Garden update

This afternoon I finally found an hour when it wasn't raining or blowing a gale, I had nothing urgent to do and, crucially, K was asleep! So I nipped outside and planted those bulbs - yes, those same ones I was going on about not having planted yet about a month ago. A couple of clumps of grape hyacinths, a couple of crocus clumps and one of snowdrops. I hate seeing those kind of flowers planted singly, in rows, so I tried to make natural-looking groups. However I put them though, they seemed to make straight lines from one angle or another! So now they'll probably just look as if they were planted in rows badly....

While I was out I took a few photos of the garden. Back at the start of October, Mum and Dad very kindly bought and then planted some shrubs for us. At the same time, H helped his Dad dig up some things from his garden and wheelbarrowed them over here (for Mum and Dad to put in!). I, er, supervised...



So now, at the side against next-door, we have: a couple of little broom plants, a great big camellia from H's dad, a nobotan (Asian melastome according to Google), another huge camellia from H's dad, a straggly purple-flowering thing, the third and final camellia from H's dad and a little hydrangea in the corner.



From the corner, looking back along the end of the garden: another, bigger, hydrangea, a cherry tree (currently well disguised as a dead stick), a murasaki shikibu (Japanese beauty berry according to Wikipedia!), another nobotan, a satsuma tree and another cherry tree (slightly less dead-stick-looking).

Those photos were pretty useless at showing the plants though, weren't they? Mainly you can just see the stakes supporting the 'trees'. Still, it'll be good to look back and compare pictures in the future, and writing all this down will help me remember what we've got where. Or rather, it will be here to refer to when I've forgotten...

You can also see that the lawn has filled in quite well now. There are still lines between the pieces of turf, but no real gaps. This type of grass is very resiliant and can survive the very hot summers here better than the type you usually find on English lawns, but it does go brown and dead-looking over the winter. I'm assured it will green up again in the spring!

While we're at it, here's the Japanese garden:

Can you see some pink flowers on the biggest tree there? It's a sasanqua, similar to a camellia, and it is absolutely covered in buds...