Frary's Fresh Flowers

Up on the winding windy massif, Juirie and jackie had tempers - like my hjealousy - too hot too dreamy... where was I? Getting distracted once again even before I'm on topic - now that has to be a bit of a record doesn't it? The heights of Masca - a long winding switch back road from the west of Tenerife up and over the Teno Massif to the north - lovely road that seems deserted even though there must be hundreds of people a day using it - a lot like the roads in the highlands and around Aberdeen - they feel so empty and lovely to drive. These roads were even steeper - slopes up to 75 degrees - real edgae of the seat driving at time - rathee be driving though instead of looking out over the edge and worrying f a bus or a truck is going to pile around the next hairpin.

Close to the top, just past a village called Masca is a cafe stuck on the side of the hill -Cafeteria Mirador I think - the village has only been accessible by road for the last 40 years and what a road as you can see from the photos.
The cafe has a concrete balcony that sticks out over the valley where you can look down the valley - a great site and a great sight.
It is the ideal place to stop for a cup of warming tea and a toasted sandwich, or an ice cream, and the old trinkets. Locvely people too - though it was out of the tourist season so they weren't rushed off their feet - I'd hate to see how busy it must get at the height in summer.

As ever on holiday we spent too much on trinkets and on mojo (gorgeous chilli/tomato sauce that is used for dipping boiled orawns and heavily salted boiled potatoes - beautiful)... One of the things we bought was a metal gecko, okay several of the things we biught were metal geckos of various sizes (geckos remind me of Fiji - as does everything even remotely tropical - I loved hearing them chuck, chuck. chuck at night and could even take the odd desicated one dropping onto me when you opened a neglected window - the gecko had either died there or been caught in a closing window and then desicate dinto a gecko mummy - must look out the Fiji photos) metal geckos - well I finally got to use one last time I home as part of the shed repair - a mascot from Masca you could say.

Tenerife -one you get over the lip of the caldera you get to the Massifs. It depends on which side of the island you are as to their character. The one we went over several times was to the north and west around the village of Masca (more about that tomorrow) - the Macizo de Teno so it was relatively cool, darkish, wet, and windy. At some places it put Tipperty to shame - blowing a gale permanently. It was darkish because much of the place was shrouded in mist/clouds while we were there (in Dec with my daughter then in January with my wife) and yet there were still huge clumps of Opuntia cactus - prickly pear - which I don't seem to have a picture of - and we ate the fruit picked straight off the pad and it was delicious. (We tried to use the claw and not the paw - am I getting through to you?) The other plants up there were familar to me from my teenage years of growing cacti and succulents - I spotted many euphorbia (which we grew last year in the garden but I think Jiurie cut them for the vase and I haven't seen them growing back after the two lots of snow last winter) Euphorbia are the Eurasian,African equivalent of the cacti as cacti are native only to the Amercias.

Also very common was a plant I kept in Grimsby on the kitchen window for many year - Aeonian (though I kept wanting to call it Aeolian which means wind). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeonium
Aeonium look a lot like house leeks - sempervivium - to which they are related, but with a stem supporting the crown of succulent leaves. Some species have branching stems so that they end up looking like bonsai palm trees. Most are native to the canary islands and they aren't frost resistant so no chance back in the UK except as house plants and they are fine for that.
I'm fairly certain that the plant aboveis an aeonium though I thought originally that it might be a euphorbia.

One of the big surprises to me in Tenerife was the mountain in the centre of the island. In fact the whole island is one big volcanic caldera. The island was formed over a hot spot and then moved away - but you can read more anout it at... you know where. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife It really is fascinating.
El Tiede, the mountain is the highest mountain in Spain at nearly 12,200 feet high. When we went up to 12,000 feet in the cable car Jiurie (and Jackie earlier) got ill with the elevation. I also got dizzy the second time.

We almost got trapped by the snow going up, fortunately they had closed the snow gates and we took notice. A couple of dozen tourists thought they knew better went up and got trapped so they had to spend overnight in the cable car lodge. Ha!!!

Anyhow it was cool and crisp and the landscape really quite exotic - like a moonscape (they say that some of it has been used in SciFi movies, some for Spaghetti westerns.)

Up there in the main caldera are many of the same types of plants that we have up in Aberdeenshire - gorses, heathers, conifers - classic cold, almost alpine, plants xerophytes with tiny, hard and hairy leaves as you can see in the gorse below.

I really love the clear air you get in the mountains, it is crisp and bright - everything seems much sharper - I love mountain air. Perhaps it is the lack of dust, he lack of fumes or the lack of spray.

In Tripoli there is always dust in the air, sand from the Sahara - it is rare that you can see more than 3 or 4 miles, sometimes only a mile or two and it is never, ever clear. Hate it - love clear sharp distance and we cetainly had that up near El Tiede (which is part of the reason that they built a major astonomical observatory up on the edge of the caldera. You look down on it from the top of the cable car).

What am I going to write about - 3 1/2 weeks to go. before I get back to my garden  but before I go on to the topic just to alert you that T&M have a 50% sale on all their seeds. Might be time to stock up before 4th June.

SO for the next few daysI'm going to post some of our photos from Tenerife from 2 years ago. I really loved Tenerife but it was a great surprise, not all beaches and bars - but then none of the places we go to are like that.

As an introduction it has to be the classic tropic flower (at least for us Pacificophiles) - the Hibiscus. It is the season now here in Libya - the red ones are coming out... but we were talking of Tenerife.

I have still not managed to get an hibiscus to survive in Aberdeen for more than a summer (and some not even that long) despite three or four attaempts. I keep buying them for Jiurie to make her feel at home as she is Polynesian - but they never survive and I don't think it makes much difference to my Mrs.
I suppose that it would be similar to someone in Fiji trying to grow daffodils or tulips for me to make me feel at home. Having seen zillions I don't suppose I would be that bothered. Similarly because Jiurie grew up with hibiscus all around then I suppose that the flowers aren't that exotic to her.
One plant that seems exotic to us both are knifophia - I can never remember which way round the f and the ph go. They do grow in Aberdeen and they were in Tenerife too. As you can see below they were flowering in January.

Apologies for anyone who is a Barcelona fan but I'm going to put up my best red pictures before the match in Rome - let me put up a Rome photo first... no I'll put up two. One is a hotel in the middle of Rome. This is how I wat the outside of our house to look eventually. The second is another picture of Dalo - Colocasia esculanta - taro one of the plants that I can just about grow in the greenhouse and which reminds me, more than any other plant, of the 5 years I spent in Fiji back in the 80's.

Judy, our youngest daughter, was born in Fiji. My features, Jiurie's colouring (our other two together are reverse, my colouring but her features) - the wonders of genetics eh?

So red flowers for the red devils - come on you reds....

Strange day, strange numbers. According to the stats of the site 50 people visited yesterday and read 570 pages - that's 11 pages each. I reckon that blog.uk may have a glitch or two in their site - I've had weird numbers like that before . Today 20 people have visited 97 pages - nearly 5 pages each. (currently running an average of around 2 pages per visit so these figures are unusual). I am feeling very geeky at the moment.
And talking of geekiness mosses are one of the most geeky of plants - you either love them, have never looked or fondled closely or arew a lawn Nazi who believes in "Graminae Uber Alla".
I remember another stats from the 90's (I did a Master in sustainable agriculture back then) - more fertilser and pesticides are used on lawns in the US than in the whole of Africa. Amazing what terrible facts stay with you ain't it.
Anyhow mosses and liverworts (and lichens) seem to really appeal to either geeks or sensual/ tactile people - so that's me squared.
Here ares ome of the ones I didn't post back in Feb - they make me shiver just looking at them - truely do.

Also got a link to a new site with some excellent photos of mosses (the site is in German with English translations attached) - http://bryophyta.blog.de/ - they are macro/microscopic photos that well outdo my occasional snaps of sphagnum. And i know that my definiton of all the mosses in our front (in the moss garden - easily made - spray with glyphosphate so that the grass dies instead of the moss) is a bit primitive but - hey that'll have to do foir now. I do love walking on a mossy lawn though - and the moss garden is even better,  - thanks to the soft sponginess underfoot - a very luxourius feeling. Same as stroking a patch of thick moss is similar to stroking velver or stroking some cats - very exotic (oops - nearly said erotic there... okay it is erotic I know). Bit of textural analysis there. I only have a couple of frosty mosses so, to remind you of what it was like in February - only 4 months ago - the rest are here are the best of the rest heather, primrose, teasels and Ajuga (good though I wouldn't want to blow my own bugle about those plants - if you follow me).

Lupins - what to say about lupins - again another flower which I had no real opinion about until I started to grow them and found a success - they have come for yet another year. Or I should say that those that were a decent size before they were planted have come up again. I planted some plug plants straight to ground last year and something got them. I don't think it was the bunny mowers this time, I think it was the the slugs. I say this because I've seen the bunny mowers on the bank by the lupins chomping away in the afternoon but never seen any damage to the lupins.
Don' think it's the woodpigeons or the mice getting at the lupins - slugs I think... not the moles... I suppose there are other 'pests' around - personally I try to think of them as wildlife rather than as pests (obvious exception being the b....d bunny mowers - I haven't seen any deer in the garden yet though I think they are around - almost hit one 5 miles down the road in the taxi at 4:30am on the way here last month. Roe deer. And i have seen two dead badgers by the side of the road - also around 5 miles away but doubt they are here. Haven't seen a hedgehog up here yet - sure they have them though the winters are cold and long. Seen the odd pipestrelle flitting around the house and birds - well loads of them -different post later on - and mice - in the hoose of course - and we even had a sheep in the garden last year)... where was I? - oh yeah wee lupins -
All parts are poisonous supposedly so it can't be the neighbours kids eating them... although I haven't see the yougest for a while...
Wikipedia is contradicting me here - reckons that the seeds were favourites with the Romans and they can be eaten after soaking in salty water (to get ruid of the poisons) while there are 'sweet' varieties being grown in Germnany which can be eaten straight.... sounds very like the situation with cassva (tapioca/manihot) - bitter and sweet varieities, soaking etc. Now I'm not doubting the mightly wikipedia but I'm gonna have to dig a little more here - which is a good thing for a floricultural blog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Lupin
Hmm the plants for a future website kind of agrees that here are edible varieties of lupin... if they taste bitter then they are the poisonous sort - hmmmm I'm still not convinced to be honest but I guess that I won't need to be tucking into a lupin chilli anytime soon (unless the news report this morning is correct and we're all got to hell in a hand basket as the recession deepens and society breaks down  although one of my past workmates(shout out to Anne menzies - I'm so street - Ha!)  had it better - we're all gonna "get to buggery on a bus").

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Lupinus+polyphyllus

PFAF reckons it's probably mice that are doing in the lupins - I'll need to remember that when I plant out any seedings next year
It looks like any lupin that is under a year old gets chopped in the garden by the mice so I now know to keep them in pots or a nursery bed (lavender doing brill in the nursery beds by the by). The big lupins have come up nicely again - each year better than the rest  though I read that they are short-lived perennials so I'm not certain how long they will keep this up which is why I invested in seeds for this year. (Not planted yet - autunal sowing according to the packet).

Och yeah - the other thing which was intriguing about this year's lupins (flower stalks on their way up now according to the home base) is the way the dew (or early morning rain) has caught on the very fine hairs on the leaves amnd collected at the well where the leaf meets the leaf stem (where the leaflets of the palmate leaf meets the petiole ... hmm I thought that there must be a particular name for that point where the water collects but I cannna find it at the moment.)

The weird thing is that the hairs are so repllent to the water that the water curls underitself to form a very tight droplet - like water on wax paper or on a candle - and you get strange internal reflections in the droplets - reflections which, to me, make the drops look they are curled caterpillars. A bit of a revelation to me  - have a look.

Now I've just realised that you can see myreflection in the picture at the top of the page - let me demonstrate:

That is my head on the right with me reaching down with the camera to the left- my fingers sticking up above the top of the camera. I'm wondering if I can use this in  anyway - reflection in a water droplet.

Here's a wee bulb that came up for the second year - the snakes-head fritillary. A very delicate flower on a slender stem that bobbed around in the moss garden for a month or so.
I like this plant not least because of the checkerboard pattern on the petals. Also the name - that put off my wife as she has a phobia of snakes for some reason - is a good one. And it is a native plant that is teetering on the edge in the wild. Almost all the online catalogues have them available (but they aren't the cheapest bulb) which makes me wonder whether you plant themn or not - I love the nodding head facing down so I am going to keep on planting.
It is also available in white.

However as much as I like this flower I feel kinda of strange blogging about it at the end of May - I mean I am a mointh behind because the news I get from home is that everything is coming up roses back in Tipperty. There's polemoniums in flower, fuchsias, and so much happening and I can only hear about it from a distance. And I'm still blogging about late April. Feels somehow wrong.

Past the teasel, past the carpet from yesterday (as above) past the septic tank which we won't discuss here - leave that for another time - we get to the final area of the perennial area. Firstly I moved the lilac from the front (where the soil is decidedly acidic) last year and the tree seems to be coming to life this spring - I still don't think it'll do as well I remember lilacs from my childhood in Grimsby. The underlying soil is deep, deep clay and below that is chalk so I think the soil is wet and alkaline and lilacs like that. Hope it grows well becsause I love the smell of lilac flowers. 
just found my photos of the lilac twig that cost too much. - highly unimpressive - and the b.....d bunnies got to it over winter before I put the tree protector around it - all 39p worth - I almost lost a £7.00 plant for the sake of a 40p protector.

Next to that is a new bramble (reduced from somerfield - the blackcurrant and raspberry bought at the same time seems to have died in the winter - put them in too late in the year which I guess is why they were cheapo. Cheap buys are not always a bargain as, in this case, the one bramble has cost 1 1/2 times what a fresh one would have cost). I have also tried to grow some raspberries from sliced twigs - canes - from the front. They appeared to have a few buds starting when I left. Again, no photos at the moment though you can see them in the back of the above photo - infront of the three compost bins.  Then comes the three compost bins. I'll leave them to another discussion for two reasons - I can't find the pictures again and because composting is important - should be the backbone of any garden with a decent amount of space - especially if it can be hidden like ours can.
There is also a large ash tree up that end though it was much bigger until me and my alligator got to it. I love my alligator even if it did try to head butt my wife last week. The alligator is Black and Decker's wee chainsaw which is so much fun (though it sheds it's chain too much) and is great for relieving stress, attacking trees and generally getting up to gardening mischief.

At the very far end I've pushed in some buddleia offcuts from autumnal trimming of the butterfy plants in the front way. I do like buddleia though I have noticed that it is very, very, very common along the side of railways - the blue ones are everywhere.  You have to trim them back hard in the late autumn of in early spring - I decided to try and use the offcuts to grow some more. The offcuts from the small ones I bought last year I put in the cold frame as they are coloured other than blue. Around 50% of the cuttings are showing bud activity. The wee ones I bought and kept over the winter I planted earlier this year but, again, I think I planted too early and the frosts'snows got to them - stupid me wasting money and wasting life again.  Hopefully the cuttings will save the day for those. As you can see below there are showing some growth and the newspaperf mulch (just wet newspaper to supress the weeds) looks to have worked  well. Hopefully the fact that the lid is still on and they aren't getting watered won't matter in the next 4 weeks till I get home - another 4 weeks... 4 more weeks...

perhaps time to make the big guesture and give up my 'career' for the love of a good woman and my plants.
We'll see.

is it 5? Yeah I think it is. After the "Orchard" we have a couple of burnt plots that are now planted with potatoes - no real photos to show really. Then we have the teasels - see links on the right. I haven't replanted teasel this year - I'm hoping that they self seed from last year - it will be interesting to see if they do.

After the teasels are a patch that we cleared using the old carpet (from the previous house). After one year the place was bare so I transferred the carpet across one place and used the bareground to transplant the kniphofia offcuts from the front. The success or not is still on hold but they were showing one or two signs of growth in Apriul (at least the larger offshoots were. The smaller ones - anything less that the sise of a pineapple top - seem to have disappeared over the winter. Well there is something learned.)

SO soon we have come to post #200 - less than a year. Let's leave over the fence for tonight and bang on a couple of random photos to show the aim - the flowers - it's all about the antirrhinums baby.

but it's not all about daffodils of course - there are the smelly hyacinths - I love smelly flowers.

And then there are the flowers I actually grew from seed all the way through to flowering - my best successes so far have been with the saxifrages and the sedums - so there's a tip - saxifrages and sedums are dead easy to grow from seed - if I can do it practically anyone else can.

And then there's some of the plants I have always wanted to see and grow since I was a kid - a wee un reading the plant books - like the Pasque flowers

And there are the local flowers which are colonising us and bringing life and colour into the garden like the heather (though these are planted by me) and the arums.

And finally the real reason behind all this - she likes flowers so she got a flower garden.

Next comes the orchard - 3 apple trees and 2 pear trees (maybe), a couple of willows and a central clump of comfrey. 
I'm not sure if there is much to say about these in that it is probably too far north for the apples to be successful especially as they out and exposed - it is contantly windy in our garden - , that the pears all got attacked by the b.....d rabbits over the winter with significant loss of bark (fingers crossed) and that the comfrey is doing great. It may prove to be a mistake that I didn't isolate the comfrey at all and it is just straight into the ground. (you can ignore the dock plant in the foreground - the comfrey is supposed to overwhelm that and chock the light from it) Comfrey is notorious for being invaisive and almost impossible to get rid of once you have it in your garden. So why did I plant it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfrey
It is flowering at the moment - nice blue flowers I'm told (I ain't there).
Comfrey is well known as an aid to the organic gardener. It can be cut down up to 4 times a year and the leaves either steeped in water to form a great liquid fertiliser (really helped my shrubs last year) . Alternately they can be added to the compost heaps to act as an accelerator.
Confrey has very deep tap roots so they bring minerals up from the deeper soil and increase the flow of minerals through the garden. I have also just read thaat they can tolerate freh urine (diluted 50:50 with water) so I will have to remember that and get some chamber pots in the bath rooms.  Nettles will also tolerate fresh urine, are also indicative of high added nitrogen in the soil,  and can also be used to produce liquid plant feed. Similar usages to comfrey then - only comfrey doesn't sting like buggery  when you pick it or try to weed anywhere so I like comfrey more than nettles. Confrey does have irritant hairs on it that will leave you scratching after handling. It I won't go into it's herbalist use - I'll let you read Wikipedia and let you make your own jokes about comfrey baths.

The only other thing I have to save about comfrey is that I watched an episode of Casulty last week when some one was having heart failure because his daughter thought she was making him comfrey tea for his breathing problems but she was actually making him digitalis tea and that was doing in his heart (bit of medical terminology for you there.) The plants are very different and you could only really make that mistake at the very start of the year for about a week as comfrey is a much bigger plant that foxgloves (digitalis) until the foxglove flower spike rushes up.
Maybe it is possible - but seemed stupid to me - and the doctor had to look it up on the internet - maybe he was on Wikipedia too.

In the picture below is the remains of the pear tree (it used to have two limbs before winter) and it is definitely struggling to stay alive - a couple of leaves getting out there but I'm sure the roots will die soon because the pholem has gone (the inner bark) so there will be no sugars getting down to keep them alive. Effing bunnies....

I've just made the rabbits the enemies in latest novel (in planning stage) because they are non-native and also buggers in the garden.

I didn't get very far yesterday - got stuck at the Arums so let's try again.
just inside the gate are the Arums (top right) and then there are steps down to the burn. They are flanked by daffodils - fragrant daffodils - must find out what sort they are.

next along is one of the latest parts of our slash and burn clearance.
Despite what lots of people think slash and burn is a very viable way fo making a living - if there is enough land. Slash is the chopping down bit to clear the major vegetation while the burn biut is - well- letting the veg dry and then burning it. This burning destroys all the weed seeds (yeah!) and releases minerals - particularly potassium and phosphates - into the soil so that the first crops are fetilized. After three years or so (on average) the land is exhausted after a succession of different crops and then you go off and slash and burn the next part. The original field is left fallow - maybe animals grazed on it - for the next twenty years or so until you get back to needing it again.
This sounds highly destructive in that it takes over 400 years for a rainforest to regenerate (e.g.). Butyou don't burn new forest every single time - you burn the stuff that was last slashed and burned 20 years ago because that has smaller trees and is easier to clear. The rest of the forest is left alone as a repository for food animals and plants. If there is plenty of land then slash and burn is a good policy.
But there isn't enough land of course and what happens now is that once the land is slashed and burned it is kept in production and never given time to recover. Once the land is exhausted of the burnt minerals then the only way to keep the plants growing is by using artifical fertilizers - either mined or petrochemicals. One of the phrases that has stuick with me for the last 30 years since Uni is "Potatoes made from Petroleum".
There is more energy from petrol put into potatoes (as transport, farm machinery, pesticides, fertilisers, packaging etc) then the food energy - the calories - that come out. Energetically speaking we would be better off eating petrol than we would be growing poitatoes.
Scary stuff. It may be even worse now 30 years on - maybe, I haven't seen the figures. But when the oild starts to run out then the food is going to run out too - not just go up in price but actually start to decrease. I shudder each time I think about it.
The other think I remember is that prawns fishing is practically the most energetically inefficient way of getting food that there is - over 20* more energy goes into getting a prawn out of the sea than comes out of the prawn... makes me feel guilty everytime I have a prawn - buyt I can't resist the big tiger prawns - I love them - fiddling while Rome burns eh?

Back to slash and burn - a great way to clear up weed seeds. it has taken well over 3 uyears before the weeds have started the return to the various burnt areas around the garden and some are still practically bare - great stuff. (The previous owners burnt a load of stuff in the garden before they left- mattresses and the like as you do).
My Mrs (and son) have mmaintained the slash and burn tradition as every six months or so they gather all the twigs and branches together and set fire to them. They bith have a fascination with fire (as do I) and it clears the area for the next lot of potatoes so I don't mind. Anyhow one of my favourite (relatively unknown) paintings is below - I often use this Finnish masterpiece as a background at work as it reminds me of the wife and kids burning stuff along the burn - by Eero Jarnefelt called the Wage Slaves - maybe that is what appeals to me even more - the recognition of myself in the title - only I ain't a slave in any way - just a wuzz - and wouldn't compare myself to real wage slaves which is only too common.

(the artist has been dead for over 70 years so the painting isn't copyright any more under Finnish law - I checked at the Finnish National Gallery website)

And once again I've barely took a step along the path - well this is a pressie for you as I now make it just over 5000 visitors to Frary's Fresh Flowers in less than a year. All I need to do now is to turn that into around £10 a visit profit and I'll be and back on the farm - just joking babes.

So the first part of the 'waste' that we are converting, that is over the fence, is at the house end of the garden and there are steps there down to the burn - crude steps but steps none the less.
At the very top, nesting between the shrubs and the fence is my wild arum - close to wher the gate is now but still shaded by the shrubs. I am eagerly awaitng it's flowering (if it ever does) as I believe it will be Arum maculatum - Lords and Ladies, cuckoo pint - pretty sure that it ain't the italian one (which is also native to the UK) as the leaves are spotted rather than striped.
Of course I could be totally wrong and it'll turn out to be a manky dock plant or something else (but that is why I am eagerly awaiting the flower (from 4000 miles away) to confirm that it is really an arum.

me and jiurie have an affinity with Arums because they are one of the staple food crops of pacific life and we grew some (even planted our own) on the farm we had in Fiji.
That Arum was dalo - also known as Taro and as Cocoyam when as a food or Elephant's ears when as an ornamental- Colocasia esculanta. There are so many types available.

I even have some growing myself - and just managing to keep it alive - in tipperty indoors in a big storage hamper. One type died over the first winter (despite being in the kitchen) but the other lot has come up every year for the last three years.
Admitedly they are a little yellow in these pictures - but then I nevere expected the chrysanthemums to do so well as they did and try to take over. This year I need to change the soil and get those chrysanths out into the garden to give my dalo some space.

When we were in Tenerife in Jan 07 it was a bit of a game to spot the dalo - it was being used all over Puerto de la Cruz for decoration. I don't think we ever saw it as food just a s decoration.
I love fried dalo chips - boiled dalo I can take it or leave it usually only now I am hungry thinking about it - like fluffy, sticky potato. And now I realise that I have told you about just the one plant... but it's a good un so I'll love and leave you with an example of Dalo in tenerife.

AS I wrote in the last post, over the garden fence - the big garden fence - we have a burn - the tarty burn stop the sniggering at the back please!!! - andan area of land which was waste land before we arrived. Indeed theree was no way of getting from our side to the other side - no gates in the 1.5metre high fence - and the other side had been left to seed with weeds - mainly dock, nettles, and ground elder along the top with bittersweet down by the burn (also known as woody nightshade - pretty-blue flowered solanum species which is pretty poisonous with nasty red berries) at one end and rosebay willowherb down at the far end by the burn (and over the end fence loads and loads and loads of rosebay willowherb - pretty flower but a weed non the less. Anyhow it was all left to weed.
One of the very first things I did in the garden was turn one of the fence panels into a gate and we hacked our way through. Last year I put another gate in closer to the house so that we can use the crude steps down to the burn. (very fragrant daffodils along side it this year)
SO the tarty burn is one of our boundries.
This photo is looking up stream towards the bridge - our part of tipperty is called bridgend - I wonder why - that used to carry the main road from Aberdeen via balmedie and foveran through tipperty and on to Ellon then Peterhead and Fraserburgh

Looking downstream is the new bridge that carries the dual carriageway - have to find out how old it is one day - and the burn runs down to the River Ythan. Before the dual carriageway you could probably just about see all the way down to the Ythan. You certainly can from the main road.

Unfortunately the dual carriageway blocks out the light in the very early morning and I think that it is turning us into a bit of a frost pocket.
At the moment the burn is pretty low - only up to the top of Jiurie's wellies but it can get much higher. Last year it got within an inch or two of the top of the bank and threatened to flood the garden. Out neighbours say that it will flood occasionally. That's at least 2 metres above the level of the burn now.

Towards the tipperty bridge the bush and treesd are overgrown I've only just made it past the forsythias this year - and the bank is extremely steep - maybe 3 or 4 metres high. At the top are thorn bushes, a couple of cinfers and then a load of tall sycamores by the bridge itself - our woodland garden. I won't describe that end much because we have barely touched it except to mention that there are some bluebells there, the trees are just budding and I found a new weed to me - a greater stitchwort. Pity the picture is a bit blurry - a big relative of chickweed - a weed that is really trying to take over our tubs and some of our beds - little bugger.
http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/stitchwort_great.htm

Now on the otherside of the burn are the sheep - or rather the rams. The farnmere keeps 4 or 5 of his big rams up there. They don't bother the rabbits or the moles and the rabbit and the moles don't bother the rams - worst luck.
Also across there at the moment are big yellow flowers which I think is Greater spearwort - Ranuculus lingua - a close relation of the buttercup (and the hated creeping buttercup that is wrestling away my front garden, and the lesser celandine that carpetted the "woodland" earlier this year)

Also along the bank of the burn is a much nastier weed - giant hogweed - coming up this year which I will need to deal with when I get back - nastier weed which I will put into a blog at a later date.

Ah yes - rhubarb - what do i say about that and why did I buy rhubarb seeds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb Well rhubarb is another of those vegetables I never been especially fond of - though rhubarb yoghurts are nice. Last year I took some of the sticks we grew and made a nice rhubarb crumble but it takes a shed load of sugar in the recipe to make it palitable which, in the current diest days of snti- sugar paranoia - is maybe not the best thing to be doing. Still it was a nice crumble and it was grown in our own garden so I should be grateful. Maybe this year I will try with strawberries or some bramble also from our garden and see if I can get the sweetness that way. I guess the traditional thing to use is apples but it will be a few more years before we get apples in Tipperty - if ever - the trees have only been in the ground 2 years now and 5 years is the more usual time - plus it'll need some global warming before apples are really an Aberdeenshire crop (though I do know of at least one decent apple tree in Aberdeen - by the railway at the end of Kittybrewster retail park - one year I saw a great crip of apples on it - but only the one year). But Rhubarb - originally it was in the front garden - a big patch where the snow drops now are - and 2 years ago we decided that it was out of place - didn't suit the area - plus I wanted to put raspberries there which I do love - so in the winter I dug it up - it was a woody stump maybe the size of a full carrier bag - took it round to the back and just dumped it one used to be a compost heap (for the grass clippings etc before we got the compost bins.) I didn't bury it, didn't dig a pit or anything and loh and behold - in the spring it sprand and shoved up these huge great leaves. What a survivor! I guess the rotting grass kept it warm. Since then I still haven't given it any treatment - haven't even buried it - just let the grass cutting and the odd lot of weeds get dumped on it and for the last two years it has come up great. This was the display at the end of May this year.
 Well I love a survivor - okay I love a useful survivor - forget the nettles, the docks, the ground elders and the creeping butterfcups even though I do have a begrudging admiration/respect for these weeds I can honestly say i don't love them - I love a useful survivor so I thought that I would give it a go and see if I can get a load of plants going and try to shade out some of the above mentioned weeds from the patch over the fence using rhubarb.  I'm going to have to try with seeds.
I would try with rhubarb plants as I am sure they would be more successful (and a whole lot quicker) but rhubarb plants are fairly expensive at around £9 per plant from T&M (£14 for a collection of two which is pretty ewxtortionate when you think that they are micropropgated - in vitro so surely that shoul make them cheaper like it has for orchids although I guess that orchids are in the same price range - damn expensive - but more about orchids at anothe date - rhubarb - £7 a plant from T&M - cheaper from Bakker  (£1.20 a plant) and from Van Meuwen (around £4.00 a plant) but still too much for the amount of space we have to cover. Hae a wee lookie.

We are turning this into our perennials garden (which I'll describe tomorrow) and there is a lot of ground to cover. I can't keep spraying it with glyphosphate in spring (environmentally unsustainable) and then hacking at it with the cane knife for hours each summer (bicepularly unsustainable) while I fight the weeds so I reckon that loads of rhubarb could be a good compromise for the moment - perennial vegetables that the rabbits won't touch (thanks to the high concentrate of oxalic acid in the leaves) that supress the weeds.  Sounds like a win, win, win though I'm sure there will be a problem somewhere along the way - probably won't get the seeds to sprout, pr the burn will make the ground too wet in winter - we will see. we will see. 
Firstly that the seeds should have gone in early spring so this is obviously a project for next year but 60 plants for 99p must be a good bargain (50% off remember and I always plan on 100% success rate - stupid I know but I feel like every seed that doesn't grow and doesn't become a plant is like a murder done by me - stamping out of potential - I've killed so many, so many - the horror, the horror).

http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/product/831/1.html

You may have noticed that I ordered onion seeds and leek seeds. Our climate seem to suits alliums - the onion, garlic and leek family. Chives, shallots, garlic, alliums all seem to do great for us - they even set well as seeds - funny as I hated onions till I was in my twenties - wouldn't eat them - until one time in Fiji when I was a teacher in Balata we went to a large farm, more like an agricultural estate - just over the hills from Balata/Tavua (where I taught). It was owned by Danny Costello (I think) but I can't remember the name of the farm. They showed the school round the fields, mango orchards, cattle fields (that don't sound right) etc - well the relevant part is that they were growing onions and claimed that the onions could be eaten raw like an apple. I had never heard of that before (this would have been around 1984) but had to be the volunteer for the class - I was 24 and the expat so picked an onion from the ground and bit into it. After a thousand screwed up faces I took another bite and everyone laughed. It wasn't quite like eating and apple but it was tolerable. That was the first time I'd ever eaten a onion deliberately.
Still hate pickled onions though, pickled anything practically.
That was one of my my boring stories I know but it must be about the only onion story I have.

So the seeds yeah - come up great.Leeks, chives, they all came up inside and out. And the wild garlic (the Allium ursinum -ransoms - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_ursinum) are coming up in the spring - native plants that we introduced under the trees they are coming up too. And I'm missing them. I am definitely in the wrong job.

Well that's 10,000 page views accomplished - wow. I'm pretty stunned myself - but many, many thanks to my readers I love you all wherever you are.

To celebrate I bought my self some veggie seeds - Thompson and Morgan have got 50% off all their vegetable seeds until midnight tonight. Here's the link (though I ken it's a wee bit late to tell you all as it is finished.)
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/list.html?filter=vegetables

ITEMS ORDERED: PRICE EACH TOTAL
-------------- ---------- -----
1 Globe Artichoke : Green Globe Improved Code: GWW0563 £1.24
1 Spring Onion : White Lisbon Code: GWW0528 £0.84
1 Leek : Musselburgh Improved Code: GWW0640 £0.94
1 Lettuce : Iceberg : Sonette Code: GWW0763 £0.99
1 Celery : Galaxy (Lathom Self Blanching)Code: GWW0603 £0.99
1 Vegetable-Easy Grow Collection -SPECIAL OFFERCode: GWW8314 £4.99
1 Rhubarb : Glaskins Perpetual Code: GWW0831 £0.99
1 Vegetable - Sunday Lunch Collection - SPECIAL OFFER Code: GWW8327 £3.73
1 Tomato : Roma VF Code: GWW0259 £1.04
1 FREE Grow your way to 5 a day leafletCode: HWW1050 £0.00
1 Fuchsia Delta's Sarah Code: AWW3936 £2.49
1 Bumper Lily Collection Code: AWW3813 £4.99
1 Globe Artichoke : Green Globe Improved Code: GWW0563 £0.00

The last 4 are freebies/reduced - my beloved Delta Sarahs to replace the snow killed one (crossed fingers that I am wrong and that the plants have survived - I can dream). There are also Jiurie's beloved lily collection - big brashy flowers that she loves. And a second lot of globe artichokes.
Now that is a bit of a suprise because globe artichokes are supposed to be perennials. Well they ain't in Aberdeen let me tell you.
That is hardly surprising as the original plants (no longer found in the wild) are mediteranean. There's plenty of snow up in the mountains around the Med - even up in the mountains of Libya (truely) but I don't think that the artichokes are from up there. I think they are more your hot and dry types.
Anywho - for two years I have grown artichokes - last year we even got to eat some - I wrote a blog about the experience. Neither time have they survived the winter. But last year they made brilliant cut flowers.
Here are the flowers from the end of October. They were the size of small melons - I was going to say large tennis balls except that tennis balls are all the same size of course.

Here they are two weeks later - kept in the dry (no water) and the flowers were still good. There's a definite market for them I think.

Here the same flowers in December, over 6 weeks since they were picked - still interesting. The ones left on the plant were all dried up so the dried flowers look attractive too. The dried ones were still hanging there in April - among the primulas as I was using them to mark the plants incase they came up again - only they hadn't by the end of April so i think they aren't ever goona come up again. Pity as a perennial crop like this would be great to start a field with. Maybe I need to cloche them next time or could do that in a field. Need to experiment. Reckon I could get maybe 50p or a whole pound for one flower (in my dreams). oooh! the last of the big timers - Sir Alan would be proud of me eh? - Gees - I seem to be turning Canadian saying eh at the end of every sentence eh?

Before I go on to the main topic of the day let's have a little laugh - I received an email from an estate agent asking if we were interested in a farm for sale in Aberdeen - all 148 acres of it. Course we are interested - though we'd need yet another lawnmower. (we have 3 and my partner is talking about buying another one - 4 lawnmowers!!! for about 1/5 acre of garden - bit excessive don't ya think?)
All we need is GBP650,000... that's around $1million.
Thanks Mr Estate Agent - if I had £1 million dollars to spend I would not be sat in Tripoli dreaming of my garden in Tipperty that's for sure.
So if any billionaires are out there reading this just drop me a line - Nigerian Goverment officials and bankers excepted - sorry sounds racist I know but I just do not believe that the Government of Nigeria would vote to give me $1 miilion and then ask me for my name afterwards - anywho - any billionaires out there want to invest £1 million (let's be ambitious - I need start up costs too - those lawnmowers won't buy themselves you know - hell they won't even propel themselves after about 3 months) in a farm and flower startup business then let me know. Free holidays in the heart of Bonnie Scotland if you do.
You never know - as my old ma used to say - "If you don't ask you don't get". That would be when we hadn't asked for something. If we did ask for something she'd say something else but it doesn't come to mind now... something like, "Don't be greedy" or... something regarding the knockers of hell. Everything - and I do mean everything- can be compared to the knockers of hell. Something can be as hot as the knockers of hell, as hard as the knockers of hell, as poor as the knockers of hell, as loud as the knockers of hell. Believe me the knockers of hell much be something to behold - all things to all men. Being an agnostic (admission has probably just lost me the £1 million from a pious but holy philanthropist) I'll never get to see those fabulous knockers, though probably fundameltalists of all sorts might say that I am going to see the knockers of hell from the inside for all eternity.
There are quite a few visitors from the US - particularly from Wichita for some reason, and Seattle and other such exotic places. What they find interesting in this blog I don't know but I am truely grateful for the return visits. Who knows someone might be in the mood to try out one of those experiments you get in movies and books where some super-rich old guy gives a million away just to see how the person behaves and whether they go to rack and ruin or whether they come good. \of course in the books/movies it's always a good thing - the newly rich dude eventually comes good. So when that million arrives I promise to waste some of it like a Chav lottery winner before eventually coming good, buying the farm, producing a mega flower business and naming a newly discovered flower after the benefactor. (Have I seen that movie - was Walter Matteau in it? or am I thinking of another movie where Walter Matteau plays Spike Jones records to his son - now that truely was a movie with a big influence on me - my love of Spike Jones and his City Slickers grew directly from that movie - whatever it was).
Being alone in Libya for weeks at a time I do dream of the knockers of hell - but that is a different story that I'll leave until my kids are too old to be embarrassed by me - does that ever happen? Maybe the grandkids then get embarrassed by you - I'm looking forward to that too after several years of deliberately embarrassing the kids when we're out shopping in supermarkets - it's amazing how red they can turn when you start singing along to trhe wallpaper music in your local Tescos or Walmart. Scouching around with a trolley is another good one - I like to take giant strides like I'm Neil Armstrong using the trolley to keep me afloat.
Unfortunately we never went on foreign holidays with the kids (holidays to Grimsby and Cleethorpes almost every year while they were wee) so I never got to embarrass them by showing off my pizza belly and super sun burn in a G-string, socks and sandals. Hey I'm English aren't I?

Where was I? oh yeah - milk thistle. I came across a magnificent milk thistle just after the iceplant (from yesterday) and this thistle was actually the reason I went out that way.
Last month I made a trip down to the beach and back and saw a huge rosette of leaves - zebra striped leaves - well crazy-paving leaves- huge as in almost three feet across - and I wanted to see how they had got on.

Well it turns out that the biennals had shot up and produced magnificent purple thistle flowers the size of a tennis ball. They look very similar to the globe artichoke flowers that we had last year - beautiful cut flowers (both the globe artichokes and these thistles). But when I got back home (to the staff house) and checked my new guide (oooooooh) I identified from the leaves that they were definitely milk thistles probably Silybium marianum or possibly S eburnum (which has longer spines on the bracts around the flower head).

So now I have "Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean" with me by David Burnie then I should be able to do a little better on the old IDs (though it didn't have the ice-plant from yesterday in it!!! so that's another theory damped off before it had barely germinated... gee this post is turning into a novel - good job because the novel has stalled since I arrived - i.e. it is dead in the water and I am seriously considering snapping my pencil and forgetting that whole hobby so that I can concentrate on reading about flowers and stuff, writing the blog and whatever. Of course now that I have written that I'm probably going to be forcing myself to write again - sometimes I just get so tired at night, but I have been in a slump this last week both at work and at play - tired, too tired - and I can already feel my energy levels going up this week - mini manic depressive - nothing like the real thing - I was told by a nurse friend of mine - could be the SAD finally wearing off as I have been out a lot more this week - that and the old mini-manic depression - nothing like the real disease just moody I guess - always was, always will be - get on with the blog - finish it already!

So I've got my Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean, my Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_thistle and People Like Us "All Together Now" album on media player - what more could a man want in Libya - let's not answer that and just look at pictures of a plant as beautiful and as thorny as the knocker of hell.

Well I took a stroll along the disturbed building ground that is as close to a beach as they get in Gregaresh in Tripoli where our new offices are. There are at least 4 ways to spell Gregaresh by the by as it is a translation from Arabic and there is no standard translation. This can be very confusing at times for us mono-linguals as the vowels tend to be fluid depending on the amount of lunacy in the air. Of course there is no reason why there should be a standard translation - it's Arabic after all not roman alphabet. For example there are 37 different spellings of Colonel Gaddafi's name in English - 32 in the US Library of Congress (thank you Wikipedia) though the Arabic spelling never changes. The joys of travel.

 Anyhow I was trucking along the beach when I came across one of the strangest plants I have seen for many a long day. But why so strange I can imagine you asking. Basically it is a plant that looks like it is made out of crystalized fruit being attacked by sea anemones. Honest injun. It really does look like a Christmass treat - though they don't celebrate here - glistening in the sunshine and sparkling as if sugar frosted - only it turns out that it is a salt frosting - and little bladders full of salt water (looking so much like raspberries) that are used to poison the soil when the plant dies so that other plants can't grow there and only it's own seeds can germinate - nasty little customer and weird to look at.

Mesembryanthemum crystallinum is known as the common iceplant and can be grown as a tender annual in the UK but is destroyed by even the slightest frost so not found wild in the UK that I can find out - hardly surprising really when you think about it.

 
The pictures aren't the best and brightest (but still better than a mobile phone) as it is an old camera that has been much carted around the desert. I should have brought one in myself - or bought another one just for here but it's all money. (Can you tell that the much lauded bonus has disappeared into children's pockets or is growing in the garden - such is life). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesembryanthemum_crystallinum.

Now plants for a future reckon thaty it is edible http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Mesembryanthemum+crystallinum nut seeing the environment it is growing in then I don't think I'll be risking it raw in a salad - acid taste  and salty - not suprisingly.
Acidic - it has the ability to switch to one of the greatest sounding processes in biology (in my ears) at time it can switch it's metabolish to Crassulacean Acid Metabolism.
I love that set of words together though I'm not sure if they are a thrash rock band, a Star Trek baddy or maybe a Goan Trance band like the Shamanic Tribes on Acid (I actually do like their music - Goan trance - Mad Hatters Acid Teaparty is a brill album - I remember ironing the kids school uniforms to this, and also working on the ICAP analysisng water to the gentle strains of the Shamanic tribes on Acid much to the disbelief/annoyance of some of my colleagues. let me emphasise here that I have never taken acid or anying like it but I do like the energising effect of the music on me).

Crassulacean Acid Metabolism - maybe I should forget the flowers and just start the band (25 years too late).

http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/WfHC/Mesembryanthemum/index.html

One of the groups of plants that have done well for us in Tipperty are primroses.  There are several primrose links at the side. I divided the primroses - the Primula vulgaris - earlier this year and the jury is still out as to whether the division was a success.

Successful at the moment are the drumstick primroses - Primula denticulata - also known as the Himalayan primrose. I am specially chuffed with the drumsticks because I planted them as seeds spring time last year. I pricked out the seedlings into the tubs and they grew to a couple of inches across by the end of the year - the ones in the shade did better - as you can see below the ones in the hellebore tub were yellow and spindly by Nov last year. When the leaf rosettes disappeared in the winter I feared the worst (same as for the pyrethrums and a whole load of other plants) as I still haven't got used to dealing with herbaceous perennials ( despite my love of bulbs - somehow the leaves disappearing from bulbs doesn't seem to make me as nervous as does the disapperance of primroses and some of the others. I think it is the mental knowledge/image of the bulb underground which reassures me while the primroses - well there isn't a nice solid mass lurking there under the ground. Or maybe there is and I just cannot visualise it yet.)

Where was I?... oh yes Primulas - they do well in our garden- the clay underneath keeps the soil damp and they like damp soil.
I planted them along a ridges and the ones down the side are thriving while those along the top of the ridge have shrunk and several have died because it is too dry. The primroses at the bottom are the polyanthus type - basically a crose between the primrose type with no stalk and the cowslip type with a stalk.
I also added a couple of cowslips this year to see how they do - they are standing sentinel at the wee hill in fromt of our new rose garden (well - it's an old stump but I'd rther think of it as a hill... cowslip divot maybe.)
These were B&Qs finest - 5 for £5 along with three Stachys - furry lambs ears.
I'm not sure how we can make money from Primulas. I guess we need either to grow and sell as pot plants or try to sell as posies.

We are coming to the end of an non-descript weekend in Tripoli and it is still over 6 weeks before I get to go home so I'm going to cheer myself up with three of my favorite images from my last time home. The first is now the background to our home computer and is one of the best flower photos I have taken to date.
You shopuldn't ned me to tell you that it is the inside oof a tulip but in case you do I will. It is the inside of a red tulip in mmy garden. The focus is just about right to give a sharp colourful picture.

The next is shot through the glass at Mcduff aquarium - it's a small aquarium but one of the best I have seen because all the fish are local - they have all come out of the sea at Macduff - as does the water which was a surprise to me and a mini "told-you-so" for my wife. it is no where near the size of the aquariums at Edinburgh or Hull but the displays are excellent and I have never seen jellyfish displayed so well and so hynoptically - very soothing in a tank where the water circulates vertically.
If i ever make it so rich that I can't get rid of my money fast enough I'll have one of these tanks as a night light... so that will never happen.

Next is a young thornback ray - native to Moray Firth but shot from underneath. It is so young that you can see practically all it's internal organs through it's skin. I like this shot partly because it reminds me of the first ever practical for which I was a demonstrator during my tie at Aberdeen University as a PhD student (didn't complete it.) That first practical was a diseection of rays like these - the grown-up versions. It also remind me of Fiji mermaids and the monk fish fakes and that reminds me of my daughter Jackie so that is a good thing too.

The final shot - well it isn't truely one of my favourite shots but it is my favourite person in my favourite place - my wife in the tarty burn in tipperty - it runs by our garden and our land actually extends to the middle of the burn. Here Jiurie is demonstrating how not to keep your feet dry by wading through a cold burn with the water over the top of your wellies.
For botanical effect it is also showing the yellow forsythia flowers which are thriving along the burn despiute the winter flooding that always occurs (the water gets all the way to the top of the bank and threatens to flood the garden most winters - that would be way above my wife's head. And I'll stop my comments there before I put my foot in it. I am doing whatever the writing equivalent of biting my lip is while I think about the name of the the stream - the Tarty Burn - and resist all temptations to keep writing.

Down tge street from me in Libya is a tree with purple flowers - beautiful purple flowers but it is behind a wall as are almost all the trees in Libya so it is difficult to get a good look at the flowers - can't get a close up photo or get and example to scan. Real shame because it is such a vibrant colour.
 
At the moment the dates are in flower and I want to try to tfollow those in the next 6 weeks or so. Here are the first shots of the flowering spikes.

One of the wasteland shrubs here is a wild form of a tobacco relative - Nicotiana glauca also known as Tree Tobacco or Brazilian Tobacco. I'm not sure if you can make cigarettes or cigars from it and I'm pretty sure that no one here does. The cigarettes are so cheap here - around £2 a pack for Marlboiro and even cheaper for local brands so I'm told. There is no sales tax here. Anyhow as a plant Nicotiana glauca isn't very interesting - it looks very like Buddleia except with smooth leaves -a non-descript shrub which just grows anywhere it can.
However the flowers - honey coloured tubes - are cute and they make a great scan. I can't see this making a decent garden plant so I won't be trying to establish it in the UK at all.
Below is a set of scans showing cross sections of the developing flowers through to the start of the fruit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_glauca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senecio_cineraria

Dusty Miller is one of those DYDs (Damn Yellow Daisies) that I have mentioned several times in the blog.
http://frarys-fresh-flowers.blog.co.uk/2008/12/11/back-to-blighty-5203132/

It's commonly used in the Uk to add unusual colour (silvery-grey furry leaves) to bedding schemes and to hanging baskets. It is also used extensively here in Libya for those same reasons only here it is a perennial and produces those DYDs as above.
In the UK it is used as an annual as it gets woody in the second year but it is more truely a half-hardy perennial. I tried to keep it outside in the half-barrels and it seemed to be doing okay until the snow and heavy frost hit us. Then again in March it looked like there was a possibility that it was coming back again. But in April it was a dry twig again.

I planted seeds this year and they came up really well so I should have a load to plant out and experiment with if we can get them through to maturity - I'm still not sure if my pricking out technique was okay mailnly because I had to prick out before the true leaves were well develioped - too early, too early. Some I had to plant direct out direct into the garden - which id most definitely not recommended.

Dog tooth violets - what to say about them - lovely bulbs with a real lust for life. The ones I planted last year (bought from ebay) - the yellow ones - well some of the roots went down through the bottom of the pot and bulbs started forming under the pot!
However I forgot to take pictures...
So the one I planted in the garden came up great this year.
The ones I missed in March (because I was in Libya) are the purple ones - spotted leaves, upside down flowers, lust for life - ticks three of my boxes (no scent though - that I can detect that is). This was one of the first "exotic" plants I ever bought for the garden three years ago - exotic as in a plant that I had never heard of before.
I was surprised to find out that they are actually native plants to the UK (though maybe not to Aberdeenshire).

Because the purple one did so well I invested in 25 of the yellow dog's tooth violets to plant in the "woodland" garden. I got about 15 in to the woods while I planted the rest into tubs. the ones in the woods have largely disappeared under the agreesive ground elder and creeping buttercups. The ones in the pots - well it looke dlike they had rotteed away because I left them in saucers over the winter which meant that the soil was permenantly damp. I assumed that they had rotted away until I planted out the remains this spring and found about 2/43 of the bulbs alive and well. Those then went into a different part of the garden - edge of the rockery and next to the dicentra - and they came up trumps as you can see below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythronium

You are priviliged to see the first pictures of what will become a great tourist attraction in years to come, an attraction they will write songs about.

When it's spring again, I'll bring you then,
Tulips from Tipperty...

Okay, so it's not quite the bulb fields of Holland but then even Osram had to start with a single bulb - and Rome started on a single hill so the tipperty Tulip Hills will, one day, be one of the modern wonders of the world... maybe... I can dream can't I?

 Let's have a quick look at the first pick of the tulips in tipperty - rembrandts and parrots - nice. In the bottom picture you can see the tulip vase we bought in Amsterdam - a vase specifically designed for seven tulips.  Been a decent year for the tulips too - warm but really it is the warmth last summer that we needed. Hopefully the current warm spell will let the bulbs swell and build up so that we get an even better display next year.

Last thing I did before in the garden before I left was plant the heathers from Speyside heather centre. They were £7.99 for 6 - so £1.33 each for about 2 years old plants. I also bought 3 lots of heather collections from Homebase on that day at £3.99 for 6 - that 66p per plant - half the price - and 12 of the 18 plants were the same ones as those from Speyside but for half price! Admidtedly the Homebase ones are smaller - probably only 18 months old but they are half the price... grrrrrrrr.

The white/pink tipped ones are really nice looking. Hopefully the weather will be damp for the next few days so that they get a chance to bed in nicely even though I ain't there - sorry folks - I know that it is the May Day long weekend int he Uk but my heathers come before the other 60 million people with a day off.

You can see the tree heathers in this photo too - some are still pretty scabby following the winter but they are alll growing so that's a big phew from me.

My own heather cuttings are actually thriving - they are now 18 months old and the only survivors from around 50 cuttings I made in Nov 07. Clearly I did something wrong (probably because I didn't use Ericaeous compost - acidic compost - just standard B&Q multipurpose compost) as my plants are tiny even after 18 months compared to the ones from homebase etc. Maybe its lack of fertilizers that did it.
Only one of my successful cuttings is Calluna - the other three are Daboecia cantabricia also known as Irish heath or St Dabeoc's Heath and closely related to the Erica's. I prefer Callunas - the heathers - with the smaller flowers rather than the large flowered Ericas but then that is just me and Erica's make a great splash of colour in the spring. Daboecia's are summer flowering so maybe they'll fill in the slight gap between the end of the Ericas and the start of the Calluna flowering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daboecia