At last, some warmth, sunshine, and a foretaste (hopefully) of the summer months ahead. The countryside is green, that special bright fresh green of late spring and early summer, the hedgerows are festooned with blossoms and the world is bright and cheerful! There are alliums everywhere in my garden – last autumn I spent quite a few hours dropping small brown bulbs into holes – the task seemed almost endless at the time, but now I’m well rewarded with the sight of these wonderful purple globes as they come into bloom.
I’m especially impressed with the performance of the alliums in the troughs outside my little blue shed as they were dug up not once, but twice, by a very naughty and mischievous terrier! The middle image (above) shows the border outside our shepherd’s huts looking towards the Hen Pen. You may be able to see that the border is rather, how can I put it, gappy? This is because when the dogs manage to invade the kitchen garden area (supposed to be off-limits to them), they love to rush in and out of the allium stems, inevitably breaking a few off before I notice what they’re doing and put a stop to their antics.
Still, there is a silver lining. The casualties make their way into containers on my kitchen windowsill where I can enjoy them, and they do last for ages as cut flowers. I’ve been busy relocating self-seeded hollyhock babies too….
Descendants of my first-ever successful hollyhock planting last year. (I blogged about it here). The upcoming issue of the Bustle & Sew Magazine also has hollyhocks and alliums, as well as roses, daisies and more. There’s a real English country garden theme going on between the covers and I feel that Percy Grainger would definitely have approved!
I particularly enjoyed researching the art of spinning for the article “A Fine Yarn.” I literally had no idea how long it took to spin yarn by hand and the full impact, both economic and social, that the mechanization of this process had in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
I think little Florence will love the Fairytale Goose Head (incredibly difficult to photograph, which is why it ended up lying on its side on the cover image above) pattern. She already has the Sleepy Bear and Princess Mouse heads from Magazine issues 120 and 123 on her bedroom wall and they’d make a lovely trio…
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