Today is the third anniversary of my dear mother Betsy Cooper Golding passing away. People say it gets easier but I think it gets harder. Been in the garden all day where mum loved to be, and where I feel her near me.
Love you and miss you mum xxx

In the last couple of weeks I have bought a few gardening bits and bobs. I bid on a David Austin Catalogue on ebay from  seller  Matt  who is a really nice helpful seller   (he also has an Amazon shop) I never realised David Austin had such early catalogues (this one is 1980/81 season) and has lovely hand written notes by the previous owner.

I have wanted a Phlomis Italica

 for a long time, but have only been able to find them in a couple of places on the web, and very expensive with £10 postage.... Happily I found a blogger who runs a nursery, Steve  who had the plant in his inventory less than half price than the other places I found, and only charged minimal postage. If you are looking for some unusual plants, go to Steve, a lovely chap with some nice plants.
I have bought some more unusual veg seeds (for me that is) from another ebay seller  Premier Seeds Direct                who again has turned out be very nice and helpful and their seeds are all DEFRA registered.  I usually only grow runner and broad beans, but their selection of italian beans and tomatoes looked very scrumptious indeed! I bought Marvel of Venice, a beautiful bright yellow bean which will look very decorative in my potager ( I dont know whether they boil up yellow, I know most coloured beans usually turn to the normal green when cooked) Edit, have just received this from Kerrie and Bob - For Info yellow beans retain their colour fully when cooking, the purple and red varieties tend to bleach back towards green unless you steam them.Thanks Kerrie! 

Borlotti beans were the next I bought, a lovely mottled bean
 and a dwarf French Bean Berggold
        The tomatoes were Gartenperle a tumbling heirloom,    .

  and Red Pear a cherry bell,
 which I have just potted on. I sowed rather too many seeds and fear I do not have enough friends or relatives to share with!
I also bought an Italian Beetroot  Chioggia
  which has red/white striped inner - I only tasted my own fresh beetroot last year, and was amazed how lovely freshly cooked beetroot tasted. I normally had the run of the mill beetroot in a glass jar with salads - I will never again buy, because fresh is best! Thanks to Kerrie and Bob of Premier Seeds for letting me use their images except the beetroot which I googled from BackyardGardener
Flowering this week beginning 17th May in my garden
minature narcissus, muscari (still flowering!)
arabis, alyssum saxatile. lychnis alpina, iberis
various aquilegias,white,mauve and yellow flag iris
euphorbia,honesty,geranium phaeum,pink geranium macrorrhizum,geranium Johnsons blue, geranium wargrave pink, centaura montana, bleeding hearts, calendular,bluebells,lily of the valley,various clematis, veronica gentianodes, french lavender,feverfew,cerastium tomentosum(snow in summer),polemonium caeruleum(jacobs ladder) Hesperis matronalis (sweet rocket)
pink and white oxalis (the white is my own creation, well with help from the bees.The original pink one is from old Georgian houses that were being knocked down making the small lovely old town where I was born on the Thames into a concrete monstrosity in the 1960s , and me and my dear mum 40 years ago took our spades and rescued the oxalis and peonies that were growing, which I still have now in my garden)
lilac,rosemary,black viola,violets, wisteria,all my soft fruits, vinca major and minor,kerria,viburnum tinus, and fremontedendrom which has now about 20 large waxy blooms on a 3ft stem!


The wisteria is looking beautiful and I am looking forward to my first roses blooming, I think Madame Gregoire Stachelin will be first growing up a pergola with the wisteria, although  Desprez a Fleur Jaune a beautiful climbing noisette,supposedly a little tender although not seemingly in my garden, which I bought a few years ago and moved in the autumn from under one of the cherry trees to the south wall, may just pip Madame to the post! 

Well the dreaded day is here, 7th anniversary of my daughter Kates accident. For those who dont know (there cant be many, ive spoken about it now for 7 years, my therapy) Kate was sitting outside our close in the bus shelter on her way to school when a car hit our neighbours car who were coming out of their garage and went into the side of the bus shelter and took the bus shelter and Kate with him. Me and mum heard the crash as we always stood at the window to watch the bus pull away and know that Kate was on it ok, I ran out to find her in the road, rivers of blood already coming from her head.
7 years, left temporal lobe brain damage, frontal lobe brain damage, temporal lobe epilepsy and a knee thats crushed and mis shapen and Kate just gets on with it, bless her. Her memory is so bad she sometimes doesnt even remember she has just eaten, she cant remember all the important things that has happened in her life in the past and every day gets worse, but she has never once complained!
I am a very lucky person that I still have my daughter with me, albeit a different daughter to the one who walked out the door that day in May and I do sometimes mourn for the one I lost, the one who would have sailed through life like a breeze.. Most people probably wouldnt think there is a thing wrong with Kate and thats the way she likes it, she says it has made her a stronger person, unfortunately I cant say the same for me and her brother Damon, the last 7 years has made us snivelling wrecks, but how glad we are that we still have our Katie Blossom  with us as her grandad calls her. We are very lucky indeed.

I got a bargain from Morrisons on Monday, a Charles de Mills Gallica rose for £1.99! I always look at their plants when getting my elderly fathers shopping every Monday. Unfortunately all the other roses were hybrid teas which I am not a lover of-give me an old fashioned rose any day!(a good description of myself I think-well the old fashioned part!)
Still havent got my camera working or learnt to use Kates complicated one properly yet, so heres a Charles de Mill from google images

have planted it in between Ferdinand Pitchard and Rose de Rescht, surrounded by peonies, larkspur, oriental and annual poppies and lavenders. Cant wait to see it flower hopefully this summer.
Well back to decorating.....

I started this blog really to be my garden diary, which I never really got around to, but from this time of year, most of my posts will now be my garden. I wanted to a week by week diary to see what was flowering and to see how the seasons are changing and plants flowering early than previous years. I have to spend at least 2 hours every day from now on in the garden (what a good excuse!) It was so lovely to actually get in the garden yesterday and do some gardening (before more snow is predicted!) I decided to move quite a few things around and dug up the potato patch (found lots of potatoes still in the soil!) and planted my soft fruit bushes there instead. Thornless Blackberry, Tayberry, loganberry, about 20 raspberries, loads of black and red currants, and gooseberries. I had forgotten which were the black and which were the red currants, until I dug them up. The overpowering smell of blackcurrant came from one bush, it was like dunking my head into undiluted ribena! I had never noticed this before, and it seemed to come from just one blackcurrant bush. The potatoes are now going to be growing in potato bags, as it will be so much easier to earth them up I feel. I struggled last year in the rows which was rather akward, hence finding lots still in the ground yesterday-I shouldnt have that problem with bags. My strawberries I am also going to grow in bags this year, £3 in Morrisons, like the planters with pockets for the strawberries or herbs, but made from black woven plastic. Wilkinsons do some, but in a horrendous orange..... In the place of the soft fruit I have planted my favourite of all flowers, the rose.
There are 6 arches going across that part of the garden, like a division in between my herb garden and my brick parterre, and I had the fruit and grapevines growing across the arches, but now in place of the fruit are climbers and ramblers Albertine, Alberic Barbier,






 Golden Showers, Pauls Lemon Pillar, Emily Gray, Penny Lane, Felicite Perpetue and Pauls Scarlet - I also bought David Austin Heritage and Burgundy Ice which I have wanted for a couple of years, it is a sport of the white Iceberg, but has dark burgundy flowers - cant wait to see that one flower. I need about another 8 bush roses which will be all David Austin or Old English Roses. I dont really like modern roses, although buy some which have an old look about them. But for me theres nothing like a Bourbon or Damask rose. Every year the one thing I look forward to is my roses blooming, and being 56 soon, I am starting to count the rest of my life not in years, but how many times I will see and smell  the roses.