Long Mizzle Garden

Hello m' sunnies! Please bring tea and sunglasses.... The dry stone hedgerows bob with happy yellow heads. The roadside fields are brazen. Sometimes a distant golden patch shimmers like a mirage, appears to move around and is impossible to locate. The flower picker trucks, with their 'pickers wanted' signs, hold you up your way to and from Rosudgeon carboot sale, grrrrr.  We're talking daffodils.  These particular rows are not for picking - oh no - these bulbs are busy multiplying. Please, let them concentrate...   Scamp's daffodil field, Falmouth, Cornwall     All the pictures on today's post were taken one glorious sunny Sunday morning (27th March): a trip to Scamp's 14 acre daffodil field on the outskirts of Falmouth. Many thanks to the super helpful Adrian  (Scamp Junior) for welcoming us, and the fab Mylor Garden Club for organising.     In Britain, we can apparently thank the Romans for bringing the daffodil over. (Monty Python: What ...

 Hello m' stormy teacups, Seems like I've been working too hard lately. As my old kindly boss used to say each day at elevenses "Let's get our priorities right and put the kettle on" ...and get out into the garden! (I added that last bit) Long Mizzle is recovering from Storm Aurore. She whipped up the English Channel with a reported tornado and 60 mph winds. At one point, the Trachycarpus Palm was bent right over, the leaves almost touching the ground. A tree surgeon friend of ours tells us these were some of the only trees to survive the hurricane of 1987 (the one Michael Fish famously dismissed), on the estate he manages in Sussex. The lower leaves get incredibly scraggly looking, so I trimmed them off. Soon our ladder will be too short to manage this though.  Spot the new addition to the upper terrace? Give us the netball and move aside kids, watch and learn!   We were lucky -  the only damage really was some battered sunflowers and one toppled Aeonium pot. ...

Hello October and hello you! Hope you are keeping well. I don't think we're ever too old to do a bit of autumn treasure hunting, do you? I still marvel at fir cones and conkers and I do love the occasional monkey swing in a tree (move aside kids!). Here I am, sensibly dressed in my back to school satchel, green flasher mac and sturdy boots at Enys Garden, Penryn. (p.s. that's not a scout tie, it's my homemade face mask) Just look at these jubilant Kniphofias, soaking up every last ray of sunshine, reflecting back the sun's happiness, face to face. Even the old handsome Enys house seemed to enjoy warming its stones, humming contentedly with the goings on of a socially distanced antiques fair inside.   Set away from the house, there are quieter, hidden spaces and a newly uncovered woodland glen. The joy of having a year's pass to a garden is seeing it change throughout the seasons and learning more about it with each visit. I have mentioned in a previous post her...