Planning for our Plot and Plant Purchases

Hi Everyone, thank you  for joining me again.

I was very happy to see that my followers now total 10 lovely people! A mini-milestone. That makes me smile - thank you so much.  Numbers seem to have dwindled since I moved my blog from 'Peapod Ponderings' to 'Love From Peapods' but hopefully people will find me again and be happy to read my ramblings!  If you have a minute, perhaps you wouldn't mind leaving a comment.  I really do appreciate the time you spend here.

I had arranged to meet up with my friend this morning for a long overdue catch-up.  She collected me at 10am and we drove out to our favourite little Garden Centre,  this little place,  We have been using their coffee shop for the past 10 years or so; using it as a place to escape to when the going got tough, a quiet corner to hatch plans, a bolt-hole to run away to and drink coffee, and in more dire circumstances, eat vast quantities of home made cake.  We used to collect our littlies from pre-school and take them here for a cheap and cheerful lunch.  Nowadays it's our catch up place; still a place to put the world to rights and to catch up on all the goings-on in our respective busy lives.  Today was no exception; a hearty full English breakfast and a couple of cups each of coffee fuelled much gigglesome gossip and sharing of confidences ...we reckon (and I sincerely hope that this is the case) that we shall still be visiting this place in our respective dotages, both causing chaos on our mobility scooters!

I took some snaps of the greenhouse which, as usual, was a riot of colour.  Plants of the moment include pansies, pelargoniums, geraniums and wonderfully spindly early season dahlias.  There were also row upon row of boxes of tiny summer bedding plantlets all ready and raring to go for growing on.

When my family first moved into this house some 12 years ago, I did my best to try to shift several clumps of columbines (granny's bonnets/aquilegias - whatever name floats your floriferous boat!).   In fact I tried to uproot them every year for about five years.  They just grew back stronger than ever.  I can't even remember why I was trying to move them now because I love them!  Even more curious is the fact that this little beauty found it's way home with me too!

I also purchased two of these beautiful Senettis.  I love blue flowers and these are really deep blue despite the camera's attempts to paint them purple.  These will be transplanted into the raised planter when the daffies have died down, and under planted with the little yellow daisy type flowers you can just see peeping underneath (which I've forgotten the names of).

Lovely Man and I were having some discussions over our week's holiday as to what we should do with the garden.  We have a decent sized lawn, but unfortunately it has become rather scrubby over the years following abuse by collective cats, chickens and more latterly, HTH.  After talking it over we came to the decision of perhaps taking up the lawn and installing a low maintenance courtyard garden, upon which we could place large ceramic pots filled with tall structural plants to create some interest and maintain our green area.

A couple of days later, we spotted much to-ing and fro-ing at a neighbour's house which what we had believed to be a large delivery of slabs and sand.  We thought nothing more of this until we saw a skip being delivered next morning and the landscape gardener beginning to load said slabs into the skip!  EEK!! STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY!!   A quick move and lots of heaving and ho-ing on Lovely Man's part secured us these wondrous items:-

 


















How serendipitous is that?!! We now have more than enough of these wonderful looking courtyard slabs, all in perfect condition, to replace our lawn!  We were most appreciative I can tell you.  Our kind neighbour was reluctant to accept the two decent bottles of wine we took over as a thank you gift, saying that he'd resigned himself to just getting rid of them and was happy they could be put to good use.  The gardener advised that he actually has to PAY to get rid of this stuff when he's removing slabs etcetera from new landscaping projects.   I love the fact that we can recycle the items which would only have gone to landfill - but more than that, the fact that they are just SO perfect for what we were planning.  Money is always tight here at Peapods and it would have taken a long time to save up for the hardcore materials we needed.  Serendipity that we were home last week eh?!  Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

Edited to add:  Major blush.  I'm down to  9 followers.  I appear to have lost one along the way in the space of a couple of hours  :(     Was it something I said.  I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the goats' heads!