Frary's Fresh Flowers

Following on from yesterday's post re the RHS Aberdeen show - here are the photos to prove that we bough the succulents... as if you need any proof. Most are Kalanchoes or Sedums as I said - with one Agave, a couple of cacti and one I habve no idea about at the moment and can't look up at 23:37 at night because... well I'm tired.
Can you guess which one I can't identify in any way?

Also here are the pictures of the kalanchoe plantlets that were brought back/puchased. Already - in only 1 week they are sowing roots and tryiong to get into the cacti compost (lots of sand in cactus composts). I'll keep you updated.

Today we visited the Flower Show for the Royal Horticultural Society of Aberdeen at Hazlehead (why is it not Hazelhead like it is pronounced?) Above are a selection of photos just top prove that we we there - I'll save most of the photos for when I'm back in Libya.
One noticeable thing (for me and jiurie) was that we had many of the same flowers in our garden and many of ours are at least as good as the ones on display.
HOWEVER before I get accused of merely growing my own buig head instead of big heads of cauliflowers, we went on the second day (Sunday) after the judging (Saturday) so I am sure that many of the roses and violets and a few other things were much nicer on the sSaturday when they were bveing judged before they faded. We are tempted to join and try to enter stuff for next year to build up a rep. Tempted.

Also I bought a load of succulents for 50p each (should have been 10 for £5 but I got home and only found 9 in the bag - doh!). The carrion flower pictures from last week and the Kalanchoes have revived an interest for me from thirty... thirty five years ago. I've also bought and sown seeds from eBay - some lithops seeds (living stones), aloe seeds, and Strepelia seeds (carrion flowers) - along with a selection of kalanchoe plantlets (some from eBay and a few from Libya smuggled in - not in a condom that I swallowed). Succulents tend to be extremely easy to propagate once you have them so here's another possibility though I don't think that there is a load of money to be made from something that is so easily propagated.

We have just discovered a new mint on the far side of the burn - the sheep side. We have a bit of a dispute as to what sort it is.

From the arrangement of the flowers - the round bunches of flowers at the leaf nodes - it looks very like Penny Royal (Mentha pulegium) from all the books. However Penny Royal has tiny leaves - 1/4 to 1/2 inch leaves so it can't be penny royal as these are the full size typical mint leaves at one to two inches long.
My opinion keeps changing as to what sort of mint it is varying between:
Peppermint - M. piperita - very similar to the picture in Keble Martin but nothing like the picture in Roger Phillips Wild Flowers of Britain - plus it isn't branches at the top like all the pictures of peppermint are though it does branch further down. Also there is no purple tint to the stem or leaves.
Water Mint - M. aquatica, except that the flower bunches taper up the stem which water mint doesn't - that comes to a blunt stop with only 2 or 3 whorls (that's the technical name - whorl not bunch)
M gentilis which has no common name (not this last one as the stamens are out of the flower).

If forced to make a choice I'm going to have to go with peppermint as it has the most similar flowers and habitat (drains).

Following up - I have finally decided that the miont must be M. arvensis - corn mint. I bought some peppermint from a local garden centre yesterday and it was definately red stemmed and the leaves were darker and a different shape to our mint therefore I am convinced now that we have corn mint... probably.

Now our garden mint is almost definately Spearmint, Mentha spicata - the flowers are absolutely tiny - more of a haze than flowers. Also we have oineapple mint in the garden (recently introduced by me for hanging baskets and for a different variety - it has nioce varigated leaves.) but I don't have a photo to hand - will do that for a later blog.

Let me remind you of the old stalag - the "rabbit proof" area of garden I had fenced of to allow us to grow veggies and rabbit-edible flowers. The fence was between 1 and 2 feet high made of chicken wire. It certainly worked for a year or so as we manageed to raise a few cabbages, carrots and strawberries inside.
And then came along the super bunnies who were able to leap tall fences with a single bound and then I tried to reinforce the fences with the old double glazing and ended up with the monstrosity above... diidn't work.
So now I've gone to the super stalag. The fences are atleast three feet tall - closer to 4 feet in some areas. If that doesn't work, well I could get motion sensitive spotr lights on the top of each fence post (at £.15 each - that's nearly £20 for the set up - plus three more rolls of wiore to give a grand total of another £40 added to the costs.) and put in a double fence with Tess or arthur between the two fences to patrol the boundry.

Anyhow if the super stalag doesn't work I have a choice - either take all the bunnies into a nearby wood and shoot them all or just give up on the bunny-sensitive plants and stick to nettles, thistles, mints and herbbs.
I think it'll be the later - abandon the rabbit free area and just try to live in rural harmony with the little... bunnies.

Today we went to the sands of Forvie again only this time we came down from the North - the Collieston end towards Forvie instead of up from the South like last time. We didn't make it all the way to the church as there was too much to see on the way - most notably my wife singing Wuthering Heights.

I think that scared everyone away as we never saw anyone else... tell a lie we saw one woman and her dog right at the start when I think she went to mow a meadow, one woman and her dog, spot, who went to mow a meadow.
Where was I, we? Sands of Forvie. Most of the piccies I'll keep for Libya blogging as there were several interesting plants.
We made it all the way to Hackley bay but didn't walk down as that was just before our turnaround point.

Okay - one of the interesting plants we found was a white buttercup. Beacuse this was not in the water we can be fairly certain that it is not a crowsfoot and upon further investigation I find that it isn't even a buttercup! It is the Grass of Parnassus (sdescribes as stunningly beautiful by Roger Philips in Wild Flowers of Britain... beautiful but not stunningly I would say.)
Incidentally it is called the Grass of Parnassus even though it isn't a grass as a reference to Parnassus being the Ancient greek home of Poetry - ie this is the grass of poetry.

It's a real shame about the grass being across the flower in the final photo as the focus was spot on so it would have made a great photo. In the first picture - the whorls of anthers are quite stunning, very unusual.

Today was wet... raining all afternoon. It has turned into a real wildlife day- firstly the damn rabbits - I coaught them inside the Stalag - as i ran towards the patch two of them raced for the fence and, without a blink of an eye l;eap over wire fences at least two feet high!!! Two feet high!
They have devastated all the flowers I planted just before I left - the brussel sprouts have disappeared totally - every last one that I risked 2 hours of sissling rain and pneumonia to plant. The violets I had raised from seed - absent without a chance. The seeds I planted - fiorget it,, the strawberries bare patches, Luittle gets.

And then this morning I watched one rabbit stroll across the gravel drive and jump - without so much as a run-up - onto the top of one of the half barrels - from the drive you have to include the kerb so it must be close to 2 foot againm. It then santered along the tops of the barrels and nestled in the lilies.
AAAAAAAAAAAAggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

Now I also had a really good wildlife experience today - I watched young swallows practice their flying skills. For some reason they really love the shape of the top of our drive - I think it crests like a wave to the road so that there is a great updraft. Yesterday a dozen of them were there for around three hours - that's the first video. The next day they were only there for around 2 hours before the rain got heavier but there were more - at least 2 dozen bombing around. I thought at first that it might be an insect/food thing but after watching for half an hour or so I was convinced that it was just purely flying practise. They bomb over the crest of the drive and either twist and dive back up after a meter or so or streak all the way down the drive dive and return or swerve and flitter past the windows or over the house and return over the crest. Occassionally some rest on the phone lines while others land on the roof opposite have a bereather and then set off again. It is just like watching teenagers with their bikes or their skateboards but with out the nopise and the menace. For once I was glad to see dozens of youngsters hanging around a street corner and just messing around having fun.

 
There is a definitely a common theme to the flower garden at the moment - lilies. There are lilies all over the tubs - and the flowers are lovely. There is only one problem with lilies... okay - only one I am going to write about - the smell attracts flies. They are like carrion flowers in that they attract flies to pollinate them. It must be something behind the sweet smell - like a carrion undertone. At the moment it is largely hoverflies that are swarming all over them. which is good because their larvaey are predators which keep other pests (particularly aphids) off the plants such as the roses. 

Of course the other common problem with lilies is reported to be that the pollen stains clothes etc. Our resident flower arranger (ie. Mrs Frary Fresh Flowers) has taken to snipping off the anthers which is a real shame as they are attractive and decorative features in themselves.
 
Finally I noticed something about the lilies in the display on the dining table which I had never noticed before. The speckles around the throat of the lily are not merely decorative. Each of the dark spot is a lttle torn - I guess thorn is the right term. That means that it is difficult for a fly to walk into the centre to grab the nectar so, I suppose, they need to fly out to be above the spikes. That means that they are more likely to hit the dangling anthers and rub some pollen on their backs and thus more likely to fertilise the next lily they visit. Ingenious and something I had never noticed before. If you have the chance run you fingers over the speckles


 

Today is a travel day so I have to make this a quick blog. Jiurie has been working hard on the garden (she tells me) so I thought that I ought to show you what I expect to see when I return.
Above is clearly what it will look like inside the stalag with all the rabbits excluded - neat rows and lots of greenery.; You can see her above admiring her handy work - all the fleece covering the brussel sprouts and lettuce, with the weed mats below some and a fine crop of onions in the back.
The flowers in the front are clearly going to look like the shot below with the red lupins and the vibrant blue delphiniums - just right for cutting. In the back you can see the new conservatory (I wish) and the potting shed/greenhouse for seedlings.


 
Now the gravel garden in front of the greenhose will have taken off in the wet and warmth but I didn't plant any lavender there so I don't know how Jiurie got so much lavender there - maybe she transplanted it all from the nursery beds. Similarly we didn't plant any globe artichokes this year as I was waiting to see whether they would come up from last year  - they are supposed to be perennials - which they are around the mediterranean but I have shown pretty conclusively that they are not fully hardy up here in Aberdeenshire. Not sure where she got the ones below from.

As i am sure you have realised these are actually from Balmoral's vegetable and flower garden. It is quite a big plot considering that it really only has to support the Royals for a couple of months (and their servents... sorry... staff and the rest of the ground staff).  And once aggain they are copyiong us in their selection of plants - rhubarb patches, lambs ears,  sedums (ice plants), - including a few purple ones. but they do beat us in that they have got their squashes already on the grow while mine are still starting (and possibly been and gone by the time I get bak - had no success with pumpkins so far - not there long enough to really take care of them) but I gues the biggest difference is the chooks. Seems that the royals keep chickens which are used in the spring to pick over the vegetable gardens - they eat the seeds and pick out the sprouting annual weeds. Maybe, in this one case, we should kep up with the Windsors and get a few chickens (and maybe a pig) for the back way. It would certainly make the barbies a lot cheaper though I'm not sure that I could barbecue a full pig on our Wollworths kettle barbie. (Just think, future generations will be denied having a Woolworths barbie, or a packet of Woolies pick and mix... the horror, the horror).

And finally, to almost finish off all the photies from Balmoral veggie garden (still ones of the garden cottage to post) are a couple of shots of the long greenhouse from the back taken oven the garden of the live-in gardener (like we are) including some magnificaent lupins (though obviously not as good as ours). As I said there are remarkable parallels between Balmoral and Tipperty - I'm sure the Windsors must keep driving by to pinch ideas from us...

Daisy, tansy, mayflower, chamomile, feverfew, what do these all have in common - apart from being native flowers (I hesitate to use the word weed as it is unnecessarily perjorative... yes I did swallow a dictionary - a dictionary with wrong definitiuons so I can use use big words wrongly - though i do tend to go for Humpty Dumpty view when I use big words -
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

Of course when other people use big words 'wrongly' then, like all pedants, I immediately switch to Alice's side.
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all.")

Where was I.... Weeds - oh yeah... sunshine flowers. It seems like the classic flowers that all (British) kids start with is the daisy style - yellow disk in the middle, white petals. For some reason it seems to be more basic that the full yellow dandelion or the sunflower - maybe the contrast is the key - or the white versus the green background. Certainly the disy has to be one of the first flowers that most kids see or are aware of as it is one of the few flowers that live in a lawn and also not be hated (like dandelions or moss seem to be) by all and sundry. There is something about daisies that people like.

There is also something about the colour scheme that is very attractive to plants/pollinators. As such we have a few around the garden.
The first - the archetype - is Bellis perennis. Well I too have been guilty of ignoring it to a large extent. In my earlier days when I was a teenage spending long summer lunch times on the school playing fields talking to my girlfriend and to others - solving the woos of the world (or more usually discussing music and the bands we were supposed to listen to rather than the bnands we actually liked to listen to) or revising for examms - and when the kids were pre-teens taking juice and sandwiches to seaton Park (before we ever had a car) then we used to make many, many daisy chains and it is still the flower of summer. Only in summer is the grass dry enough to sit on without getting a wet bum.
Daisies - the more I think about them the more I like them - the originals not the genetic freaks that are so often planted nowadays.

What else have we got... well there is an anthemis in the alpine tub...erm species.... erm.... no idea. (Should have but don't.

Another Anthemis we definately have (in one of the lavender nursery beds) is Anthemis arvensis, aka corn chamomile or mayweed, scentless chamomile. Feathery fronds and a nice big daisy head.
Right next to it - on the other nursery bed is a huge great feverfew plant. For a long time I thiought that it was tansy but finally settled on feverfew. The white ray of petal should have told me (but I was flicking through a flower book when I realised my error)as tansy has no petals - similar relationship to mayweed with the white florets and pineapple mayweed which has not petals.
Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium is a perennial in the same genus as tansy - they are closely related. When you brush feverfew you get a great waft of fragrance - a smell a bit like mmedicine.

Finally the biggest daisy flower we have is also one that was one of the very first perennials we got through the internet for the garden maybe three years ago. I'm pretty sure that it is an ox-eye daisy -
Leucanthemum vulgare aka margaritte. What i wouldn't give for a margueritta now - even one of the poxy non-alcholoic ones in Dubai - a frozen marguerita - like an alcoholic slushy - only Libya is dry i.e. no alcohol and Ramamdan started at the weekend so double plus no alcohol and no drunks at all during daylight (though that doesn't apply/get enforced for us heathens.)

now I'm going to have to go and have a sprite I've made myself thirsty (tomorrow I can have the real thing - though I won't after a 6hour flight I'll be lucky if I get a bacon sandwich and/or a quick snog).

Libya is all over the news today thanks to the return of the Lockerbie bomber. I won't comment except to note that no-one in Libya believes that this paticular person was guilty.
Anyhow I managed to king of fix the company camera to give slightly better pictures and snapped a few coming back from work on thursday.
Above is a weed growing around the base of one of the many tree that are grown in the pavements to give shade and basically to force you on to the road. The trees are clipped so that there is only around 4 to 5 feet below them and it is almost impossible to wlak beneath them.
Anywho this is (I believe.... 95% certain) a species of  Pallenis but not the most common one which is P spinosa (this one didn't have the spines on the bracts). These are closely related to sunflowers. ... possibly it is a type of marigold or aster - but definately part of the Aster group... but I'm getting off the point which is that they are a lovely yellow weed to walk by each morning.

Other flowers which I have posted about before are the hottentot figs and the bouganvilleas - i found a yellow one (well yellowy orange gold bouganvilleas) so here are the photos to compensate for the previous blurry ones.

We have just reached 20,000 visitors to the blog - many thanbks to you all - let me celebrate by showing you one of the weirdest flowers I have come across for many a day and it is in Libya naturally.
Have a look at this one in the pot of succulents that I posted yesterday. ou can see the two big buds which remind me of seaurchins (the same 5 fold symetry.. why does that spelling look wrong?.... because it should be symmetry I guess) - so there are the two sea-urchin buds maybe the size of ping-pong balls and there is an open flower at th back. Have a look at the flower in detail.

It's like it has been made out of tweed - the same sort of texture and colours - now I am going to have to go to Wikipedia and on to try to identify it. I'm going to start with Euphorbias (as many of the 'old world' succulents are euphorbias and then progress from there. See you soon, honeypies, honey lambs, honey dears.)
Ended up that Wikipedia was no use in this case and I had to turn to http://www.succulentstreasures.com.  I am 99% certain that is a species of Stapelia - aka the carrion flowers, toad flowers or starfish flowers. Supposedly they smell of carrion - rotting flesh.
These flowers are around six inches across so I don't think that they are S gigantea where the flowers are up to 16 inches across - that would be something to see - sounding a bit like a rafflesia - gian tflowers that stink of rotting flesh - if I win the lottery or Frary's Flowers really take off then the forest of Indonesia woiuld be on the list of places to visit (after Madagascar - see yesterday's post - and Tanzania - the Serengeti - always wanted to go on safari - that will happen one day I think.)

So if I have to plump for a species (which I don't) then I'd go for S gettliffei - almost definitely. I guess I should then dedicate this post to my youngest - the Nooka look-a-like as her favourite saying (at one time when she was around eleven) was "get a life".
One day i will, one day.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stapelia

http://cacti-succulents.suite101.com/article.cfm/toad_starfish_or_carrion_plant

 
This is more like what I expected to see - loads of succulents (though not arranged around a mini-pond). The place is dry - oh how dry iot is - maybe 2 weeks to on month of rain this tyear - but well humid at the bottom thanks to the high heat over the mediterranean which is evaporating the sea and getting it blown over us. It's a very sweaty period at the moment - any how dry, yeah, averages around 15 inches a year almost all between November and February. The rest of the year is pretty well dry - we are on the Northern edge of the Sahara and you don't have to far to be in real desert. Before I came here I would have thought that Tripoli was real deart bu having seen Amal and Dubai, havimg flown over Saudi and Egypt last week - well Tripoli seems like an oasis at times - there are your actual trees about which do not get any artifical water. So in this dry climate i expected to see a lot more cacti and succulents but, apart from the big opuntias - prickly pers - used as fences or escaped onto scrub land there isn't many around.

These are in planters outside shops in Gergaresh and the most prominent are Kalanchoes.
Now these have a place in my heart as they are some of the very firsy house ploants/succulents I grew when I was around 11. Our biology teacher was very much into cacti and succulents and gave everyone in the class a couple opf plantlets from a few Kalanchoes. I gey mine and never really looked back. (Mr Roberts - a very enthusiastic teacherwho i also had for A-level biology where we dissected rats, toads and earthworms as I remember. His nickname - Ratty Roberts. I think this was because of the annual lining up of preserved rats along the side bench (covered with cottonwool dipped in formaldehyde - I can still remember the smell - I bet that isn't allowed now.)

The tall skinny plant on the left of the display is Kalanchoe delagoensis aka Mother of Millions, the chandalier plant or Mother of thousands. The plantlets grow at the end of the leaves and along the margins. if the plantlets remain on the plant for long then they start to sprout roots while still attached. Once they fall off (which is caused very easily they can be planted or grow naturally. In fact it is difficult for them not to grow on any sort of soil - only in very wet/damp soil will they not grow because they rot.
Unfortunately i didn't get good shots of the Kalanchoes because a) the cmera is only 4M pixels and b) the camera is rubbish even though I have now levered off the plastic lens cover which had become clouded (due to the UV) so that the photos were cloudy.

I'm not too sure that the middle one is a kalanchoe but the top and the bottom one definitely are.
Bottom one is K. daigremontiana (probably - 90& sure) aka Devil's backbone, Alligator plant, mexican hat plat or also Mother of Thousands. You can jusg about make out the plantlets on the edges of the leaves.
Both of these Kalanchoes are native to Madagascar (which I didn't think was so dry though it is on a lattitude with The Kalhahari and the drier parts of South Africa) - turns out that there are significant areas of dry shrub land in the south and sout west. Madagascar is on of the places I would like to visit/work in because it is so unique biologically. Unfortunately it is too late to see the Roc - the giant elephant bird of Sinbad's tales - or the Dodos of the cloeby islands but there are still lemurs and many interesting plants, I am certain.
maybe, maybe.
Kalanchoes - Not that it is too relevant for their position in Tripoli but these Kalanchoes are extremely toxic to grazing animals. They have become noxious weeds in many places especially Austrailia (hot and dry just how Kalanchoes like it).
 I think I might propogate some - a lot and then plant them out as bedding plants for the summer in Tipperty. I am almost certain that they aren't hardy but they are so easily propagated that they might be worth using as a toxic weapon.
Hopefully they are toxic to rabbits too. We shall see, we shall see.

http://www.northwestweeds.nsw.gov.au/mother_of_millions.htm

Strange time to be thinking and posting about Narcissus but I am doing so for three reasons.
Firstly Van Meuwen sent out an email flyer about buying your bulbs for next spring... too late, already did it last week.

Then I heard this tune and it took me a long while to work out while it was so familiar.

It is called Narcissus and eventually I remembered that the tune was that just by Norman Wisdom and Joyce Greenfeld for their laughing song.

And finally i have been walking by a lily outside one of the shops in Tripoli on the gregaresh road and it is just like some mutant daffodil.

All three put together in an act of sychronicity told me that it might be appropriate to put up an out of season post about Narcissi and daffodils. These remind me very much of the thalia daffodils that we have (photo of which I have put at the end) but as you can see the details of the stamens (the anthers that produce the pollen) is totally different in that in this mystery plant the stamens are fused to the trumpet.
Mystery no more - it is a sea daffodil - Pancratium maritimum. (Never heard of sea daffodils? Me neither until I looked in "Wild Flowers of the mediterranean" by David Burnie. I might look for some seed pods as I pass by).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_daffodil

As the next shot in our battle against the bunny mowers (remembering that we have already planted rabbit resistant spikey, spiney, bad tasting shrubs, erected a 2 ft fence round 1/4 of the garden, reinforced the fence with double glazing panels, grow plants in 1/2 whisky barrels and generally do anything we can think of to disrupt the little buggers - short of poisoining, trapping or shooting - though I am considering a BB airgun or a cross bow for my birthday in a couple of days time - sustainable food for the pot - I will eat everything I kill - if I ever do it which I'm not sure of...) given all these steps the next logical step was to arm the son/daughter-in-law's dog, Arthur.
We are giving him special training so that he can be a Gladiator and beat down on the bunnies.

Unfortunately he seems confused at the moment and looks to attack anything that is jumping or is on the floor - anything like sons and daughters in sack races, or wife's on water slides. I think maybe he needs a uniform to inspire him - something similar to what Tess has been wearing - pink housecoat but can't find the picture at the moment - because Tess is a Jack Russell and they were bred to go down holes after rabbits and rats... On the other hand maybe we need a dog dedicated to rabbit patrol - greyhound maybe - except I read that they are very lazy - which would suit me re. exercise but maybe not if they are too lazy to catch the rabbits.

Anywho - to return to pests - it seems like several of my recent posts have been about pests. Well's here's something I spotted on the inside of my greenhouse the other month - intriguing trails in the algae on the inside of the window. Now I knew what they were (I used to be a biology student 30 years ago... 30 years!)but do you? - without scrolling down to the subsequent photos?

The neat little triangles arranged in a path are snail trails. The snail has a rasping tongue called a radula which it use to scrape the algae off the glass. As it moves along it swings its head from side to side licking the glass - I think it licks top to bottom so from the base of the triangle to the point.
It is really quiote fascinating (and quite gross) to watch them do it from the other side of the glass. Which reminds me of a scene in the film "Microcosmos" with the snails mating - it was the closest thing I have ever seen to animal pron (not involving humans that is) and really quite disturbing.

Snails - until I came to Aberdeen the only land snails I had ever seen in the UK were the common garden snail - the big brown one. Where I grew up in Grimsby I never saw a stripey snail (We did see pond snails in the ditches and of course we saw the sea snails - the whelks - or rather the shells of the whelks - on the beach at Cleethorpes) but there was only one sort of land snail. Helix aspersa (there are a couple of pseudonyms too). I knew that it was closely related to the Roman Snail - the edible snail - but I didn't realise how closely - and I hadn't realised that they were edible. I wonder if my wife and kids would turn their noses up at boiled garden snails. Fortunately I don't eat shellfish - or very rarely, when I can afford scallops which are about the only ones worth the effort - so I wouldn't be a good test subject to see if they are nice.... I'll let you know if we decide to give it a go.
Stripey snails - Capaea hotensis - the white lipped snail - I find they very beautiful - the shells are a bit of a marvel but they are not that common around here so I don't as annoyed by them as I do by the common garden snails. Even so - I still can't bring my self to crush the snails - it seems wrong and when you do crush them they look like real gut buckets inside - so nortmally when i find a snail I will throuw it well over the fence. That way it has a fighting chance of survival but not at the cost of my plants.

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

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

So that's rabbits and snails for the pot - maybe we can eat for free for the whole year at this rate. If I can just persuade one oif the farmers sheep back into the garden... (it has happened before, it has happened.)

I read that last week there was an invaison of ladybirds in the Uk and that put me in mind of the mid seventies. We had a coupke of absolutely gorgeous suimmers and each time there was a great glut of grenflies - they were everywhere for a week or two - if you went out on your bike (like I used to back then) you would regularly get a gob full of greenflies or acouple in the eys (and they really sting when they get in your eyes.).  And in both years around 2 or 3 weeks later we had invaisons of ladybirds - all over eveything - washing on the line, cars (throats and eyes as well) millkions and miilions of them coming over from the continent and choimping on the greenflies. I remember it well as it was the first summer I had a girlfriend so would have been '75 and the second year I took part in the Cleethorpes parade on the Red Cross float (my girlfriend then same one as year before) was very into the red cross. I was one of the guys walking along and collecting money in a bucket for the charity and I well remember the ladybirds - ah happy days.
Well this year I missed the invaison but we did have our own glut of greenflies in early July. You can see above how they coated the climbing rose in the front garden. I thought that they might ruin the plant but they didn't - the pink rodse came through relatively unscathed as you can see below. The pink roses are from this plant (while the orange and red are from the roses in the tubs that I bought Jiurie for valentine's day - Rose plants - the gift that keeps on giving.

Also are two recording of rose songs taken from music boxes of the 1890s - that's over 110 years ago - known as the Gay 90's - there's a feew popular tunes in there connected with floweras that I'll post over the coming weeks. I find the tunes really restful. Anywho, the first is the last rose o summer which hopefully I will get to see as I will be home a week today.

While the second is called the wild Irish rose. Doesn't really remind me of anything in particular - not even my wife.

Anyway enjoy the tunes, the photos and relax in the warmth of the summer. (39C and around 90% humidity in Tripoli today... pretty similar to Aberdeen ... well it's throwing it down with rain in Aberdeen so that's 100% humidity I guess and around 11C or so is a bit like 39.... if you squint and screw up you face really tight. )

Here are some photos I did not expect to be able to bring you - the second year of the copper maples in the tubs. You  can see from the photo above from February that they were reduced to twigs over winter - pretty much as expected when you consider that maples and sycamores are deciduous - but they were scary days for me to see if they would come back, and slowly but surely they did and over the next six months to August they got bigger and leafier (when half of them did).

By the start of july when i left they were thriving so that I could take a good textural photo in the rain the day before I left.
Anf then the damn rabbits have got to the. My Mrs has told me that she has seen the bbbbbuggers on top of the tub chewin' away at the maples, they are stripping the leaves. Now she has seen them we have the evidence - that's a good two feet up they have to jump just to chew at my prize Acers - there's a whole damn lawn out there for them to chew on but, no, they have to leap up and attack these.
I hate them.
I suppose you realise... this means war.

Tipperty imitates nature , the Queen imitates Tipperty - it's the old. old story, as old as three years ago when we moved into Tipperty and got our first garden for 20 years.
The two flowers above - actually might be the same flower in two different photos- above are from Newburgh golf course on the banks of the River Ythan. They are a garden escapee of G platypetalum - the broad-petalled geranium. It certainly shows the veins of the broadleaf (which aren't seen on the meadow cranesbill Geranium pratense which is the only wild blue geranium/cranesbill found in Scotland. In fact it could be an escape from our garden as the Tarty Burn runs byy our garden into the Ythan estauray maybe one or two miles away from the golf course. Asyou can see from the piccies below from the garden in Tipperty that ours are almost identical to those on the golf course.

Now I'm wondering whether to discuss the difference between:
Geraniums (aka cranesbills - the seed pod looks like a long thin bill of a crane.... and when do we ever see a crane in the UK?) and
geraniums (aka pelargoniums aka storksbill - the plants that we all seem to know as geraniums for hanging baskets and bedding displays - the ones with the brown rings on the leaves - ditto when do we ever see a stork in the UK - once in a blue moon when one gets blown off course... talking of which I once saw one that had been blown offcourse at the mouth of the congo in Soyo - another tick on the list of things to do).
they were once in the same genera and who could tell the difference between a cranesbill and a storks bill. You can kind of see where the name comes from when you look at some of the flowers and especially the seed pods (have to update this later).
Below is another geranium right next to the blues - not sure which this is.
 

Then above we have the large patch of Geranium dissectum that is in the corner and covers the daffodils/snowdrop
Geranium dissectum (Cut-leaved Cranesbill) . The insects, bees (yeah!) and cabbage white butterflies (buggers) were certainly loving the variety of geraniums we had in the front garden.

Oh yeah - the Queen - well you can see that they have copied us yet again at Balmoral with the geraniums in front of the castle - the copycats.

Today has been a bit of a nostalgia fest for me on Youtube fololowing somethoughts whileI was trying to write the next 1000 words of my latest novel. I have called it Nymphs and Shepherds - or rather that is the working title. This is actually the 9th novel - none published yet - and for a few ideas I opened youtube and then looked for the music - Nymphs and Shepherds. Here it is from 1929 0 the Manchester Schools Children's Choir

Well I went on to look at soime childrens' TV themes and  I watched some old TV shows. As I watched  Pogles Wood (shown at the top) I wondered how much of an influence that has had on my mind - on my imagination. The plant and bilberry wine and thw whole rustic atmosphere - that extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people - like in many Grimms fairy tales where the extraordinary things happen to wood cutters or soldiers walking home from war (the tinder-box is a particualr favorite of mine - "eyes as big as dinner plates" is a phrase that seems to haunt me for no known reason).  And a belief in faeries (in the style of Froud and Lee's book Faeries rather than Enid Blytons fairys... also influences by my surname of course) - I think I actually do believe in faeries - that's one saved - as nature spirits - more than I believe in any other supernatural beings - don't believe in ghosts, aliens, gods, angels or any other of the etheral beings but faeries... well there is something about faeries (and dragons and mermaids) that seems more real to me. Manifestations of natural energy in the world around us. The fairytales taht women love seem to be mainly about Princesses or girls that are high born and fallen only to rise again whereas the ones I like are about ordinary people whi have ordinary adventures. I wonder if women relate to Princesses whereas men do not relate so well to Princes. I do have a few talents that are out of the ordinary but I have never thought that I was a prince - just an ordinary person waiting for extra-ordinary things to happen (and there is the rub - I've spent far too many years waiting instead of doing - asleep as as so many of us). Anyhow Pogles Wood seem to have had a major influence on my imagination.

Pogles Wood was an early animation by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and thinking about it naturally led onto the great and wonderful Noggin the Nog. I've a feeling that this has had an even greater influence on me - not so much on my imagination (as that is definately stuck in Pogle's wood land) but on my actual life.. I think that I may have modelled my voice and manner on Oliver Postgate's awesome narration - at oncewarm and modulated while still able to add mystery and depth to an ordinary tale. Gravitas - that is what I have aimed for and I think I have achieved vocally... How else has it influenced my life? Vikings - Noggin is quite clearly a viking and I have always seen myself in that world - I (and my dad and younger brother and sister) were all born blonde - and all turned into mouse blondes over time - whereas my mother and older brotherboth had black hair. Blonde hair - you have to gravitate towards the vikings don't you? Grimsby (where i was born and raised) was originally a viking town and my two grandfathers were both deep sea fishermen (though I didn't know one of them) so they went out to sea in ships into the dark North lands to return with bounty. My family are actually from South lincolnshire (Partney and around there from Mother's side) and East Anglia (a whole load of Frary's in Norfolk) and all moved to Grimsby probably in the early nineteen hundreds following the movement of the Yarmouth herring Fleet up to Grimsby to become the deep sea Cod and Haddock fishermen but I still see myself as a Northerner rather than a displaced East Anglian. So yeah - I have placed myself firmly in the Viking milleau (but haven't gone overboard with it of course). This means that I have always looked North as the desired direction. Although I was real excited to hear the Polynesians described as the vikings of the pacific... my Mrs is a Polynesian... but that is false as the Polynesians went much further and over greater oceans than the Vikings who tended to hug the coast lines (as did most ships in them days) or went to lands/is;ands they knew were there. On the other hand I'm sure tat most Polynesian

Dragons - the only successful thing I have ever written (a children's play) has been about dragons... and my favorite books that I have written have had a fair smattering of dragons in them. It's a motive that seems to resonate in my work.

And I guess one of the most influential things from Noggin is Nooka.

Nooka is Noggins bride from the far northlands - an Eskimo Princess. I hadn't noticed until today that Jiurie, my wife, bears a remarkable resemblance to Nooka! (okay I'm sure that Freud would put the resemblence more down to my Ma than Nooka - with the round faces, similar body types and black hair) but i reckon that Jiurie is very like Nooka. Actually my youngest daughter Judy looks even more like Nooka but I do not want to go there.

www.smallfilms.co.uk/ nogginnooka.htm

After two days of exsquite but tiny flowers I decided to go for something big, brash and typically tropiclal today. these are yesterdays photos of Oleander and of the four different colours of Bouganvilleas that are commonly found in Tripoli - white, purple, orange and red.
unfortunately the pictures have revealed how useless the camera is - every single picture is blurry - probabluy mould growing on the lens or just general degrading of the plastic lens cover due to UV, heat, condensation etc.
I was thinking of buying a camera for myself to use in Libya but if this is what heppens to the company camera after only 3 or 4 year I don't think that it is worth it. A decent camera would cost a pound a week over three years - a good camera would be 2 pounds - whether I use it or not and I'm not sure I want to spend that much on maybe half a dozen photos a week... I'll have to think about this - maybe get new one for home and then use the old one at home here. It's a pity the photos are so blurred - bourganvillea is taken for granted as it iis often up high or in the distance so ius just a blurr of tropical colour (or subtropical in Libya's case) whereas the flowers are quiote interesting inthat the main coour actually comes from the leaves surrounding the flower and not from the flower itself.
Well i fing that interesting.

I think that this is the final few photos worth showing from the Linn of Dee. These are two plants of the genus Galium.The plant belowis known to almost everyone in the British isles with one of its many names such as cleavers, bedstraw  or goosegrass. Around Aberdeen the name seems to be sticky willy. The yellow plant is also a Galium ( I think) - lady's bedstraw - G verum. So that's bedstrraw and lady's bedstraw together - Va va voom, though my Mrs was fast asleep in the car so that's pretty much all you can expect after 24 years of marriage ain't it?
I don't know why lady's bedstraw should be yellow... being generous I suppose it because a lady's bedstraw should be spun from gold (shades of Rumpelstitskin there - I'm just readung a brilliant book about fairy tales called Spinning Straw into Gold - I think I mentioned this already) nothing to do with the colour of urine I hope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady%27s_Bedstraw Interesting article from Wikipedia about Frigg and why the plants are called bedstraw (because they are dried and used to  stuff mattresses because the smell is repellent to fleas).
The one above is also a Galium - probably G. mollugo. aka Hedge bedstraw aka G album.
It is another plant where the flowers are tiny but look really sweet when you look closely - a pur off white with 4 anthers (pollen producers) like alien's antennae with those pistils sticking up in the middle.

Not much of a post today but it is warm here... hot... in the twenties at 9 at night and I've got to go outside and look at the Peresid meteors.

Here some pictures of a plant that is very frequently overlooked and dismissed as the flowers are small - not tiny but small. This is a speedwell - probably Veronica arvensis - the common speedwell, aka Corn.. Wall... or Rock speedwell.
Those above are from the Burn O' Vat, those below from the Linn of Dee. You can see where some of the common names come from in the photos below. There are over 500 different species in the Genera so it could be one of several species.
(Didn't know that hebes are/were/may be again species of Veronica - New Zealand versions of our speedwells).
When you get in close the flowers are a little orchid like - and the vivid blue stripes are lovely. however the flowers tend to be well under a centimetre in diameter so not really flashy and showy enough for the garden.T&M only sell two varieties of Veronica seeds (if you ignore the hebes - see previous post re the effect of weather on hebes in tipperty).  
As you can see below the further away you are then the less noticeable the blue stripey flowers are. Even if you get a real swathe of them they still don't grab your attention in the same way as other flowers do - they are just little blue dots in the grass (as per the lowest photo). And yet each individual flower is as startling as an orchid.
this is when a real good macro lens and close up photograph would have beeen really useful - or even a greaty scan that can be blown up to impress.
Then again we have to remember that these speedwells are not primadonnas who need tending and fussing over, and they haven't eveloved or been forced to evolve, to impress the likes of you and me. The flowers are there to temp in the bees and the flies (as in the photo above) with each stripe acting almost like a neon sign to the insects yelling "Free food! All you can eat buffet" at them , to get the punters in and get a quick poke so that the insects are covered with or deliver their package of pollen. I won't put that into a similie as i'm going to eat my tea soon - all I can eat with only the cost being away from home for weeks at a time (a price I am beginning to resent).

Now would it worth trying to develop the Veronicas into garden flowers? I don't know - they are perennials and the flowers are spectacular - I suppose it depends on whether they can be induced to become gigantic (maybe multiploid genomes might do it). I might look into that in the future. Meantime I am certain that the speedwells will go on thriving in their minature glory without worrying about us.

At the Linn of Dee i found a flower which I already knew something about - or thought I did. the wee yellow flower is tormentil. It is a flower that often passes through my mind because there is a village in Aberdeenshiore called Tomitoul which is close to Dufftown (the home of Glennfiddich) and just north of the Lecht (a ski- area in the cairngorms). Tomintoul is surrounded by the Glen livet estate.
Now I don't ski and I rarely drink whisky but we tend to go through both of these areas maybe twice a year.
The Lecht is a great drive along Strathdon (Billy Connolloys country estate - a country estate - oh that I would hate) with largely empty roads and steep roads - up to almost 1 in 3 at places. It can be a real test going up them (especisally in our first car - a 1 litre mini - almost didn't make it and our first hire car - a 1 litre metro even closer to not making it. I think I gave a few brown moments to the cars behind me) but is an absolute joy coming down - watch oput for the sheep on the roads.

Once you pass through Tomintoul (and i think about the tormentil) you bomb among to ufftown and Glenfiddich.
But why Glenfiddich instead of one of the other 8 distilleries on the trail. Two reasons... well three actua... make that 4 reasons. #1 - Glenfiddich is the best known single malt (35% of the market!) with the distinctive green triangular bottle and the only one with the whole process on site- and I do like the taste of it which brings us to #2 you get a free dram at the end of it. #3 they give a very professional tour - multi-linugual availability with a good site to visit... actually make that 5 reasons.... #4 they have a gift shop with a lot of very expensive things in it - VERY expensive. I can't afford them of course but I do like to point out the botle of whisky (standard size) that costs over £10,000 - yes over ten thousand pounds for a bottle of whisky!! (I have touched the bottle - what a whuzz eh?) oh yeah #5 It's free.
That's the m,ain reason of course. it's a free tour.
Now I want to go back and take some pictures for you... soon be there.

Oh yes tormentil... well I took the photos because we have a very similar plant back in tipperty or so i thought - only it isn't and it is. the plant we have back in Tipperty is wild, and a weed (threatening to swamp the kniphofia at one point0 known as Silverweed. See the photos of the yellow flower below. When I compared them there was something niggling at me - so much so that I thought that tormentil may actually be unrelated. Can you see what is the big difference?

Apart from the leaves being very different (tormentil looks like the leaves of a gernaium or a buttercup whilke silverrweed is more like a fern shape) there are 4 petals in a tormentil while there are 5 in a silverweed. Thius may not sound like a big difference but in botanical terms that can be a huge difference. I started to suspect that one of these is a ranuculus (a buttercup) and that they were not related. And then I turned to the font of all human knowledge - wikipedia in case you don't know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinquefoil and all was revealed. They are closely related (tick for me) and they are both members of the cinquefoil family aka Potentilla species.

Notice that - the cinquefoil genus... the five leaved group - five leaved - it was the leaf and not the petal that counts for five - that is what threw me. They are actually part of the Rose family and you can imagine that they are tiny roses. (Four leaves is highly unusual for roses by the by)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Tormentil

Of course I now find out that Silver weed is no longer classified as a pontellia so that's all this discussion thrown out with the bathwater. Sigh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverweed
turns out that you can eat the roots... and drink tea.. hmm maybe another one to have a go with.

To get back to the tormentil and potentillia we do have a representative in our garden - a genuine potentilla fighting the ajugas strawbeeries (also closely related) and other assorted creepers trying to take over the rockery. As you can tell it is very close to a strawberry, with runners and similar flowers and potentillas are often called the sterile strawberries. for the moment it is holding it's own... another candidate for potting on and selling I think. perhaps I should specialise in ground cover and flowers...

 
This is a flower I spotted at Linn of Dee which I had never come across before (except in the books). It reminds  me, a little, of snap dragons, a lot of Fumitory (having seen the pink fumitory a few time. I have since discovered that an alternative Genus name for this plant is Pseudofumaris), but mainly of the head of the Alien in the film ALIEN.

The film is in my all time favourite top ten of movies - I remember seeing it in Liverpool at the end of the 70s when it first came out and when the strap line - "In Space no one can hear you scream" - was new. That was still the days when you saw a film once and that was it until it turned up on the TV in 5 years time. It was just before video took off and long before satellite TV was common. I don't know if this is relevant - it is probably more relevant that I was 18 or so, away from home for the first time (University in York) and visiting my girlfriend in Liverpool - maybe even the first or second time I had ever visited her there. I won't go into further details - the vicar wouldn't like it on a Sunday - suffice to say that it was one of those times in your life when lots of things seem new and excioting: one of those times when you come out of your sleep and experience new, raw emotions.
Alien got to me at the time from many directions - the design was like nothing I had ever seen and it was an intelligent screenplay. It was only much later that I read about some of the themes and underlying ideas - about the ichneumon flies and about oral rape and about the old dark house style of horror. Anyhow - it was/is one of my all time favourite movies and this little yellow flower reminds me of it everytime I look at the pictures..

I'm literally shuddering as I think about it now. I might see if we have it on video back at the staff house - if so time for a steak baguette and Alien on the video - although thinking about it, maybe a steak baguette is not the best food to eat while watching Alien.

Well I'm back in Tripoli with 2 more week to go until I get back to Aberdeen and I am missing running water and green grass and trees and flowers... I am missing tipperty and a whole host of things. It is very rare that I am homesick but the last few trips I have had it bad. Not good is it.

That made me think of Linn of Dee - where J&J slept in the car while I wandered around and discovered plants I had never seen before a a mini water fall. I'm not sure if the link above will display so here is the link for the video I took.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SKO_SuBeWI

Along the side of this burn is where I found the milkwort and the corydalis that I blogged about and took more pictures of ferns, foxgloves, thyme, and speedwells. Perhaps the strangest plant there is shown in the first two below. Well not strangest so much as unexpected.
We have similar plants in our garden that are starting to do okay - at least one hasn't died over the winter so I have invested in a few more to see if they will survive too. Purs is shown in the third photo.


It is a peony - possibly even a tree peony that is growing outside a seemingly abandoned building - surrounded by tall grass in an area that I guess is used for sheep grazing or maybe only for deer grazing (we didn't see any grazing animals at all while we were there.)

Finally as I don't see any flowers in any of these photos above let's just compare the wild foxgloves that were growing amongst the trees at the Linn of Dee with our foxgloves. There are pros and cons but i was pleased to see that at least one of the plants at Linn of Dee was a white one.

Another quick post today as I have just flown back to Libya from Dubai. After dubai Libya looks verdant there are definite forests visible east of Tripoli as you start your descent into Tripoli International Airport.
So I decided to prove that we have had tea at Blamoral and to post some piccies of trees.
Trees are big in Balmoral - they are very proud of all the trees taht prince Albert planted 150 odd years ago and beloiw are a few examples - but we didn't buy the guide so I can't really tell you that much about them, plus we are flower gardeners so few trees are of primary interest to us. I'm not saying that I don't like trees - I do - but I don't have the emotional bond and interest with trees that I have with flowers and with minature plants - I have come down from the trees - and I could say more but, today, I won't as 6 hours on a plane plus a couple of hours each end has made me decidedly weary.

Quick post today - I found a wild flower at the Linn of Dee near Braemar which has me stumped. For the first time in a while I can't even identify a family let alone suggest a genus or species.
Part of this is because I don't have my UK references here in Libya to look it up. Part of it is also because it is very difficult to start to look for a flower on the internet if you don't know where to start. Have a look and see if you can help - I'd much appreciate it if you could.

the closest i can think is that it is a little bit similar to a Dicentra (the bleeding heart) with the two overlapping petals.

Okay, okay, okay - I think I may have the identity thanks to a plant identifier/key on t'internet http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/index.html followed by an image search on Yahoo and a look at Wikipedia.

I reckon that this plant is Polygala serpyllifolia aka heath milkwort aka thyme-leaved milkwort.

Well we live and learn

Today I received an email from Van meuwen re half-price tulips and I couldn't resist (and I added a few more collections - there was a collection of 4 different black tulips which I did manage to resist - but only just) and added a few offers as well. So tioday was the first purchase of bulbs for next year. If I had (Prince Philip's) money I could have bought at least another few hundred quids worth which wiould have been extremely decadent - in fact I feeling bad about it now when that moeny could have gone to more charitable causes - it's a balance between giving and receiving and in the last year or so we have fallen too far onto the receiving side. Once a few things are settled we'll return to the light side and reinstate the giving... and the more I type the more guilty I feel.

Anyhow I ordered:
1 of Daffodil & Narcissus Fragrant Collection [69118] @ 13.98 each
1 of Daffodil Lover's Collection [23555] @ 17.96 each
1 of Primula Collection [71878] @ 11.98 each
1 of Tulip - Half Price Collection 1 [20928] @ 10.98 each
1 of 25 Pansy Plentifall [A69173] @ 5.95 each
1 of 42 Winter Flowering Pansy Super Mix [B60758] @ 4.99 each
1 of 20 Tulip Mickey Mouse [A69153] @ 2.99 each
1 of 1 Scented Gold Rose [A68924] @ 2.99 each
1 of 6 Narcissus Replete [A60785] @ 3.99 each
1 of 3 Bearded Iris Batik [A31313] @ 4.99 each

So what could I post that would relate to this list - more pictures of daffodils and tulips - nah... not the right time of year. Best I can do is a picture of an iris in our bog garden. It's a yellow flag orchid so not so related to this list - bearded lilies are closely related but not the same as the yellow flag irises.
We have just the one yellow flag this year - I haven't found the right place for irises in our garden yet and bearded irises are just too damned expensive to experiment with too often.

Now you have seen our impressive display of yellow flag irises I bet you know who has copied it don't cha.

yep, her down t'other end of the Desside Road naturally has to try to keep up with the Frary's . There is a pond round the back of the graden cottage (more about that in a future post) and there is Queenies attempt to outdo Frary's fresh Flowers bog garden.
Not bad - have to give the Windsors 10 out of ten for effort - nice pond, nice yellow flags. And they have some blue flags in the foreground so they are one up on us for that as our blue flags didn't come back this year..

In early July we went along Royal Deeside for a day out to Ballater, Blamoral, and past Braemar to the Linn of Dee. One of the recurrent features were purple blotches on the hillsides - not huge great swathes but lines and highlights. It's not too clear in the photos, not as vivid as in real life but at the top of each steep slope on the hills above Ballater (above is the main street in Ballater) is a distinctive purple highlight.  I have emphasised it for the third photo.
This is the blooming of Erica carnea - heather. At the Burn O'Vat and at the Linn of Dee I was able to get closer to the plants and they are the wild form of the heather we have in our rockery - the large flowered Erica which is uysually called Heath rather than Heather.


At the Burn O Vat - the first two photos above it is almost totally restricted to the sides of paths because it is only there that the heather can get enough light. At the Linn of Dee you can see that the heather form mini-swathes in the clear areas between the trees. You don't really get Erica heather under trees - it needs the light to thrive.

At Balmoral you can see where the Queen and the Royal family have been copying us again - they have heather beds (mainly Calluna vulgaris - "real" heather also known as Ling for some reason - although I thought thqt Ling was a type of fish). They were designed by Prince Philip according to the spoken commentry and the guide and they are more like beds than a rockery so I think that he needs more instructions - maybe he needs to pop round to our place and have a better look at the rockery. I mean the first bed below (by the cricket pitch) has a few rocks in it but nothing that you would really call a rockery - it's basically a heather bed with a couple of rocks thrown in for the hell of it. Same with the one below - (seen from the terrace on the way to the ballroom which is the only room in Balmoral that you can actually go into) - there are a couple of rocks half-heartedly thrown in but nothing really noticeable. If you compare it to the wild stuff at the top of the page - the stuff on the rock faces you can see that there is much more rock than heather.
So it seems to me that if Prince philip either wants to copy me a bit closer (pop round any time) or more closely resemble natiure in the medium highlands (rather than in the high highlands of the grouse moors) then he needs to bung in a lot more rocks and give the beds a bit more verticality. However i guess he may hay decided that he couldn't rival the magnificanece of the rockey at Casa Frary so has aimed to duplicate/resemble the tops of the grouse moors and then I guess he's doing nae bad in that the hills tops are flatter with relatively fewer stones. I'll give him that one.

At the bottom is a picture of what it should look like and you can see our one pink Erica blooming away in the middle. I offer this purely as an educational picture for the Prince in case he doesn't get a chance to visit Tipperty - which he may not - or in case he visits while I'm in Libya although I'm sure that as long as he rings ahead and lets Jiurie know when he's coming Prince Philip could turn up at any time. - even bring the wife and kids - we'll clear the picnic table of the fuchsia pots if they wanted to sit down.
 I'll now take my tongue firmly out of my cheek and get back to my training course in Dubai.

At breakfast today we were talking about Dubai and what we thought of it. Several people commented that it had no history - there is a lot of building going on - or was; many of the cranes are still there but not working and building is halted until the banks recover and start the financing again - and almost every building is new - or relatively new. Almost everything is a skyscraper (by Aberdeen standards) but behind it all there is no history so there doesn't seem to be anything to explore - you are not going to round a corner and find a small shop that has sold tobacco for a hundred years, or clothes or a brass working district, or something like that. More likely you round the corner of a relatively new block of flats and find another Starbucks or another Macdonalds or yet another Mall.
Overall Dubai reminds me of the Trafford centre in Manchester or the Mexborough Centre in Sheffield - without even the history on the outside - it is like one big mall and almost as souless. I'm shuddering just thinking about it.
The Malls here are just as sumptuously decorated with marble floor tiles and columns etc as they are in the UK malls but with even less history behind the facade and almost identical shops inside them. The malls are suffering in the recession - they are pretty empty, lots of sales as the tourists simply aren't coming to shop. And shopping seems to be the biggest pass-time for a visitor to Dubai. Okay if you come from somewhere without Malls (like Libya) but not exactly exciting.

But then I'm prejudiced as I'm training all day so only get to see a smidgen of the place and I'm sure there is much more to see - museums, exhibitons, the desert etc if you have the time and the money.
Also the older I get then the less I enjoy shopping - funny that the more that I can afford to buy then the less I enkjoy shopping - the thrill of the chase starts to disappear in many respects - bargain hunting has a much sharper edge when it is a necessity (as it was for the first 20 years of my marriage/ family life than when it is a game or a luxury like it tends to be now.<br />Anywho after the discussion I decided that I needed to see a bit of history so I had a look at the Balmoral photos (allbeit only 100 years or so of history so not exactly real history).

In the grounds of Balmoral Castle are some large gardens - not huge but large. The vegetable garden is developed to provide veg and fruit for the Royal family in August when they stay at Balmoral. We went round at the end of June so everything was coming close to its prime.
While walking around the gardens (coming from the lake/garden cottage side) you pass the long borders and then come to the conservatory - it is a conservatory rather than a green house because the back wall is solid brick. The food garden is beyond the wicker fence you can see in the photo below.

As i am sure you can tell the Queen is still copying us by having Sea thrift (Artemia maritina) in front of the conservatory like we have in front of the greenhouse. Okay I'll admit it - we copied the Queen this time round as I only put the sea thrift in our gravel garden after I spotted this at Balmoral.
She is also copying us by having some real beauties in the conservatory like we have in Tipperty as you can see in the photos below - the blonde and the brunnette are to be recommended as the most beautiful flowers available though pretty difficult to find in most conservatories.

For some reason the photo directly above reminds me of photos of Tess (my eldest daughter Lavasa's old Jack Russell terrier.) I don't think it's the age of the ladies involved - maybe it's the sad eyes when caught among the flowers.
As you can see there is a colourful display of plants. Them pots are arranged on shelves that are stepped towards the back like a grandstand so that the plants on the top are on shelves maybe 10 feet off the ground while those at the front are maybe only 4 feet fron the ground. I don't think I've explained that too well.

These are then watered from below (I think). There are doors into the area behind the shelving.

Seeing the flowers in the conservatory finally convinced my wife that maybe a conservatory could be a good thing. After years of planning in my head the conservatory has now moved from the "in your dreams Neil" list into the "future plans for Tipperty" list - i.e. Jiurie has been convinced that it could be a good addition to the house.
I hope she isn't expecting something that is going to look like the Balmoral conservatory (unless we win the lottery some time soon).

There are plenty of familiar flowers in there among the unknowns - things like spider plants, lilies, ensetes (i.e. bananas) and right by the door was a violet hibiscus - I'd never seen that colour in a hibiscus before.
One plant colour that I hadn't come across before was the pale blue/baby blue of the... well I've no idea what the plant is but the colour was very vivid - it looked as if sprayed on plastic colouration - I guess the closest is chicory blue or maybe a cornflower view - very strange colour that I have never seen in a plant before.

I'm in Dubai for a week - training so I may not be able to post every day (last month I posted every single day - first time - woo hoo!). It was 36 degrees C when I arrived... at midnight. 36 at midnight!!! So I'm going to post some photos today to remind myself that there is life outside the air-conditioned offices, and there is a place that is wet, with plants, where the problem is often too much water. I mean that here it is absolutely bone dry - the whole place is either desert or sprinklers for grass or drip irrigation. There is almost nothing outside of that except sand and dust. It is very dusty compared to Tripoli. There i think we have breezes blowing off the mediterranean for half the time so that keeps some of the dust out of the air but here the breeze is coming off the sea but carrying sand from the Saudi desert (or from Iran across the Persian Gulf) and you only have to stand in a breeze for a minute to taste the grit on your lips/ you can taste the very air that you breathe. Anywho - here are a few photos from the Burn O' Vat from last month showing some greenery. The first is bracken - one of the best known ferns in the UK. I took this photo because the tips of all the brackens were yellowish - it's a strange effect - like the plant is growing so fast that it is outstripping it's nutrients - but only at the tips. Then above we have a couple of portraits of moss - not particularly good portraits but they do remind me of somewhere that is damp. You can see in the second moss photo that they are growing on a vertical granite face. This is the moss which seems to grow on our roof - I'm thinking of trying to establish a green roof though the neighbours might object - just thinking at the moment - maybe do the rear and side first to see how it goes. Finally we have another one growth on granite. You can see the big crystals of pink feldspar in the rock to the top right but not on the bottom left. That is because bottom left is actually a lichen that has blended in almost perfectly with the rock. At first you don't notice it but once you are alert then it is fairly clear where plant ends and rock begins. As I said I'll try to keep up the posting (today is at lunch time) but can't promise. Now I'm going to have a quick look outside and bathe in the heat - deserts do have one big advantage and I guess (looking at the Ashes test report) the lack of rain could be seen by some as an advantage but it isn't, believe me, it isn't.