Wot, no pink petunias?
If the amount of water collected in the decorative green glass suspended tea-light holders is anything to go by, there must have been about three inches of rain today, with temperatures fluttering bracingly around the 13C region.
This is actually a good summer, by Aberdeen standards. Considerably better than the last three or four years at any rate. There has been actual sightings of sun, and I was moved to buy a lightweight, knee-length coat. Is there no end to my daring?
I have also been working on some horticultural improvements to the back courtyard/patio where Rabbie Burns laboured last year, transforming it from a bleak, concrete enclosure into... well, a slightly less bleak concrete enclosure.
A couple of months ago, I ventured down to the bottom of the garden, in the shade of the monstrous, triffidesque Leyland hedge, to see if any of the plants I dug up from the site of the new kitchen had survived, and lo, in plastic bags and Leyland crepuscularity, they were doing better than they'd ever done in the two-and-a-half inches of gritty, impacted soil which had constituted the old back kitchen garden.
The fern is now settling in nicely into Robbie's ad-hoc, stairs-used-to-go-here planter:
A sunflower-inna-pot, and the cutting of purple Tradescantia which I smuggled in from Majorca last year. After a slow start turning green and anaemic on the kitchen windowsill over the winter, a transfer to the south-facing conservatory worked wonders on the Tradescantia, and I deemed it butch enough to venture outdoors.
To be honest, both the sunflower and the Tradescantia give me resentful looks every time I step outside (you sort-of have to imagine plants with eyes for this to work... I know, work with me here, okay?), and mutter "You cannot be serious! We were expecting something a bit more Mediterranean. South-of-France at a pinch!" (...plants with voices... yeah.) The lavender plants tell them not to be such pansies and the pansies object to negative stereotyping. Yay, political controversy in the herbacious border!
The unexpected star of the show, though, is the Hydrangea-inna-pot.
Now, I have to 'fess up, I have never been a great fan of Hydrangeas. There always seemed to be something very fifties and suburban about them with their tight and prissy floral clusters, and I have never at all cared for the habit of feeding them Evol Chemicals to make them turn blue, but dig them out of a barren suburban garden, stick 'em in a nicely-distressed terracotta pot, and let their flowers revert to their loose-woman pink rather than acid, pensioners-perm blue, and they become rather pleasing.
After pondering this conundrum for a few days, I remembered that the pink Hydrangea-inna-terracotta-pot is an almost ubiquitous feature of those lush Moorish courtyard gardens you find in towns in Spain - when you've been traipsing around dusty streets all day in ferocious temperatures (because you're a tourist, and you're stupid enough to go in July and August, and walk around in the middle of the afternoon), and just when you're wondering why on earth anyone would want to live in a Godforsaken place like this, you catch a glimpse through a half-open door into a wonderful oasis of cool and green.
With a pink hydrangea in a terracotta pot.
And that is my vision for Rabbie's Courtyard. Weather permitting.
Quite.
The pink Hydrangea does not appear to be pining for the Mediterranean in any way, and this is not particularly surprising, since it is not a Mediterranean plant. I had always been under the impression - supported by no evidence that I can recall - that Hydrangeas were from India. Thinking about Hydrangeas always brought to mind such other words as verandah and bungalow and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but when I consulted the immortal and infallible Wikipedia, I discovered that they are actually native to Japan, which also has appalling weather at times, so perhaps that explains my Hydrangea's blase indifference in the face of a fine Aberdeenshire summer of three inches of rain and 13C.
"And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six o'clock news and a lime juice and gin"
This is actually a good summer, by Aberdeen standards. Considerably better than the last three or four years at any rate. There has been actual sightings of sun, and I was moved to buy a lightweight, knee-length coat. Is there no end to my daring?
I have also been working on some horticultural improvements to the back courtyard/patio where Rabbie Burns laboured last year, transforming it from a bleak, concrete enclosure into... well, a slightly less bleak concrete enclosure.
A couple of months ago, I ventured down to the bottom of the garden, in the shade of the monstrous, triffidesque Leyland hedge, to see if any of the plants I dug up from the site of the new kitchen had survived, and lo, in plastic bags and Leyland crepuscularity, they were doing better than they'd ever done in the two-and-a-half inches of gritty, impacted soil which had constituted the old back kitchen garden.
The fern is now settling in nicely into Robbie's ad-hoc, stairs-used-to-go-here planter:
A sunflower-inna-pot, and the cutting of purple Tradescantia which I smuggled in from Majorca last year. After a slow start turning green and anaemic on the kitchen windowsill over the winter, a transfer to the south-facing conservatory worked wonders on the Tradescantia, and I deemed it butch enough to venture outdoors.
To be honest, both the sunflower and the Tradescantia give me resentful looks every time I step outside (you sort-of have to imagine plants with eyes for this to work... I know, work with me here, okay?), and mutter "You cannot be serious! We were expecting something a bit more Mediterranean. South-of-France at a pinch!" (...plants with voices... yeah.) The lavender plants tell them not to be such pansies and the pansies object to negative stereotyping. Yay, political controversy in the herbacious border!
The unexpected star of the show, though, is the Hydrangea-inna-pot.
Now, I have to 'fess up, I have never been a great fan of Hydrangeas. There always seemed to be something very fifties and suburban about them with their tight and prissy floral clusters, and I have never at all cared for the habit of feeding them Evol Chemicals to make them turn blue, but dig them out of a barren suburban garden, stick 'em in a nicely-distressed terracotta pot, and let their flowers revert to their loose-woman pink rather than acid, pensioners-perm blue, and they become rather pleasing.
After pondering this conundrum for a few days, I remembered that the pink Hydrangea-inna-terracotta-pot is an almost ubiquitous feature of those lush Moorish courtyard gardens you find in towns in Spain - when you've been traipsing around dusty streets all day in ferocious temperatures (because you're a tourist, and you're stupid enough to go in July and August, and walk around in the middle of the afternoon), and just when you're wondering why on earth anyone would want to live in a Godforsaken place like this, you catch a glimpse through a half-open door into a wonderful oasis of cool and green.
With a pink hydrangea in a terracotta pot.
And that is my vision for Rabbie's Courtyard. Weather permitting.
Quite.
The pink Hydrangea does not appear to be pining for the Mediterranean in any way, and this is not particularly surprising, since it is not a Mediterranean plant. I had always been under the impression - supported by no evidence that I can recall - that Hydrangeas were from India. Thinking about Hydrangeas always brought to mind such other words as verandah and bungalow and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but when I consulted the immortal and infallible Wikipedia, I discovered that they are actually native to Japan, which also has appalling weather at times, so perhaps that explains my Hydrangea's blase indifference in the face of a fine Aberdeenshire summer of three inches of rain and 13C.
"And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six o'clock news and a lime juice and gin"