the real story

Yesterday I went out between rain storms and took some ever so lovely photos of what is in bloom now.  I’ll put a few of them at the end of this entry.  But here is the real story of our garden, a tale of January laziness that has resulted in the latest start ever on my own personal gardening tasks:

roadside narcissi

Yes, I planted a collection of narcissi along the gravel road (an undeveloped public street) which serves us and one other house, but without cutting back the perennials and ferns and general mess, they hardly show in a photograph.  In years past, when I was all sentimental about throwing away plants, I tucked in starts of the horrid orange montbretia all along here and now am filled with regret each year as I try to eliminate them.

Harry and clematis

Harry alone

I have two large matching contorted filberts known as Harry Lauder‘s Walking Stick. One (left) is swamped by traveler’s joy clematis which I usually have well cut back by now.  The other (right) is free and able to show off its twistiness and spring catkins.

lower pond

lobelia tupa?

I have cut nothing back by the lower seasonal stream and little pond or the bed to the north of it.  And I am sadly wondering if my Lobelia tupa (right), which was spectacular last year, will come back.

deer damage

arch enemy

(left) The deer have found a way to break in through the fence and have chowed down on an evergreen shrub which a friend gave me because deer were eating it in her garden AND on ‘Radway Sunrise’, my rather special rose from Cistus Nursery. They walk to this furthest corner from wherever they break in.  Meanwhile (right) I have let the horrid yellow archangel get rampant…Oh woe betide the day I planted it.

Phormium

garden seat

The slimy old Phormium (once prized for its smokier than usual colour) still lurks in the garden despite my having gone off them and removed them from the gardens of others; meanwhile, is it not time to admit that the old garden seat has gone from a romantic ruin to just looking sad?  (But the golden Acanthus makes me happy.)

muddy pond

It has been three years since I mucked out the bottom of the year-round spring-fed pond, and it is almost nightly encircled by raccoons hoping to get at the fish; the shallower it gets, the easier it will be for the fish to be snagged.

azara dead?

Another bit of tragedy: My Azara lanceolata right across the patio from our front door looked so beautiful for the last several years in spring, and was evergreen…..This year (left) it looks like a no-hoper, probably from last winter’s hard and early freeze.

Azara lanceolata at its best

And yet, walking around the garden, I can find so much glee in what looks great and can avoid photographing the even more unsightly areas (piles of white buckets, unsorted pots and stakes). By selectively choosing what is wonderful, I can put a an album on Facebook of over twenty photos taken that same day that make my garden look like a thing of late winter beauty.

Hellebore

Ribes brocklebankii blooms for first time

Narcissi by front gate

Corylopsis flowers

Stachyurus praecox