A Cycle of Gardening Misdemeanors

I had a wonderful weekend just passed. Most of the time was spent avoiding the gym and playing in the garden. It's quite difficult tending to someone else's garden, not quite knowing what has been planted where and whether one pull too many will destroy an entire eco-system. A few months ago I pulled up a heap of silver ground creeper that had started to colonize most of the back garden to realise shortly afterwards that it kept down a far more deadly creeping weed which has now killed off everything in its path. I've tried to reset the balance again by pulling up the offending plant so we'll see what happens next.

Setting myself a budget of £30.00, I headed off on Sunday to the local nursery to get some low-cost plants that we could also take with us when we leave here in the Autumn. Luckily we have heaps of terracota pots left over from previous gardening failures so I didn't have to spend money containing what I had bought and Jo had some spare tiles lying around that could be made into steps on the empty muddy slope at the front.

Just 14p over budget, I was able to buy 5 different herbs (Basil, Dill, Chives, hot and spicy Taragon, Mint), a Limonium plant (reminds me of my trip to Arizona), an unknown flowering succulent (I may regret that one), a Strawberry Parfait Dianthus, four Scarlet Geraniums, six assorted Nicotina plants and a Penstemon Pensham called "Avon Belle". Oh and I also got a new hanging basket to replace Jo's that had weathered and disintegrated and some compost. It occurred to me afterwards that apart from the Penstemon, most of my choices represent a smorgersboard of delight for the slugs and snails in the garden and with the Nicontina plants they get a choice of smokes afterwards too. The cycle of empty terracota pots and gardening misdemeanors continues...

In the meantime, the Reticule website has been a fantastic resource for identifying the wild flowers growing on the garden. I still don't know what this one below is called though.