Long Mizzle Garden

 Eh up our kid, Less gardening this weekend - I've been living it up large, feet up, head full of lurgy, watching the Glastonbury Music Festival highlights on t' tele. The band that opened up my first ever Glasto in 1997 were called The Shirehorses. This was radio DJs Mark and Lard's spoof band. Having listened to their ridiculous comedy sketches on BBC Radio 1's graveyard slot, holed up in my teenage garage, I was a big fan.  When Mark n' Lard moved to Radio 1's prime time slot, they refused to relocate from their Manchester base (the rest of Radio 1 broadcast from London) and they would often play the spoons or kazoo over any tune they disapproved of (compulsory playlists you see). They particularly seemed to take offense to a band called Savage Garden, which they called 'Cabbage Garden'. They claimed every band around at the time had nicked their sound. In my early 20s I got to meet them in person as a friend of mine from the BBC technology trainee sc...

 Hello m' fizz pots, It's too bloomin' hot outside, so I've come in for a nice glass of cokey pokey* and wee blog sesh. Ol' Glass Eyed Mumrah told me off for not doing a post last week! Feet up and crunching on ice cubes, I'm smug in the thought that I won't have to bucket up the bath water tonight and lug it downstairs to water the patio pots. This is because I have gradually been planting them up with drought tolerant succulents. * The cokey can't pokey because the pokey's in the cokey! * [The copyright goes to my six year old daughter who came up with that slogan. No, it doesn't make any sense, but it could be advertising genius ]    Aonium 'Zwartkop' underplanted with Sedum album   Red house leeks and Delosperma 'Ruby' Aeonium arboreum and Mesembryanthemums (that's a mouthful - lets just call them Livingstone Daisies) Last year the cannas were in the half-barrel pots, but look how much happier they are let loose in rich, m...

 Hello m' chewy beavers, Well, it'd be nice to say my blogging absence has been due to this week's Chelsea Flower Show, but it was in fact another Lulu (Lulu Urquhart along with Adam Hunt) that won Best Show Garden. 'Rewilding Britain Landscape' incorporated weeds, a wild meadow, dead foliage AND can you believe it.... an actual beaver dam, made with twigs pre-chewed by real beavers. I mean, really, what's not to love about that!!! As a big beaver lover, I think it was genius. I wish I had thought of it. 'Is it a garden' is as boring a question as 'but is it art'. It was planted, it was made, it looks beautiful. Just let it be. Bring on the beavers. As regular readers will know, I'm such an en pointe, en vogue, le chic kind of girl (yeah right!), so of course I already have my own beaver dam, of sorts. Oh, I may not have the gentle trickling water or beaver soundtrack,  but I am custodian of an old Cornish dry stone wall, so that's rathe...

 Hello m' mid Mayers, Just a quickie from me today.... How people choose to spend their free time always fascinates me. I think that's why I enjoy reading blogs so much - they are full of personal passion and interest. This month I  discovered one work colleague used to head a 'supernatural investigation club' - he has some hilarious and hair raising stories (more on that some other time).  Another colleague has converted the lower part of his garage into a blacksmith's forge, where he makes weaponry for his cosplay weekends. It gets better - the upper part of his garage looks like a medieval tavern. This is where he and his beardy friends gather under flickering candles to drink mead, eat stew from wooden bowls and play the Dungeons and Dragon's board game! It is said that the UK is a nation of gardeners. I suppose we have a good amount of rainfall and enough sun to make it a plausible pursuit. But what to do when the snow endlessly falls? Last week, I stumble...