for celebration.

I tripped and fell in the garden and not a soft landing but fortunately nothing broken, just bruised, so on light duties for a couple of days only I hope. When will I learn to pick my foot up as I turn!! I wonder, it’s either that or take out all the paving slabs by greenhouse and elsewhere!!!

Pelargonium Apple blossom rosebud last so long in a vase it is the one flower I feel no qualms about cutting as I am not depriving any little creatures, it grows in my porch and has little to offer wee beasties.

I think newly emerged, not sure which one it is as very pale and not in my book. Always a treat to see something like this.

Along one field there were hundreds of thistles, another was a sea of cow parsley but the wind was blowing up on the top so this was my best offering.

So fortunate to have this on our doorstep, rural living might have a few downsides but this year it really is the best place to be for me.

Sadly not in my garden but when I finish writing this I shall go look for some seed, never bored when you garden or love photography.

This is her greeting, sopping wet but must have a toe rub first.

Just a very fast quick six on Saturday and then away to the propagators blog

to see what’s happening over there.

Taken at station where I do a bit of this and that, love the shape.

Looking very innocent!!

As it fades it changes from white to this lovely shade of pink

Well Mr Propagator it is in the garden have I got away with it or should it be the chair?

Poppy should be named “Hilarious”

Another week flown by, I think all you folks reading this must think and where does it go? All I know is it has gone but today I have time to put up my SOS not without any difficulty. Yesterday I needed one more photos but when the Monsoon arrived I was trapped in the greenhouse and little chance of getting any plant to stand still long enough for a photograph. So all I could do when there was a slowing down of the wave after wave of wonderful ‘proper’ rain was grab a quick shot of the pond now beautifully brim full. So when you have duly perused my efforts drop over to the have a gander at our hosts blog at

Where you will find some wonderful contributions from his many followers.

These are spreading year on year and filling me with joy everytime I walk past the greenhouse, I have no doubt I will see the Humming Bird Hawk Moth soon.

My daughter said it look like silk

The Japanese blood grass having being rescued from the ground where it was not at all happy, is now thriving in it’s new home. It likes a good drink but I never stand it in water rightly or wrongly. It doesn’t seem to enjoy these weather variations we keep having or maybe it is my soil, so I think I will overwinter it in a cold frame this year.

I love everything about this plant even though it raises my gardening anxiety when all the other roses around have leaves, this one looks like it has died. Luckily I bought my daughter one as well and as she is a better rose grower than me she always reminds me, it always comes late, I may remember that next year!

I think this picture is more about this ‘Small Tortoishell’ butterfly than the perenial wallflower that it is feeding on. have you noticed how most pictures are of pink flowers well the next one isn’t.

Everything that has been living in just the mud must be breathing a sigh of relief, as I am having full rain barrels once again, wonderful to see the garden being watered properly and seeing everything jump up for joy, it’s certainly what the veg patch has been waiting for.

I have been struggling to achieve decent pictures as my garden seems to have a perpetual wind blowing through it, which just encourages the ground to dry out even more. Despite years of composting it still has fissures appearing all over the place, two very light showers over two days has not even touched it so I am having to selectively water plants, as I do not want to run out of rain water in the barrels.

Still coping with this confinement and just hoping that there will be a shift soon in what we can do soon, hubby and I started this two weeks before lock down in line with government advise, so it is now beginning to feel like a long time, exciting news for us is that we will get to drive into Exeter for him to have a routine 6 monthly scan, so at least he will have the drive there and back!

I have yet to try this in rhubarb crumble it tends to die down whilst my back is turned!

Well I know which name I prefer!

I have some very different self sown seedlings this year only ever had the usual dark pink in the garden.

Now I am off to have a look at The Propagators blog and see what he and his contributors to the famous SOS have on today.

Wonderful freedom to meet with my daughter the first time since the day before lock down began Being able to drive to the destination felt like proper freedom and to enjoy the great outdoors in her company fantastic.

Being a total meanie I am not going to share the whereabouts of at 9.30 a.m. a very empty car park, when others were already full, although some of you may guess work out where it is from the pictures (one for you Iris) still only a total of 5 cars when we returned from the walk some hours later.

We maintained social distancing and anyone we did pass did the same, we could see some groups of in the distance who were not doing the same but we could easily avoid them. Louis being on a long lead is a bonus meant he and I could at least say a proper hello, so long as I don’t touch the harness I am told.

The pictures are self explanatory and all taken with an iPhone SE 2020 my Lockdown present from my lovely OH. Chairs at requisite distance and my own flask it’s a strange world right now.

Although I am Shielding my husband, the one thing I do is walk, without that I think I might have gone a little bit mad by now. Not a lover of tarmac walking, for the moment I am grateful for a combination of that, plus fields tracks and green lanes, which are not tarmac. I often think of people who do not have this and are stuck in apartments in hot cities.

Not a lover of cows near entrances to fields I was able to bye pass them by walking on the tarmac roads which were for once a blessing, Oh to be braver, country I am but not 100%!! On the moor it’s fine I can do a detour round them without adding on mileage, I did once completely on my own, with just a small dog have to pluck up all my courage and walk past a Bull , he was laid down and too tired to be bothered by me, I told myself he must be docile if he is allowed out on the moor to fraternise and he was.

In my area I am discovering little villages that normally I would only see the sign for when passing in the car, as is the case in Devon there is often no where to park on tiny single track lanes so I don’t venture in to them. Yesterdays walk made me feel as if I was on holiday discovering pastures new.

So I hope that for those of you who do not have access to green space or live to far away to walk to one that you enjoy my 5 mile stroll around and about.

Will have to ignore the telephone cables, getting too hot to go for another angle!

You may realise if you follow my photos that I have a bit of a thing for quaint front doors!

I had a letter in my pocket that I never had time to post in Copplestone ,et voila parfait, yes postman still collects I hope!!

Unable to stop taking photographs with this amazing blue sky increasing the loveliness of it all.

I can see this SOS is going to be slightly different, the garden is so dry that cracks are appearing and nothing is taking off as it would usually in spring. So during the week I resorted to watering and did as much as I could manage in one go. I could not get the weeds that are growing in awkward places so planned to leave them, happily or unhappily it rained on and off all day yesterday and now I have no excuse! other than adopting a live and let live attitude.

It is a bit bizarre that my purse which usually lives in my handbag, now has taken up permanent residence next to the computer but hooray for online shopping. I know this has nothing to do with gardening but I am sure you will find a bucketful of the more serious stuff over on The Propagators blog. Read on to see my eclectic SOS of whats happening in my garden.

See what I mean about weeds!

Not a weed but a flower and not in the wrong place, it is allowed to ramp itself up to it’s full glory in the chicken garden.

No idea what this solitary little beauty is called and only the one has appeared, picture cheating …again.. as I took it a good 10 days ago when there was an early morning dew.

Not really I made it up they just looked like they were standing guard over the Muscarii

I have yet to find the time to get back on this, in fact I am not doing a daily walk either. I am very guilty of indulging myself and gardening every day. The bed behind is where an old split sleeper shed was taken down, which opened up the views to adjacent fields of sheep. Beyond the back edge is the railway line. The shells were stuck to lengths of wood with something that used to look remarkably like beach sand, sadly it has not stood up to our weather, French galvanized tubs that I used to hunt out at the Brocante markets, they are a great home to various sedums that usually enjoy the neglect but this year seem to be sulking and saying un peu d’eau s’il vous plait, so I did as they requested, hope they pick up.

I only have a few of this lovely dark tulip surviving, so last year moved them away from the chicken garden, it looks like they are happy with the move.

My daughter and I did this walk on the 22nd March. We arrived in separate cars and kept our self distancing measures in place through out the walk, as did everyone else out on the moor, which oddly enough seemed to consist of Father son and Mother daughter combo’s. Little did we know that this would be our final walk for some time to come.

My daughters NHS service has closed for the duration and she and her team have been redeployed into the firing line so to speak. So this Blog is especially for her to hold onto that memory and wish her luck in the new job.

My other half has lung health problems, so we are in for the long haul of self isolating/sheilding.

He says it is what it is and is much more at ease with it than I am whereas I fluctuate between wanting walkies on the moor, feeling tearful about the whole world and anxious at times for those I care about.

It was a perfect walking day and certainly one to be treasured until we are free to roam again.

A six and a half mile walk which if someone had got their way and stayed on the metal road would have been 9+ !!

So relieved you sometimes give in to your mother, that was the longest walk I had done in a while.