Tiny saw another Lucy Bee grounded on the patio. This happened before, I think I only posted it on my deviant art. This time I knew what the problem was, so I got B to help me tip her into a tub, and we took her inside to warm up. We’ve had hot weather for a few days, followed by cooler overcast days. So we kept her in the kitchen in the tub with some honey, and she kept buzzing, only one of the grown ups decided that bees belong outdoors and threw the tub out. Tiny said literally threw, but I don’t think so.

So we smuggled her back inside and hid her on the attic stairs. But when we checked a few hours later, she wasn’t buzzing anymore. And we held the tub up to the light and she wasn’t moving either. We thought she might have died. We decided the best thing was to take her back out and if she was dead, we could give her a burial. We took the tub out, and B had a peek and she was still moving a little, so I got The Chipmunk to tip her out near the straw pile. And she started walking away.

The next morning, I had a look near the straw pile, but I couldn’t see any sign of her. When B got back from school, he went out in the garden and found two more bees, and he’d put them in the same tub we’d put Lucy. One might have been Lucy, I don’t know.

Why can’t I ever get sweetpeas to germinate? I think I only ever germinated one, several years ago. This time I tried the baggie method, where you wrap the soaked seeds in a damp sheet of kitchen roll, and place it in a baggie, but four days later and nothing is happening.

I think one is actually getting mouldy. I am never buying sweetpeas again.

We had a really sunny spell a few days ago, so I sowed some pepper seeds — I’m not bothering with eggplants anymore — and I was hoping the warmth (I turned off the heating during the day. It was 26 degrees) would get things going, but of course, I fell for false spring again, because it’s back to overcast.

We have a repeat visitor in our garden from last winter.

I mentioned in my last garden update that these potatoes keep growing on my budgies' graves. This year's harvest turned out okay. Naturally, the spuds I actually planted didn't produce anything worth eating.

It's been a while since I posted one of these.

A huge dragonfly was sitting on the lily for ages. I don't like bugs.

These potatoes keep growing over my budgies' graves. No matter how many times I cut them down, they just keep springing up. Whereas the ones I plant deliberately never do well. So I guess I should take it as a gift from my little idiots:

Something I've been reading about recently is no-dig gardening. So you've probably been told by every book, TV show, grandparent or gardener that digging is absolutely essential for gardening. But this is not true! Digging actually damages the soil. Have a look at these links:

• The No-Dig Approach
• Stop Killing Your Soil

Having healthy plants is more about having healthy soil. Look after the soil, and the plants will look after themselves.

Don't believe me? Who's digging up the forest soil for all that growth?

Photo by aisvri on Unsplash

Speaking of which, I finally got round to green manuring a patch of the garden. I didn't have much luck with winter rye last time round, so this time I tried field beans. I had a germination rate of 100%, plus I got a decent amount of growth from November to February. I had a vague memory of reading an article saying to cut the plants down, then cover with cardboard (even though every other article I've seen does the digging spiel). So that's what I've done. It will take about a month to decompose, and we'll see how the soil is after. But yes, cut and drop. Leave the roots buried, and let the foliage sit on the soil. The worms will do all the work.

I didn't plant them densely enough, plus I should have planted them earlier. So next year I'm hoping I can do the whole border, starting early October and I'll plant them way more densely. Oh another problem I had was the blasted squirrel kept digging them up. For why, I have no idea. Probably just to annoy me. Blessed squirrel also broke my squirrel-proof feeder. Damn you, écu, damn you.

Here are my new friend robins, Hoppy and Hoppily. Hoppy (the male) was easy to tame, but his mate took a lot longer to come around, and for a while I had to keep my face turned away from her to get her to eat from my hand. Hoppy is rather trusting now, and was happy to eat from my nephew's hand, also Hoppy tends to atttack anyone emerging from the house as he immediately assumes it's me with my worm box. Hoppily is very cheeky and will usually try to get worms out of the box rather than from me if she can.

This is the fruit of Passiflora caerulea.

And this is the fruit inside.

I'm not sure if it was completely ripe. It tasted okay anyway.

I tend to buy avocados, and then not eat them. Anyway, this time, I decided to be serious about planting the seed and seeing if I could get it to germinate.

Online there's all this long stuff about toothpicks and jars of water, who has the time? So I just chucked it in a pot of compost, left it on my windowsill and kept it moist. After about two months, there was nothing happening — or so it seemed. When I started to empty the pot, the seed had cracked and a root was growing out! So back into the pot it went, a quick prayer that I hadn't killed it, and after a couple more weeks, I was rewarded with this!

And today we start with a random photo of soaking dried mealworms...

Red and yellow aquilegia:

Here is a photo of a poached egg flower:

Lamb's lettuce flowers:

This was the plant that I found a thrip on and chucked outside. Since it seemed to be surviving okay, I planted it in the border and did manage to get a few leaves out of it before it started bolting.

Tubbie:

Robbo:

Dizzy:

I have a couple of Robin friends!

It's been a pretty bad few weeks. It started with...

I was really looking forward to eating the cress, but one by one, the plants all ended up like that. White patches, followed by tiny black dots. I had no idea what it was and therefore, no idea how to treat it. It was an absolute mess.

Now you may (or not) remember, but the parsley I kept on the spare room windowsill, since my own was getting a bit cluttered. Well, my mum didn't like that and I had to bring it into my room.

Ahh, the everlasting Morning Glories.

So I think I never got round to mentioning these weird buds I saw on MG #2 a few weeks back:

They didn't look anything like those leaf buds I was so sick of seeing:

So I mentioned in the last MG post that I'd Continue reading →

More photos!

So this is the end of my lamb lettuce. It's not so obvious in the photo, but most of the leaves suddenly ended up covered in powdery mildew, and smelt all sickly sweet. Definitely not edible, so I chucked them into the border. I'll start a new crop next month.

And here are some photos of the busy bees. They always go straight for the borage.

Here are some stuff that I'm growing. I don't really get much space in the garden, so a good deal of these are in pots.

Here is my lamb's lettuce, which is doing quite nicely now. Got off to a bit of a tricky start. It tastes really nice.

I planted some borage in the garden, and also some indoors for the budgies, but they didn't like. I tried a leaf and it tastes kinda cucumbery, but it was too furry and I didn't like, either.

This is one of the garden ones. The bees absolutely love it. I planted one in my sister's strawberry tub, and it is making it grow more than the other strawberry plant.