budleas and some wildlife

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finished off my rose bed path today, sort of anyway, still needs tidying.

also planted 3 budleas today, which i brought with me when my sister and i drove over from holland last autumn.
i had lots of odd cuttings, given by friends in a bucket in my little campervan and at night i had to put the bucket with ‘weeds’ outside or i wouldnt have enough space for us, me and the dog! we went through and hung around in the ardennes in belgium and travelled slowly home through france, best way to travel.
so i was more than surprised when most of them survived those few weeks, and no mollycoddling either.
i planted the lot in a bit of spare garden, have enough of that! and forgot about them for the winter.
no idea what budleas they are, will see when , if they flower
planted them on the north cliff, hoping to hold some of the soil together
will put some piccies in this week.

divided lots of stachys, planted some more on the cliffs, hoping they will cover and hold onto soil

planted out one of my Roxane rose cuttings, had good roots.

checked on the hedge and pleasantly surprised we lost none of the 400 odd and still fairly young plants, most of them flowering, blackthorns, cherries, viburnums and nearly honeysuckle tartaris, and showing leaves.
oaks still dormant, as to be expected, elms coming on, even the one i thought had died, shooting out at side.
dogwood just about beginning to show leaf buds
figs all have big buds, some opening and some figs forming at ends
cognassier, wild japonnica? beginning to flower.
limes all in leaf and walnuts just beginning to bud, even the one transplanted this winter to middle of top lawn has survived! they do not like being moved! so feel very happy

saw first swallows on walk around toplake yesterday,
red kites have mostly gone but plenty of black kites now, and calling their fantastic song, love it

cranes all gone, saw last groups passing over about 2 weeks ago.

last week walked around the Hournee fields and found many early spider orchids, so nice to see them coming back, lots more diff ones to come

saw first swallowtails today in the garden.

not much gardening to be done tomorow, we are getting electric shutters installed on our upstairs salon windows, cannt reach most of them to have the normal push open shutters here as most windows up there dont open
they are large windows and we need more shade in the room so they will have to put up lots of scaffolding and no doubt will damage much of my precious vegetation, damage limitations mostly for the next few days methinks!

• 20 Mar, 2011
• 2 likes

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