June is birthday month for me and this is a lovely posey given to me by local friends, all from their own garden. Gorgeous

We opened up this new bed and I trialled the “three sisters” approach (of squash, beans and corn). We’d had the muck heap on it previously so I’d thought it would work quite well but actually, likely for a combination of reasons, it didn’t particularly flourish. But it was good for silhouette photos 😉

Support structure in progress

…and up

Courgettes in a neighbouring bed. I find it amazing how just a few metres apart can make such a big difference (light, soil, all sorts)

You may remember this acer being very pot-bound. Not any more!

This area is across the drive and to the right of our front door – the grass knoll is on the right hand side of the photo

Check that grass! (Writing this in March 2020 when the sumer grass proliferation is barely accessible in my memory bank). The trough was left on the land and is now used as an extra water-capture device, hence the pipe from the water butt. We’ve got a bunch of plastic barrels we’re hoping to get into use for water storage this year (2020)

Roses! So it turns out I love roses. Who knew?! This is one we planted a year or two back on the Library wall

This is one of the birthday roses (see later) – probably my favourite one. Could do with creating some kind of wind protection for it this year (2020) methinks…

…and in context in the land (the trampline is at the most southerly edge of our land, directly down from the house)

The salad did us well but did rather get away!

The greenhouse in its early stages. The trough contains sedum cuttings – which are AMAZINGLY easy to bring on and are a great succulent leaf for salads, especially early in the season

The view from the bathroom…1

The view from the bathroom…2

This year’s brassica bed

Two more birthday roses, one on either side of the front door

Not quite sure what grabbed my attention with this slug, but having snapped it three times (slugaratzi?) I thought it only fair to share with the world

Peas! These are still the purple-podded ones my friend Andy sent me

I attempted to plant the peas in succession to keep a crop going all summer, but in truth the early ones just produced way more than the others so I might just go for planting them all up at the same time this year

I forget what I was digging out, but every now and then I get to dig without footwear. And I loves it, I do 🙂

I’m not sure we harvested more than a few sticks of rhubarb last year: aspiring to get more on it this year (2020)

This year I got really into putting grass cuttings straight on to beds as an instant mulch. And it worked pretty well. This is the “boundary border” (with our neighbours with the polytunnel) in the fruit garden

And here comes a series from the fruit garden

The wool was given to us by our neighbours who have a small flock of sheep – good mulch and also very slow-release nutrients

Really happy with how our currants are getting on – one row of black, one of red

This red currant was given to us by friends at Laurieston Hall who had extracted it from a stone wall (their “undesireable” was our treasure!) Sadly for us the birds got most of the berries this year

Gooseberries! We even managed to pick them before foxie (or whoever it is who snaffles a whole bush-worth overnight)

Our new willow-break: the willow was given to us by a local friend who was cutting hers back (and is sufficiently busy that using the willow creatively wasn’t going to happen this year)

Gooseberries! These are in the apple (& gooseberry) triangle above the raspberries on the upper slope on the west side of our land

Two rows of raspberries – believe it or not! The one on the right never really got going: we’re not sure if it was the variety, the soil or something else but we’ve essentially given up on it now. And definitely won’t be replanting there!

The “overflow” squash plants, along with some onions merrily growing away (I love growing onions – so easy!)

The now-grass-more-than-daffodils labyrinth.

Foreground: potato bed (with overflow squash and onions and welsh onions at the far end),.
Far right: raspberries
Behind the raspberries in the middle of the photo: apple & gooseberry triangle

More grass-cutting-mulch in action, this time around courgettes

June involved one of my epic trips around the UK: including finding Booga Booga Wonderboxes ridiculously cheap in Leeds. I didn’t quite manage to coincide with my cousin, Keith, but I did see my friend Adam and get Wonderboxes 🙂 (Yes, plural: I didn’t go totally nuts, but I did get 2 :))

Birthdays don’t get much better than this: birthday roses with a birthday breakfast of hot chocolate, beans, hash browns and veggie sausages. YUMOLA

Anti-pigeon-baby-brassica-growing-station

A beautiful little nest that, after it had served its purpose, dropped out of the bush it had been in, just by the peas

Another one from my travels: do you know where my feet are? (took me a minute or two to remember, but now I have done, I know without doubt that they are in…Charney!)

Amazing weathered sandstone in Morecambe (the old train station)

Galloway has much to offer: but these sunny beach moments in Morecambe are just stunning x