Long Mizzle Garden

 Hello m' fellow bridezilla's, I have news ... Monsieur & I got married! It was a small, quiet ceremony at an old Cornish mining site. We told only a handful of people, including our two lovely witnesses. I picked my outfit from my  wardrobe that morning - plum velvet dress and vintage embroidered Chinese jacket together with my sturdy leather work boots. The flowers I picked fresh from the garden- river lilies, snapdragon, lemon scented geranium, cerinth and trailing ivy.   I cried. Monsieur welled up a bit too.  We were back by tea time to collect the children and treat ourselves to a nice takeout (Indian cuisine & a cloudy cider for me, fish & chips with juice for them). Gardening duties have happily been on pause.  We've been treated to whole array of different types of rain:  drizzle, mizzle, spittle, danky-do-don't-go-to-town deluge, silver sleet sheets, splutter gutter downfalls, piss pop drops, neck floss splodge, flippity-freezing ...

 Hello m' slim shadies, After a two day heatwave shattered UK records, my trusty Glass Storm Barometer warned me that a storm was imminent. The next morning I woke to a drastic drop in temperature, thunder and lightening. Climate change has officially arrived, just as the scientists said it would all those years ago. Sadly environmental scientists don't rule the world, knobbers do.  Above left - barometer in fine weather | Above right - rapid ascension of blue liquid in snozzle means approaching storm (see monkey blog post here for more detail). If it pees, batten the hatches! Below: Down by the morning cool, Penryn Marina  Whilst the holiday makers were rollicking in the sun on the beach, I was crunching on ice cubes, taking shade where I could. Obviously all the parasols had sold out, so a little improvisation was required for the top patio -    Approaching storm after the heat -  Very little gardening happened during the heat . Contrary to what Monsieur...

 Hello m' foxtrots, Do come in, I've got t' kettle on and I'm raiding the biscuit bunker.... I wonder if those in the northern hemisphere are missing garden programs on TV? It is always a sad moment once I've watched the very last Gardeners World and Beechgrove Garden of the year on BBC iPlayer. Monsieur, on the contrary, does a celebratory dance. He feels like he has his TV back for wrestling, horror flicks and guitar shreds. Oh how I dream of a straight forward 'job for the weekend', such as simply planting bulbs in pre-prepared pots full of  fresh crumbly compost. My version of planting bulbs involves a big shuffle of many steps. 1) Make room in the greenhouse for the overwintered cannas:  Old pots are tidied away into the storage box (this hides behind the greenhouse).    Some plants come into the house, such as the ginger and the chilies.   On a side note - I am feeling pretty smug that my ginger tuber, brought from Wilkos for just a couple of pounds b...

 Hello m' fiery crusts, With each growing season, it is fun to try something different at Long Mizzle. This year I thought I'd have a dabble with dry flowers. Technically all flowers can be dried, but some fare better than others. If hung upside down, nicely spaced in a warm, dimly lit place, they are more likely to retain their colour and shape.  As I am yet to erect a proper drying rack (or slung twig more like), some have started to festoon the living room druid tree - turned skeletor lamp shade.  Above: Statice (Limonium sinuatum) The Statice was very easy to grow, with lovely sturdy fluted stems and indigo flowers. The mutant molluscs seemed to leave it alone. I wish the same could be said of the Strawflowers - many young plants succumbed to the munching marauders. Aren't the papery flowers wonderful though !? Above: Strawflowers (Limonium sinuatum) In addition to the Cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) and Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), which self seed freely here, ...