Autumn tidying

Today was a tidying up in the garden sort of day. I cleared all the tomato plants from the raised beds . The tomatoes have been pretty good this year but some had succumbed to blight. The green ones should ripen indoors and I've left a few in the seed house as well These are …

Nesting bees

It was one of those days when you are sitting having your lunch, pondering the nature of utility and beauty and realising that your garden is not quite passing the William Morris test: 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful' - for more see here …

Paradise reclaimed

This blog takes its name from Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi. My front garden is a reclaimed car park where previous residents parked their cars in front of the house. For more on this story, see my about page. Instead of parking cars, I grow plants and welcome the wildlife. Today I did a …

London flowers

I've been away again and not gardening or blogging as much as I should. I was in London for a family event but I sought out some floweriness even in the big city.  As part of #30DaysWild I tried to find some wildness in the city parks and found these glorious (if not actually wild) …

Thirty days wild

It's June, so it's time for #30DaysWild - an annual event run by the Wildlife Trusts  to encourage people to get outside and enjoy nature. I try to appreciate nature every day, not just in June, but the 30 Days Wild event makes me try that little bit harder. My busy city life doesn't usually allow …

Renewal

I don't know about you but when I go out to spend a day in the garden, things never go quite according to plan. I did make a list, mostly concerning seed sowing, but, once I got outside, my mind turned to other things. First of all, it's been the most glorious day - cold …

Slowing down

There's a heatwave in Scotland, too much going on in the day job, garden and allotment in full vegetable production. They don't combine well with putting your left arm out of action with a (thankfully) minor injury. So I've had to slow down. The grass will stay long, the weeds will invade, the shrubs will …

Frog and bee paradise

This weekend has been all about the frogs and the bees.  We've always had frogs in the garden, even before we built the pond and we were delighted when they moved into the water.  We don't see them very often as they are, rightly a little shy, what with cats prowling about.  This weekend though …

Bees and ivy flowers

I've not done much gardening this weekend, but yesterday I was out and about, looking for inspiration from the natural world to cheer me on my way.  I passed a little garden with huge pink sedum flowers: (Photo of sedum from a previous occasion) - those should be covered in bees, I thought but there …

Autumn joys

I've been away at the weekend, visiting my mother.  We went to the wildlife reserve at Caerlaverock, in search of migrating geese.  The geese migrate to Svalbard in the summer and come back to Scotland in the winter.  We were a little too early, though I did see my first skein of geese in the …