Gardening
Potting up one of the Mammillaria cacti of my balcony terrace in Marseille. A lot of root below the ground; the roots bind hard on the terracotta.
Flowering is over for this year for the old Wisteria in my West London patio garden. Now time for trimming to protect the boiler chimney from being strangled by Wisteria tendrils. Tree fern and apple trees doing fine, and some flowers on my citrus trees growing in pots.
Thinning out Terry’s Greengage tree in his garden in Preston Park, Brighton. We’ve been looking after this tree for many years now and have found that pruning is best done in the spring when the sap is moving, rather than just after the fruit has been harvested This catches up with storm damage and reshapes the tree to keep it low and flat. It’s a shame to loose the buds and even blossom but the tree has a tendency to over-fruit then dieback the next year. And anyhow the fruit would be out of reach of harvesting.
Pulling my boots on I was pounced on by one of the colourful Keswick beggars. You don’t need to be a a hen pheasant to be impressed by his colours. Tame as the neighbours hand-feed a number of them.
Warmer weather and no shortage of rain mean the garden growth season is well under way. Plenty of trimming and thinning to be done. But it’s not all cutting, I uncovered a Holly sapling of about 25 cm height, dug it out successfully with about the same depth of root. Its new home is a gap in a hedge to the road. Watered in with some of its previous soil and rain water from the butt.
My garden Camellia in full flower, out and proud in the spring sunshine under Latrigg (368 m.) in the Lake District.
