Summertime - and the living is easy!

Nature certainly is wonderful and it is showing throughout your garden. What a lovely place, love the 'brick-built' it so rural, love it all in fact, such a lovely place just to sit and contemplate and watch nature fly by and enjoy the surrounding areas. Thank you for a lovely tour around the garden, great place to visit :O)

ps, now I cannot get that song out of my head either! I love that piece of music.

Thanks, Barbara! I always appreciate the photos of your garden as well. There is such a lot of joy to be had from a garden, isn't there?

Lovely garden, looks peaceful, I love your favourite area too.

Thank you, Michaella :-)

Our gardening styles are very different Mel but as I wander through yours I see and smell many of my own favourites. Well done on rescuing Eliz. of Glamis. She has given you a great reward. We have had a good summer so far and we were delighted to welcome a pair of bull finches yesterday. I can not remember the last time I saw any of them in the garden but they were making short work of the seeds on the heuchera plants which I had not gotten around to dead heading. Thank you for taking the time to share.

Thank you, Scotsgran. I'm glad you enjoyed the visit. Thank goodness we all have different gardening styles - visiting would be very boring otherwise! Both my neighbours have very different gardens from each other, and mine is different yet again, but we all enjoy gardening and spend hours outside.

Bullfinches are lovely birds - I have never seen any locally, only chaffinches, and that rarely. We are enjoying the young birds at the moment, finding their way around and sampling various bits and pieces to find out what's edible. I watched a young blackbird have quite a tussle with a dropped petunia flower. He nibbled it a few times, but eventually decided it wasn't worth the effort!

You have beautiful garden, Melchi, it has spirit :-) I am surprised how big do primroses grow over there, I have one clump, but it has only around 30 cm and blooms only during May-June. I remember, when I was first time to the UK, in London, I went into the pharmacy (you know, I am woman and was looking for some nice creams) and found many creams and body lotions with primrose oil. Before that I had never heard about this plant.

Thank you, Katarina - I appreciate the compliment. Evening Primrose Oil is used in a lot of preparations here, for skin, and for ladies of a certain age!

As a plant, like poppies, it apparently often appears after the ground has been disturbed. I didn't have any here until after I "restored" the garden after many years of (dare I say it?) - neglect.

I think we share a very similar gardening style, Susanne and I'm not sure I can coin the phrase to describe it! I'm half asleep tonight so will add a full comment tomorrow. For now, suffice to say, I loved that.

Thank you, Tuesdaybear. I don't know what to call it, either. I just sort of go with it, really. The one place that is imposed on, of course, is the patio. The pots and baskets are refreshed each year and provide a lot of colour. Having said that, the herb bed at the side is pretty exuberant (a better word than "untidy", I always think!)

Despite being very laid back about the garden I spend hours out there!

Yes, me too! I love your 'trompe l'oeil' shed area. It looks a lovely place to sit and relax with a good book. Are you reading anything good at the moment?

Your garden is lovely, and seems quite a size. I like that brick shed with all the planting around it. Old buildings have such character :)

I'm glad you like the pretend shed, Tdb! We got the door from a skip some neighbours down the road were busy filling - I think they thought we were bonkers when we asked if we could take it, because it was not in very good condition. Ideal for us, though - I had thought I'd have to buy a new one from B&Q! I can't remember whether the window came first or later. It's just perspex with some black weed control fabric stuck behind it, and some wooden strips across. I wanted the patio to have more of a courtyard feel, and now it appears to have buildings on three sides instead of just two. Gradually, I have made more of a frontage to the trompe l'oeil side, and now it is really well established.

Thanks, Hywel. The garden's only medium-sized, I think. It's 64 x 35 feet. That is quite big, I suppose. Dividing it into three has made it seem bigger, and the main axis is on the diagonal, which also helps (I think it feels bigger than my neighbour's). The brick shed is a great asset. The chap who used to look after our roof (his son does it now) loved our shed. Whenever he was here to do any job, he would do a bit of pointing on the shed! He said it was worth its weight in gold. A couple of tradesemen have told us never to get rid of the toilet! The shed is a nice shape, I think, and the brickwork and the slate roof are attractive. We had a new roof put on it three years ago, as we have listened carefully to all the advice - we intend to keep it :-)

The planting in front of it is my rampant herb bed. I have quite a variety of herbs in it, and I use a lot of them in the kitchen - especially the sage. That started as a small pot plant from Hexham Herbs (sadly gone now) and a few years after I planted it out, it layered itself into a neighbouring pot. So now I have two large bushes, which I love. The ferns at the back are self-seeded from the other side of the garden. They may outgrow their space, but for now, they are staying!

Thanks for the explanation - interesting to read :)

I love to hear the story behind a garden. It helps build up a totally different picture of the gardeners own personal space.

Do you have to protect your sage over Winter? I've never managed to keep any planted in the ground, but would love to.

Thank you, Hywel and Scotsgran. One of the advantages of staying in one place is building up a store of memories, and the garden has had quite an interesting life!

I don't do anything at all with the sage, Tdb, except cut branches off it when it gets way beyond its allotted space. I've had it for years, and it is obviously very happy in that position. It is in a sunny place, in light soil, and the back garden is pretty sheltered. I never feed it, and don't even water it. It is Salvia Officinalis "Tricolor" - just common sage. It started off life in a pot, and the bit which layered is still in a pot, so it is obviously happy being confined. It's as big as the bush in the photo. (It's in a 15" pot). I only realised it was still in a pot when I went out to check just now - I don't water it either!

Apart from new or young plants, those in my garden have to beg for water before I give them any - I water most evenings in the summer, using a can, because I have a lot of annual containers, but I only water the other things if they look as if they really need it. It sounds very mean, but it works for me!

Just noticed your question about reading matter, Tdb. I recently re-read some CP Snow - "The Masters" and "The Affair". I realise Snow is rather an acquired taste. OH introduced me to them when we were first married. They are very much character-driven. I have heard them described as "turgid". Well - I don't think they are, but action-filled they are not. I also caught up on some Anne Cleeves - "Vera" and "Shetland" which I enjoyed, especially the "Vera" books.

Otherwise it's been mainly magazines. The "children" bought OH a Kindle for Father's Day, much to his delight (which amazed me, because he hasn't even got a mobile phone) and he has very kindly said I can put stuff on it if I want - if I ever get my hands on it, that is. He's a great Sapper fan, and obtained the entire Bulldog Drummond canon (he has the books, but they're falling to pieces) for 77p! "Can't argue", as our eldest would say!

Thanks for the sage info. Mine is in two pots and was grown from seed last year. Both made it through the Winter, under the car-port but are still only about 3 or 4 inches tall, but beginning to bush out a little now. When they're big enough, I'll put one out and follow your advice. The other can remain as an insurance policy.

I haven't read any C.P. Snow, but he/she sounds interesting. I enjoy a character-driven novel, if the characters are well drawn. Anne Cleeves is new to me, though I assume she's the author of the TV series of the same names? Something else to try. I just finished "Lady's Maid" by Margaret Forster, which was fascinating and definitely character-driven. Now I'm reading "Half of a yellow sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; very gruesome at times, but beautifully written and thought-provoking. I'm also working my way through a literary quiz book entitled, "Sonnets, Bonnets and Bennetts", which I picked up for £1 in a charity shop; very entertaining and likely to compel me to buy even more books!!

Enjoy!

Charles Percy Snow was a chemist as well as a novelist. He believed that the split between arts and sciences ("The Two Cultures") was a problem that caused all sorts of difficulties. His major literary work was the "Strangers and Brothers" sequence. It is all about the life of Lewis Eliot, who is a Cambridge graduate who becomes a lawyer and who works in high-profile business as well as in the university. It covers all sorts of things, including the development of the nuclear bomb and politics (he coined the phrase "corridors of power") One of the interesting things I find about it is the way different characters interact and reappear at different points of his life. When I was younger, I though that was contrived. I now realise that - in fact - it is very true to life!

I'm even more hooked now! Will definitely be delving into C.P. Snow.

I shall be interested to hear what you think of him. I don't think he's much read these days. He's not very good at writing about women - I don't think he knew very many! He married late in life. When I started reading his books, I began with "The Masters", which is pretty much self-contained, but if you prefer, you can start at the beginning, which is "Time of Hope". They are quite unusual, in that some of the books overlap chronologically, but deal with different aspects of Eliot's life.

Wait until you've got a bit of time and patience - I think you either love them or hate them!

This is my favourite kind of blog...a tour! I so enjoyed it Melchi, and you reminded me of just how much I prefer an old house to newer...so much character! Fancy you still having your 'Gardener's Convenience' ..very useful when you're in a hurry and have muddy shoes! ;)

Thanks, Karen - I'm glad you enjoyed it. I too love seeing the whole garden. I am happy to show mine, warts and all, because that - to my mind - is what gardening is all about. It's always a work in progress, and there's always an improvement waiting to happen! Which is what makes it such fun!

Very true!