Dopey has finally woken up!

OK, so it’s official, as if we didn’t already know, the news have been filled with it today: Britain has just had its coldest spring for over 50 years. My garden is still very behind and despite two very nice May Bank Holiday week-ends – when did we last have that?! – it didn’t help much in catching up with everything as all the days in between has been oh so cold.

Tuesday was a nice sunny day, although cold and windy, but I got some photos, the rest was taken Wednesday and Thursday, dodging the showers. I know this photo looks like a nice sunny summer’s day, but what you can’t see and feel in this photo is that bone chilling wind we had Tuesday that made sitting down for more than 5 minutes a rather cold experience. Taking photos in such a windy weather is also rather challenging, I keep chasing the flowers in and out of focus and hope for the best. It is really nice to have a camera with image stabiliser, it is meant for camera shake but helps really well with ‘object shake’ too!

My rhododendron is finally flowering! I have waited a loooooong time for ‘Dopey’ to open his gorgeous flowers. I suppose this year he really lives up to his name ;-) This rhododendron is a dwarf and part of the Disney series, hence the name, I have had it for 9 years and although it seems to get a bit wider every year it hasn’t grown in height the last 5 years or so. I would love to have all 7 of them, I just have nowhere to put them, although I might be able to squeeze in one more, at the bottom of the garden, next to my camellia, so Dopey might be joined by one of his brothers soon.

Rhododendron ‘Dopey’ in the sunshine.

Rhododendron ‘Dopey’ just after the rain.

And my evergreen azalea has just started to flower too, this is 'Geisha Purple', soon it will be completely covered in flowers.

All the alliums are out now, I planted a few more last autumn in addition to those I had from before, Allium aflatunense 'Purple sensation' and Allium Superglobe Mix. Look at the bumble bee hanging upside down, only attached by its tongue! It was not moving its wings, just hanging there collecting nectar.(Click to enlarge, you really get a much better view)

Next to the alliums are my peonies, they should have started flowering by now but as you can see, they need a few more weeks at least. But it seems I will get more flowers this year than I had last. I just hope they won’t be ruined by rain like last year, all was caught by balling the day after they started opening so I never saw one of them fully open without damage. Fingers crossed for that nicer weather we are being promised!

And in front of the peonies are the rest of the irises, finally making an entrance! The leaves started to emerge in December, some of the irises are still in bud, it has been a long wait.

And here is the whole bed, this is the right side of the garden, the sunny side, next to the patio area. There are lots of green leaves in this bed at the moment, some are dying daffodil leaves but the rest is what is going to take over when all the blues, purples and creams have died and the pink peonies have finished flowering. Then it is the time for the hot colours! At the front I have daylilies in zingy yellow and burnt red and the tall spiky leaves at the back are fiery red crocosmias. There is also a hot-red trusty old geranium in the middle of this bed, but it hasn’t emerged yet, not sure if it has survived the cold winter we have had. The 3 geraniums I had in pots died, but they are actually the only casualties of the winter so far, everything else seems to have survived. Even my 5 dahlias which overwinter in the ground have survived and are now emerging, late but alive, incredible, I was so sure they would have succumbed that I bought 3 new dahlias earlier this spring, now I need to find a home for them as all the others are still alive and kicking!

When I wrote my GBBD post on the 15th this month I had so many plants just started to flower, now 2 weeks later they look much better. All the Lily of the Valley are flowering, I have so many of them I actually have started to pull them up as they are a bit invasive. Fortunately they are easy to pull up, with shallow roots.

Lily of the Valley.

On my GBBD post I also wrote about my roses, or lack of roses, and showed this bud. I am sorry to say it is still a bud! It is certainly taking its time. This bud is on a cutting in a pot, the mother plant is further behind with no buds showing any colour yet.

This is the only rose I have so far, from my cream pot rose, it is tiny and hidden among the leaves, the rest of the buds are weeks from flowering.

This is what my roses look like, green buds all round. And it is 1st June tomorrow. Unbelievable. I usually have roses in mid to late April.

Let me finish with some cheerful pictures of something that is flowering, my pansies Can Can is still going strong. Normally this is the time when I throw out my winter bedding plants and put in the summer bedding, but the plug plants I bought in March are so small still that they are not really ready for planting out so the pansies will have to do for another few weeks.

The weather for the next two weeks are promising, with higher temperatures and more sun, we could even get temperatures well above 20 degrees C. After all this time with a thermometer that seems to have been stuck on 12 or 13 degrees I would love to have something more summery, for more than 2 days at the time. Maybe I can get some roses for June GBBD? Or July??

Before I finish, let me pick up something I wrote about on my GBBD post on the 15th May, the Green Plant Swap website. If you are located in the UK, have you had a look at this yet? Maybe signed up? If not, it is well worth looking into, the more members we get, the more likely it will be to find people in the neighbourhood to swap plants with. Here is the address again:
www.greenplantswap.co.uk
Until next time, take care.