“The world’s favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.”
Edwin Way Teale
I love May. It’s so fresh, alive and green … except where it’s flowering madly in every other colour. Hedgerows, verges, gardens, woods – it’s all going on, everywhere. Sure, there’s been plenty of action in the earlier spring months, but this is when it really wakes up. May is optimistic. Energetic. Delightful.
But will it ever stop raining? Will it ever be warm?
So now we know what happened to the April showers – they held off until May.
When we moved towards the west we expected to see more rain than in London, where day after day the weather systems petered out before they reached us. So April’s dryness (and frosts!) surprised us. And the constant rain and chill in the first 3 weeks of May was, well, surprising too.
The greenhouse is overflowing
I’ve planted seeds. I’ve ordered plug plants online. I’ve bought plants at the garden centre. And I’m running out of room in my greenhouse. If it doesn’t get warmer soon (and if I keep shopping at this rate), I won’t be able to get through the door.
Nothing like home grown vegetables… literally
I stuck some runner beans in pots to germinate indoors, but for the rest of my vegetable plot I bought ready-grown plants. In mid-May I planted out:
- 10 cauliflower
- 10 broccoli
- 6 lettuce
- 2 squash
- 1 courgette
I carefully netted the cauliflower and broccoli to keep the pigeons off and congratulated myself on my future harvest.
The very next day, a pigeon took time out from its busy schedule of constant flapping orgies to destroy the courgette.
I hastily covered the squashes and lettuce to keep them safe from more pigeon vandalism. But within a couple of days I lost everything else, barring a few broccoli plants, to that other enemy: slugs and snails. So much for a thriving vegetable patch.
And then the bloody beans didn’t even germinate!
Subtract 2 trees, add 3 trees…
There’s a small flower bed outside my study. Throughout winter I had high hopes for its future. I’ve been expecting all sorts of spring, then summer, flowers to emerge. But so far, nothing.
The bed is bracketed by a couple of columnar yew trees. And beyond it there’s a tangle of Chinese bramble (nope, I’d never heard of it either) with some hopeful branches of something or other peeking through the mess.
We decided to renovate the whole area. We began by attacking the bramble and lo, we discovered 3 different varieties of viburnum in there, which now have room to stretch their hopeful limbs.
That opened the space up to create an entirely new flower bed. Except for one thing. Well 2 things actually – the yews. They must have been planted to be smart sentries near the front door. However they’ve simply become obstructions with scant ornamental value. So they had to go.
It took a good couple of hours of Simon and me solidly digging, sawing and prising roots, and full-bodied rocking back and forth, to dislodge a yew. Their branches and roots are amazingly tough. No risk of them coming down in a storm, I suppose.
…then add a ton of plants
Laura cut out and prepared a whole new space for the bed and we were ready to plant up a load of shrubs and perennials.
The colour scheme is mainly blue and white, with a few dark-leaved shrubs and perennials for punctuation.
The full list:
- Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’
- Heuchera ‘Wild Berry’ and ‘Georgia Plum’
- Verbena bonariensis
- Artemesia ‘Powis Castle’
- Echinacea purpurea ‘Double Decker’
- Campanula persicufolia alba
- Aster novi-belgii ‘Fellowship’
- Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’
- Penstemon digitalis ‘Huskers Red’
Plus a few carefully redistributed Alchemilla mollis and Astrantia from the original bed.
Tawny but definitely not tiny
The owl (I should probably say “owls”, as we’ve heard more than one here) has a couple of favourite roosting spots in our garden. I snapped a grainy picture of it a couple of months ago, but I’ve since been more determined to get a better view. I was lucky to find it in a good spot on one of my stalking expeditions.
But even more lucky to see it sitting in the owl box on our cedar tree while chatting to Laura about the yew trees. We’d given up hope of that box ever being used as the only previous action we’d seen was from an inquisitive squirrel.
They seem small when you see them tucked up on a branch. But once they take flight, tawny owls are pretty imposing – except, perhaps, when they’re being mobbed back and forth across the garden by blackbirds a fraction their size.
Visitors of the human kind
When Covid restrictions eased a bit more on 17 May, we could finally introduce visitors to our new(ish) home. After nearly 7 months of having it all to ourselves, I couldn’t wait to share it with friends and family. We’ve done a fair bit inside the house since we arrived – it’s not all about the garden, you know. It’s time to enjoy it with loved ones.
So the last third of May was focused on spending time with them and only fitting in bits of gardening when I could.
Happily, one of my visitors is also my garden guru (at least that’s what I tell him) so we did a few garden things together. Visiting garden centres and planning future projects. Planting sweet peas and dahlias. And some quiet, companionable weeding.
Relaxation, at last
The weather picked up near the end of May and we started leaving open the doors and windows that have been tightly sealed against the cold and wet. I gradually planted up some pots and hanging baskets – freeing up space in the greenhouse. I realise it isn’t really that much later than usual – late May is when you normally count on the frosts to have gone.
But this winter and cold spring have felt like an age. We’re incredibly privileged to have so much space and comfort to get us through lockdown. I can’t imagine how impossibly hard this has been for some people. So it’s a bit cheeky to say that it became in some ways an endurance test – there’s not much to endure here.
Nevertheless, the sense of relief and quiet joy when we could see our friends again was complemented by the warmth and openness of the outside world.
Other jobs for the month
As usual, Laura did a lot of the hard work this month – I just take the credit. She also:
- continued clearing around Rosa Rugosa at the top of the garden
- cleared sedge grass and other brutes
- mowed and strimmed the grass
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