Solstice

I took this photo yesterday but the light in the sky was so lovely, it represents the season rather better than the rain and gloom today. We should have had a special dinner to celebrate the Solstice but it was one of those 'see what's in the fridge and cook it' days. So we had green …

Lacemakers

The tomatoes are ripening very slowly.  I'm still holding out for some red ones before it gets too cold for them outside. Blight has been a real issue this year and the green ones that I harvested last week are not really ripening inside. So they have all been turned into 'Autumn chutney': basically green …

Contrast

Just as the Scottish schools went back last week, the weather turned warm and sunny. Then Friday and Saturday were cold and wet, so an assistant gardener went camping with his friends. Today is hot and sunny.  Such is a Scottish summer: unfair, but today was a good opportunity to get the resulting wet sleeping bags …

Lazy Saturday

There's nothing better than going away for a couple of days and coming home to discover it's still the weekend. But a lazy one so far: Bella is making the most of the sunshine, so I brought all my baby tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and cucumbers out to join her in the sun: They seem to …

More spring purples

.. and reds and yellows: Yesterday I got on with the big task of pricking out seedlings. I seem to have an awful lot of purple sprouting broccoli and rainbow chard. So that's next year's multicoloured spring sorted. I also sowed all my runner bean seeds in paper tubes, ready to be planted out once …

More mud and some spring flowers

Saturday morning - time to finally get some of that spring stuff going - and what is it doing out there? Sleeting heavily on the swamp, turning everything into mud.  Yesterday we had lovely frost   But we also had roofers attempting to mend an awkward leak- so there was scaffolding all round the rhubarb.   …

On mud and not gardening

It's been another no gardening weekend - away all day on Saturday and on Sunday the weather was foul foul foul - cold, wet, windy.  I've been reading everyone else's blogs and you all seem to be sowing and planning and digging and doing stuff while nothing much at all is happening here. So I …

Goodbye to 2015

Here's a review of my garden year January In which we said goodbye to our beautiful Robbie, aged 15, and enjoyed the first snowdrops February When I visited Shetland and was impressed by a bath garden, I sowed some broad beans under a cloche, I spotted some self-seeded lavender coming up through paving stones and …

In the swamp

The garden is a swamp today.  It has rained solidly for several days and there is little to inspire out there. Everything is inches deep in water, the water barrels are overflowing, the cat would like some welly boots to get across the garden. So today I've had an indoors sort of day, getting on …

Over the wall

I've always wanted an allotment. Here in Edinburgh there are long waiting lists for the local authority allotments - people say you should put your children's names down on the waiting list when they are born and there might be a chance that their grandchildren will get to the top.  Well I've been on the …