My Garden is Exploding Into Colour so Fast I can Hardly Keep Up!

We are having amazingly un-Wetlandish sunny weather, and what's more, we've been having this for days now! What joy, what absolute joy!

Unfortunately I am extremely busy at work, so I cannot spend as much time gardening as I would like. But I try to be as often outside as I can manage. And my garden rewards me with colour and leaves unfolding and the occasional surprise.

This is the wildest part of our garden. We've let the Nettle (unprickly) run riot. It covers a large part of the border, but the Narcissi peek through. Later on in the season the Aquilegias simply grow high above the nettles, and so do the Digitalis.

And my husband has come up with a neat method to keep the snails from marching up the prune tree in legions. 

It works!

My Ghost Birch isn't in leaf yet, but it is about to. 

The Mahonia is attracting the bees.

It's very obvious our front garden gets a lot less sunshine than the side and back garden. The Tulips are all still green here.

© Wibe Koopman Photography,
all other photos are by myself.

Gina on Viggo

Just to set the record straight!
You have been reading all those stories about me, Haikus even, by my cat Viggo, and I just want to tell you that Viggo is a fabricator of fibs.

Yes, I am an older dog, but I am NOT decrepit nor smelly and I hardly ever fart. Well, only when I have had cheese.

The only truth Viggo has told you is that he isn't allowed in my basket. Too right he isn't!

So let me tell you something about that cat: he snores! There, I've said it.

And you can understand why I keep some distance between us, can't you?

By the way, the chain was an experiment, but I didn't like it. So it was not repeated.

My Master fenced in the entire garden instead. I don't mind that.

Any way. Do NOT believe anything that cat tells you!

What is it You Love about Flowers?

Flowers have fascinated, cheered and comforted me from my earliest memories onward. 
Do you know those little illustrated books called 'The Flower Faeries"? They became quite the rage in the Seventies. I had a couple, but sadly they were lost somewhere in between my 16th and 17th house move.

Will you just look at that wallflower? Isn't it absolutely stunning? It has seeded itself and crossed itself with a yellow one, the original being a red one I brought as seed from Hampton Court Palace (Yes, I admit it, guilty. I nicked the seed. So if there are any Brits reading this: I apologize profoundly.)

The thing is, ever since those little books, I have had a thing about getting right up close and personal with flowers. Can't help myself. I have to stick my nose in. 

The artist portrayed flowers as being Faeries, very sweet. And looking at this Amaryllis I can relate, totally.

This is the original yellow wallflower, by the way.

And no Dutch garden without some red tulips, obviously. Mine are just coming into colour.

So, I wonder. What is it you love about flowers?

Glorious, Glorious Gardening Weather!

Today was the third day in a row that the sun was shining, the temperatures were above 17 degrees and thus I have been enjoying my freshly blossoming garden 100%!

After years of trying to get a Camelia to settle in our difficult soil, we finally have one that seems to enjoy staying with us. Last year it had three  smallish blooms, and just look at it now!

And our Japanese maple has produced tiny clusters of blossoms, just before the leaves are about to unfold. Isn't it gorgeous?

Unfortunately I will have to work a long day tomorrow, but perhaps the sun will be gracious and allow me some time after seven, to sit next to the pond on my make-shift seat on the compost heap and enjoy its last rays.

I'm wishing you a super gardening weekend, where ever you are.

Empty Nest Syndrome

Have always laughed this off. ENS. What nonsense! When your children are children no longer and fly the coop, you simply start doing 'fun things' again yourself. ENS is a silly 'oh look at poor old me' attention grabber for menopausal  women.

Or is it?
There I was, Saturday evening. Son was playing a tennis game; ETR not before midnight. Daughter was with her lover; ETR not before Sunday afternoon (when I was expected to pick her up from the next island over - did I mention we Wetlanders live on islands?). Husband was having a middle-aged snooze above his accounts.
And there I was. Alone (well, with Gina and Viggo, but they didn't say much) in a suddenly deadly quiet room. Thinking that this ENS lark wasn't as ridiculous as I'd thought.
So I shook myself, lit some cosy candles, put on some cheerful music, poured myself a whiskey (I drink Jameson these days) and despaired.

Usually I can entertain myself (and aforementioned cat and dog) by practicing my singing, but this would mean waking up my husband, so this was a definite no-no. Also, it meant practicing my guitar was out of the question, especially as these days I try to play slide. (Helped by a wizard on YouTube called Matt Smith).

So. What to do? The only thing I could do. Write.
I wrote a Haiku.

Empty silent room

both kids in pursuit of love

empty nest syndrome

It didn't help.

Help! I believe this ENS is here to stay...

Photograph by Wibe Koopman Photography

Gardening Season in the Wetlands Officially Opened!

Suddenly it is a done deal: temperatures above 10 degrees C and dry weather.
In The Wetlands this means a quickening of the gardener's blood! Like the sap stream in a tree, our own sap stream cannot be stopped and we wake up with pleasant anticipation and tingling fingers. Out of bed and into the garden we go!

We have plans. But then, we always have plans. Every year for the last 21 years we have changed things in the layout and planting of our suburban garden of 25 x 16 meters, North-East facing mostly, and in the front West facing.

Some years we have put a lot of money and effort in something large, for example a greenhouse, or the pond, and other years we simply change the planting of the borders around because it turned out not to work in the way we thought it would.

Gardening in the Wetlands, on heavy clay (great for potatoes, not so great for the Roses I adore) is challenging to say the least. And we face an even greater challenge (not counting the North-Easterly winds which howl across our plot in March and April), for the largest part of our garden has, as the locals call it, "hunger soil". In other words, it is poor soil.

It took some years before we sussed out that this soil made our plants struggle (we were absolute beginners with this garden), but after that we have started mulching, mulching and mulching.

Also, after April the prevailing wind is Westerly, bringing with it the sea salt from the North Sea which is only 13 kilometers away. And there usually is a lot of it, wind, even in high Summer.

This is our third Camelia, the first two died. But this, finally, is in the right spot, sheltered from the wind by the fence on one side and a hedge on the other.

Today we have emptied the planters on the balcony, and have planted them with purple, pink and orange pansies and the white creeper from the photo above. And we have tried to get some order in the rest of the garden, and I've been planting out seedlings of the Digitalis which I love.

They seed themselves in between our cobbles, and I painstakingly uproot them and plant them out again in the borders.

This year we have decided to uproot some shrubs next to the pond and move the compost heap (also next to the pond), as the best place to catch the late evening sun next to the pond is...on the compost heap. We will ask our son in law and both kids to help us, and hopefully we will be able to do all this in one day. It also means uprooting the box hedge, and resurfacing with pebbles. But when it is finished, we'll have a wonderful place to put some chairs and watch the fish and frogs in the pond.

Viggo loves gardening as well. He has 'helped' me today by digging up my Digitalis seedlings as fast as I could plant them. I had to resort to locking him up inside.

Viggo on Frogs.

As it is Caturday, I've asked Viggo to explain his fascination with our pond frogs.

Hi fans, Viggo here.

Frogs. Right. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

When I arrived in my house, as a young innocent but feisty lad of approximately 2 months, one of my first exciting experiences was falling into the pond. 

The fish fascinated me, and I thought I could walk on water. The fact that I could not  surprised me, to put it mildly, but that pond has been one of my most treasured spots to visit ever since. 
What attracts me to it, is that is it never dull. There are always fish to watch, and damsel flies, and butterflies, and frogs and toads. And I have this special stone that juts out over the water, so I can drink.

There are many frogs and toads in my garden, and it pleases me to scare them a bit, so that they try to make a run for the pond. They look so silly when they try to jump the box hedge and end up waving their legs about when they are stuck there. I sometimes drag them out ever so carefully, only for them to jump straight back into it. This has given me the conviction that especially the toads are not very intelligent. They can't even jump.
And did you know that they can scream your ears off? Not a pleasant sound at all. I much prefer the song of the mice. They'll sing for their females, very romantic.

Which brings me to the following. The frogs have left. Only yesterday evening it was, they were out there, all 54 of them, frolicking in the pond in the late sunshine and making a hell of a noise doing it.

And when I got up this morning (after spending the night in the laundry basket) and visited the pond....Gone. All of them. Disappeared.

It was such a sad, lonely sight it almost put me off my breakfast. I tested the spawn, just to make absolutely sure, but no...no frogs surfacing to defend their territory.

Now I know from experience that those hoppers are not really gone as in gone forever. They have simply wandered off. And they will revisit the pond from time to time, to see if those tadpoles are doing well. My woman says that J.R.R. Tolkien has written moving words on the subject. Although I'm not quite sure that he was talking about frogs. Still, he could have been.