Walkless, but not quite wordless Wednesday

I'm not going walking today. My throat is sore and I've been doing a lot of coughing, especially last night. I blame the flowers! On that note, here are two more flower pictures, which I've entitled 'Scene from my windows'. The first one is a bedroom window view of the wonderful yellow tulips - once just a dozen bulbs, now 200, and the second is the landing window view of our neighbours' magnificent magnolia, which stops me in my tracks every time I come down the stairs.

Or maybe it was the dust to blame for my cough. After the past few warm, dry and summery days everywhere is as dry as a bone, especially down on the plot where I (with Mike's help) spent some considerable time the other day covering my newly erected brassica cage with netting to keep out the predators. It appears that fluorescent colours are all the fashion at the moment (I wore them the first time round!) but I wasn't aware that they extended to garden netting until I had to choose between acid yellow or acid green. I chose the green, just because it was 'sort of' green, but it really is quite a disturbing colour. As there wasn't quite enough of the said netting to complete the job, I (we) finished the cage off with some of that building site netting stuff, which is a different, if almost equally violent, shade of green. By that point I'd had enough, but I was not at all happy with the results. What a mess! Not at all pleasing to the eye. So, yesterday I was back on the plot with a further pack of the acid green, unpicking Mike's carefully woven joins, and removing the building-site netting. The end result is a completely acid green cage with a building-site green netting entrance (just because it was quite a successful fitting the first time round, and was too good to remove). However, as the cage is only half my height I then had to crawl inside to tidy up the compressed earth/dust, making sure I didn't damage the 'survivors', which are those cabbage plants that the pigeons devastated earlier on in the season and which, after re-covering with fleece, have revived very well. By this time, and after all the struggling, the area all around the cage was completely flattened and compacted, so I raised more dust as I restored it to order. I hope my hard work will result in perfectly formed, insect and creepy-crawly free brassicas. The cage is not at all aesthetically pleasing and will clash with the proposed colour scheme for my flower bed at the front of the plot. Hey ho!

The good news is that the potatoes are sprouting, lots of blossom on the plum and apple trees, seeds sown for salad crops, parsnips and beetroot, climbing peas and sweetpeas settled in at the base of their wigwams/canes, berry bushes looking lush and healthy, and we are enjoying plenty of rhubarb. At home both the main and the little greenhouse are full of sprouting pots and trays, and I've eventually got round to giving the front and back garden the attention they deserve, as the beds and borders are suddenly greening up.

I can't end this blog without mentioning how good it is to have 'Gardeners' World' back on track again, with Monty Don and his team.