My first black Cornflower and Oriental Poppy

I have my first black Cornflower called 'Black Ball' and first Oriental Poppy flowering in my garden. It's pretty exciting seeing flowers that you have grown from seeds coming into flower.

I am really looking forward to seeing the flowers on my Danish Flag poppies. There are a lot of buds on the plants so hopefully it wont be too long before they flower.

I'm really enjoying my garden and love growing my own flowers from seeds. My new greenhouse is working well and on Sunday I collected over 200 small plastic pots from a lady on freecycle. I was also given a little propagating tray with the dome lid so next year I'll try and grow some seeds in that as well.

This Saturday my neighbour, Mily and I are going to have a small plant sale. I am hoping to sell some hellebore seedlings and Mily has some succulents that she has divided and potted. I've potted over 100 seedlings so I hope they all sell!

Gardening and a day with Jacob

In amongst all my business with work and study I enjoyed spending a day with Jacob last Friday. We spent the morning doing a few jobs down the street and then picking up some plants that had been given to me by a lady. We planted the cuttings into my new garden bed which I started last week and also planted out my bowl of baby lettuce, a tomato plant and seeds of parsley and basil.

When Jake visits he always helps me with the worm farm. He's a great help tipping in all the food scraps and helps bottle the worm wee.

In my new garden bed I have planted out the hellebores I purchased on eBay. I purchased 5 colored hellebores - red, yellow, white and black and also some ruffled lady hellebores. they are growing really well so hopefully next winter I will have some new colors in my garden.

I'm really enjoy having time with Jake and getting to know him more. He's a good little boy with a great sense of humour. Every now and then he'll do something that reminds me of Philip when he was the same age. When I look at Jacob I think how lucky I am to have been able to spend time with his father, Philip at the the same age and now 30 years later to be spending time with his son. There are not many aunties that get the opportunity to have so much time with their nieces and nephews growing up and then with great nieces and nephews.

I am looking after Jacob during the Christmas holidays so I am really looking forward to having the extra time to spend with him. I am also really looking forward to spending some time with my great nieces, Sarah, Hannah and Olivia when they visit in October. I've nearly finished Sarah and Hannah's cardigans so I am hoping to be able to give them their cardigans when they visit.

From Seeds to Seedlings

I love gardening and been growing my own flowers from seeds. I've tried to grow seeds before without much success but his year my seedlings are growing really well and I ended up having to get a second little green house (free on my favourite website - Freecycle) to keep them all.

I have recently planted out my first lot of seeds from my green house into the garden. In the pots in the greenhouse are some Danish Flag, Black Flowering Poppies, Heirloom Poppies, Flemish Antique Poppies, Larkspur, Hollyhocks, Aquilgeia, Cornflower Black Ball and Cosmos Picotee. The poppies have grown really well so I am looking forward to seeing them and all my seedlings in flower.