Thread by @Hal_Duncan

Yesterday in #Rakesden...

I started off planting two salvias and ended up staying up to three in the morning blethering over beers.

But yeah, tried moving some bulbs that haven't flowered the last couple of years round slightly into the space in front of the rose. Cleared of moss, soil with a wee bit more drainage, a bit less shaded... hopefully *something* of that will help.

Echinacea and dianthus out to harden off. That's the last of the freebies except for one delphinium which is still a bit behind.

First blooms on the nasturtiums.

The sweet peas are also climbing for the sky. No blooms yet but hopefully we'll get the frame covered by the end of the season, and I reckon if I hadn't had the nasturtiums in there, maybe a bit more compost... we could maybe get faster growth in another try next year.

I think this might be acanthus mollis which shows no signs of flowering again and is still just being devoured by the snails. So I may eventuality try digging up a clump and moving it to make room for something else & to see if division reinvigorates it and/or it likes elsewhere.

For the last two years this has looked just like some woodlandy windfall self-seeded in Birchby, and I've left it just for the green after the spring blooms and the lilies have gone over and there's a lot of bluebell leaf still dying back. And lo, I am vindicated!

The scaffolding is down, the workies gone! So I could dismantle the protection, start some repair. The salad burnet is recovering fine. The winter savoury is still looking rough. The chamomile shows little sign of regrowth but still has a wee stub. The wild bergamot looks gubbed.

Moved a Welsh poppy along from in front of the heuchera it was crowding to fill some space, hopefully without to much damage to the roots of either. A carnation rooting from the pot on the cubbies may not be rooted yet, but with the soil soaked from the rain, I figured fuck it.

There's a bunch of other rootings pushed down into wee pots around the big plant as per spider plant babies. So it's worth an experiment to see if I can snip some from the mama yet. And if this works, I reckon the tone of the foliage will connect nicely with the sage & lavender.

There's some self-heal in at the back in the previous pics. I added another wee patch down the front after this pic too. Cleared out the area on the other side of the hydrangea, behind the lavender. May try and find where the bulbs are so I can lay a path for pruning the mophead.

There's some tulips and bluebells in there, but it's mostly just weed in summer, so it wouldn't be a bad thing just to get some stepping stones in there between the bulbs. Though of course part of me is just, "Bugle! Bugle as ground cover!" Last dianthus may go in there too.

The hydrangea is also half covered in cement dust, solidified and not washing off, but it doesn't seem to have made it poorly yet, fingers crossed, and otherwise Langshaw is looking not *too* ravaged now.