Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

Above are some photos taken at the beginning of last summer of my garden. I hope to take some more photos later this summer to show all the differences that have happened to it in a year. Sorry about one of the photos being shown twice, but it has taken me ages to upload them from a zipped file, which is what the photos I scanned into the computer ended up in. It is a slow process learning all the techniques to run this blog.

The first photo shows the alley that runs down the side on my sandstone barn and the side of the house next door, this leads to the garden proper. I like to fill this with planted pots, interesting stones, mossy boulders and my chinese warrior statue and buddha head. I hope to add some varying height to the alley this year and extend it backwards past the side of my kitchen wall to my side gate.

The next three photos show the main part of my small garden, the sandstone wall is part of my barn and the whitewashed wall is an old outbuilding. One of the photos was taken by standing on the end wall of the garden looking down into it. Behind my garden is a large square of common ground which is called in this area 'common drying land' it is for the use of our line of six houses and washing lines etc can be put up there. It is quite overgrown and is a haven for birds such as goldfinches, blue tits, wood pigeons etc. Lots of buttercups, daisies, dandelions and other wild flowers grow there too, as well as masses of comfrey which I am going to harvest to make a plant feed. I have already made major changes this year to the view of the garden in these photos.

The final photo is of my shady spot which is right outside my kitchen door, across from which is the old sandstone barn, last year I grew mainly hostas in this area, but it can also be pleasant on a really hot day to put a chair here to sit because it is a cool shady area, the rest of my garden gets the sun all day in summer. I hope to add more to this area this year. Note my cat, Pixie, making a guest appearance by coming out the barn.

I am going to finish off writing for now as the sun has just come out, I have done my housework for the day and I want to go into the garden to use the table there as I have a few houseplants that urgently need repotting because of their surge of growth this spring.