Dear Mr Device.
Please forgive my tardiness in sending you my garden photographs, I've been driving down to the south coast every touch and turn looking at properties, hence my blogging absence. The last house I viewed was in Bognor Regis... BOGNOR! It was a nice house but I can't live anywhere with 'bog' in it's name. I'm away for 3 weeks so I might not be able to thank people for their gracious comments.
Hope all is well,M I T Z I
Birds eye view from the car camera. Look how clean my drive is compared with theirs next door.
[Can Mitzi's car fly?? - IDV]
The other side of the fence lives a Chinese lady. She likes to peer through the knots in the wood at us, reminiscent of that horror film The Ring.
Carmen mowed over an unsuspecting stone in the grass, it shot out and hit the front door, it made a nice crackle glaze effect on the glass. I made Carmen go on the game to pay for the £350 worth of damage. This happened in May, she's still paying it off.
Photo taken 26th Oct 2024. Doing well. Box of lemon trees grown from seeds from a single Waitrose lemon.
[If these were from a Morrisons lemon I would have vetoed the photo.
Not that Mitzi would step foot in a Morrisons, of course - IDV]
I don't usually venture out into the front garden, I live on a cul-de-sac (the top end of the bag, of course) and there is a high chance that a neighbour will come out and chat. Unlike the maid, I'm not an over the fence garden gossip.
Wilting in the sun, Bottle brush grown from a cutting courtesy of Sandhill Garden centre.
This highly scented Panache fig or Tiger Stripe fig has only produced 1 fig so far.
[Lovely Crocsmia "Lucifer" at the back there - IDV]
Photo taken on 9th April 2024. Tree peony from a root cutting (very daring!) courtesy of Strike Garden Centre of Beverley, there was no way I was going to fork out £40 for a potted one. It bloomed for the first time last year with a very poor display, much better this year. On the left you can see a rogue tulip.
The Colocasia Elephant Ear plant didn't get the best start in life because I had planted the swede like bulb upside down. Now overwintering with the Brugmansia and lemon trees in the shed.
The creeping phlox in the gravel bed. I didn't realise anything was wrong at the time I took the photo, on closer inspection I noticed the birds had ransacked most of my succulents situated in the blue pot, that same blue pot that used to be a hand basin in the downstairs toilet! I say birds, it could easily have been the actions of a jealous neighbour.
When I was trimming my overgrown bush in the back garden, I found this cyclamen, that had been hidden away. It was a house warming present someone had given me (cheapskates). Makes a much better outside plant than a leggy indoor one.
I'm on a two week cruise, had a few days scouring Southampton and Portsmouth beforehand, sadly both are not places I would like to live or in the case of Portsmouth visit again. In Cartagena at the moment. Neutrogena as my maid of all work keeps calling it. It's best to humour the daft cow.
Mitzi.
☙❧
Thank you, Mitzi, and we hope you had a fabulous cruise! Your blooms-on-a-budget are quite stunning, and an inspiration to those who think they can't afford a garden.
Please pop back on Monday for a look at what Mistress Maddie has to offer!
That peony is a stunner! (As is that boy's arse, but I digress.)
ReplyDeleteYou've done so well on cuttings "donated" by various garden centres over the years - I love doing the same! The only drawback where we are now is the fact we have no space for a greenhouse, and the only sunny window is in the kitchen, which is hogged by houseplants. It won't stop me taking inspiration from your good(?) self in future when next I am in a plantery that has inattentive staff, of course... Jx
With Gavin a no-show this year after having been abducted by Maddie or Hound, I should have approached Mitzi for a replacement before she departed on her cruise.
DeleteShe is a beauty. I think I will dig it up and take it with me, when I move. Last year I had quite a few unwanted house plants that started life as a garden centre cutting, however, many had caught a dose of the pesky gnat fly, it tends to happen when you've had house plants outside and you bring them back indoors, I should have known better, only a lonely clivia miniata sits on my kitchen window ledge. Questionable morals indeed I am a paragon of virtue, if you please.
DeleteI love that super neat gravel path, and is that Mitzi's foot in the Elephant Ear photo? It's a very small foot clad in something Croc like????
ReplyDeleteI think I have a Lemon Tree is the conservatory - they are hard to look after - they need too much water for someone such as myself who forgets to water plants. From seed though! Blimey.
Have you thought about the Devon coast, Mitzi?? Or even Dorset? We would love to have you in this part of the world.
Sx
The foot does appear to be quite small and delicate, so I imagine it is Mitzi's rather than Carmen's. I just hope it's clad in a welly rather than a Croc?
DeleteThank you Scarlet. I keep a pair of Adidas sliders by the french doors, they are a bit tight, you're suppose to dip them in boiling hot water for a minute, making them pliable so they stretch to fit your feet, I never bothered. I wear them for pottering around in the garden. Yes that is my foot, doesn't it look shapely? I cropped it out in the first photograph because I didn't want people thinking I sat on plastic chairs, I sent that one by mistake. I haven't explored much of Devon, I've been to Torquay many years ago with National Holidays and from there we had a day trip to Plymouth which I enjoyed. I'm off to Eastbourne in a few weeks to see a town house in a gated community, gated to keep the riff-raff out or if I lived there, it'll be to keep the riff-raff in! I will also be making a visit to Worthing, a place I've never been to.
DeleteLooks like adilette "Aqua" to me.
ReplyDeleteSocks and sliders worn together I blush as I type.
DeleteSocks and sliders worn together? I'll pretend not to notice.
DeleteI'm just glad I didn't have a hole in the toe of my sock.
DeleteThank you Mr Device for putting on such a lovely spread .
ReplyDeleteNothing BOG-standard about Mitzi's garden!
ReplyDeleteWe'll never see Mitzi's adilette in Hambog.
DeleteThank you MJ. I said I can't live anywhere with Bog in it's name and yet I've lived in BEVERley for most of my life, and what witty punilinguists you both are.
DeleteI love a nice creeping phlox in a gravel bed. You'd think I could at least grow that? And if the neighbors in Mitzi's neighborhood look like that, I'm moving.
ReplyDeleteI've been so busy I missed the start of this. I have to catch up.
I don't know who the lad is, he's from my maid's wank bank.
ReplyDeleteLovely stuff... seeing as you only got one fig from that tree... I don't suppose you really give a fig? (sorry, couldn't resist, my bad). Plox... one must have patience before they look like that... I have tried, but they die and don't come back. Yes, seems I keep Phloxing it up... (oh, dear, do forgive, can't be helped.) Kizzes.
ReplyDeleteThank you Uptonking. I'm sorry about your creeping phlox, I don't do anything special with mine other than trim the spent flowers when they start to fade otherwise they could flower themselves to death in producing seeds. Now figs are unbelievably easy to grow from cuttings and one of the fastest to produce roots, people treat them with kid gloves, by keeping them in tubs and wrapping them in fleece in winter when there is no need.
ReplyDeleteYou've got some gorgeous things there, Mitzi! I adore peonies, but am not daft enough to try them here.
ReplyDelete