Rhubarb Appreciation Society

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Going with Rhihaf's thread name suggestion, following on from the first rule of gardening club is thread.

Pull up your kneeling pads, crack open the elderberry wine and the blackberry gin and come and join us. No real experience or gardening know-how needed.

Ooh, I might look in Poundland then!

I saw some in our local Aldi a few weeks ago but they looked very sickly so I left it.

Cross posted - humph, how fucking annoying!

It's 'spring green pink', I think. There's also a red version. Both really not very nice colours, IMO, and certainly not elegant like proper spring green. My mum had exactly the same thing last year and was gutted - they are a known variant, the pink ones, which makes the mistake worse IMO.

I love Gertrude Jekyll, btw. You're tempting me.

Rosamund is a beautiful name. Will he let you have it as a Middle name? The 'fair rosamund' from the poem lived near where I live (not that this is a reason! But I just like the name.)

Lovely day down on the south coast today. I have been hearing the hum of lawn mower all morning as the lawn mower men do the neighbors gardens.
My day is somewhat blighted by the twat in the house that backs on to mine who is busy pruning and hacking back the tree where the magpies are nesting. I hope he falls off his ladder.

Poor magpies. I know they're vermin but they're lovely.

humph - is it like this? Not the ugliest pic I could find, though.

www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/tulipa-flaming-spring-green/classid.2000010943/

Ah, that will be it then! They are the right shape but the wrong colour.

You mother's garden sounds heavenly. My PIL have lots of lovely old roses too, my MIL has an absolute passion for them. It was a fantastic setting for SIL's wedding, they chose the date to go with the roses and were lucky enough to have good weather. Stunning.

Not that picture, thank goodness! They are pink outside with a white centre.

have tried to upload some photos of my garden.
hope it works.

oh bugger, for some reason only one picture shows up. ah well, it's the prettier side anyway.

Lovely day

Spread poo and pumpkin patch now all prepped and ready to go. My peas are popping up nicely. Put up a set of poles for the purple beans. Manured the bit ready to plant out my sweet peas to climb over the veg plot arch. Spoke encouragingly to all the seeds not yet germinating. Admired my tulips which are not pink white with red stripes.

Was very tempted to buy a huge black bamboo from the 'display of death' at the garden centre this afternoon but seeing as they still wanted £30 for it and as it did look particularly dead I wasn't sure it was a risk worth taking. Anyone know much about black bamboo? Do they come back to life with a bit of nurturing?

I would love a climber rose LRD but arch is just a little daydream at the moment, especially since DH has decided that he'd rather make his own arch to fit our requirements and 'then we can have it any colour we want because all the ones I've seen are dark green'.

He doesn't seem to understand that it'll have a PLANT growing up it. Or he could PAINT the metal.

But it's all academic since once DH decides he's going to make something, he spends a very long time mulling it over in his head and drawing multiple sketches which he loses, before making said object..ooh...maybe 4 years later?

Missing Monty tonight. Bloody snooker.

display of death

Did a bit of pottering in the garden this afternoon and also a bit of lazing in the hammock for an hour with a beer and a book

Looks lovely Mousy!

I wouldn't spend thirty quid on a ropey black bamboo. You could get a perfect condition one from Crocus for not much more than that.

I managed to get another quarter of dd's flower bed circle dug over today. Very heavy going; this soil is so clayey.

The weather is so heavenly. Round our way the magnolia trees and cherry trees are laden with blossom and seriously stunning! Intoxicating almost.
The tulips in the front are a very cheery yellow with red streaks, looking fine interspersed with rampant prolific forgetmenots and purple aubretia.

I'm happy because I've got mange tout seedlings, chilli seedlings, rocket and french beans to go in the vegetable trough this weekend. I'm feeling on-trend and River Cottage-ish, but really I am such an amateur, that to be growing veg is a little bit pseud. The thing is, it seems not quite right to be growing only flowers and not edible things.

The cerinthe is germinating though I wouldn't go so far as to call the cotyledons seedlings as yet. Echinacea isnt germinating. Delphiniums are struggling in their pots outside and cosmos too. humph your greenhouse sounds very useful. No sign of action from my dahlias yet. I too had convallaria in the post.
maud the thought of clematis montana in a tree just about to flower being cut down by a twat would make me feel seriously paranoid. I might have murderous fantasies about revenge except I am too nice. Do have some

lrd welcome! I quite like the one sidedness of your apple tree.
mousey welcome! your garden is lovely
humph a friend of mine called her daughter Rosamund, she was called Rosa for short.
wynken thinking of you through this.

I might be sitting in the garden reading the Monty book which came through the post, and sipping a stream of luscious cool drinks tomorrow!!!!! I am secretly hoping the DC dont turn up .......sigh.

I found a poundland btw. Extraordinary shop. Extraordinary value plants and seeds.

Hello, mousey; your garden is lovely.

I'm beside myself with excitement that my sweet peas have begun to sprout, and still don't quite get how they'll grow all winter, but they do, apparently, at least in Melbourne.

No gardening today as I'm off to Clunes Booktown, Australia's version of Hay-on-Wye, it's a preserved gold town. Tomorrow I'll be ripping out an unthrifty hibiscus and two diosma which do well and a lovely scented leaf, but I want bird/insect attracting natives.

echt everytime you post I want to visit Australia.

Perhaps after we've chartered the charabanc to visit Humph's garden, we should go on to Oz?

All I know about black bamboo is that, despite some nurturing, mine died. I think £30 for a sickly specimen is too much.

Still no sign of my Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate seeds germinating. How long should I leave it before chucking them away in disgust?

Hi all, my resolution to do a little in the garden every day is falling by the wayside dreadfully... I must try harder. Still, a whole BH weekend now to catch up!

My parents are here for just one night, and so I took my mum for a whirl round the garden to see things. It's amazing how much more you see when you are actually describing and looking, and telling someone how you planned this/that.

I have some beautiful ivory-white tulips in bloom at the moment, just on the point of doing that sigh-and-flop thing they do, the great big drama queens. One of them has a 'fault' which thanks to a picture posted on fb/tweeted this morning by the RHS, I know now is a 'chimera'. Theirs is a perfectly half and half red/white camellia bloom, mine is an ivory tulip with a red stripe along the grain of the petal, almost as if it had suffered a paper cut. Must take a picture before it loses its petals.

Rhubarb for breakfast this weekend I think: stewed, cooled, and poured over natural yogurt, maybe with some granola too.

Morning all.

Just heard Monty on the radio, where he was saying that when we was growing up he never expected to become a gardener but wanted to be a rock god or a sex god. Doesn't he know that to ladies of a certain age, he is?

I have some lovely tulips in flower now - Prinses Irene (keeping the Dutch theme going), Caravelle and Cosmopolitan. Couleur Cardinal is a bit behind them and Showboat has already collapsed.

Thanks to that same RHS fb status, I realised that the red streak last year on the only one of my 99p store roses to flower was a chimera too.

thanks all!
I am very pleased with it not least because it was mostly there when we moved in.
I am still discovering lots of things, like the masses of bluebells that are in bloom now.
my tulips are all red or yellow, my favourite flower colours.

Thank you, funnyperson, and when I can work out how to photos up, I'll post some of my garden.

Maud an Oz visit should be on the itinerary of any MN gardener.

On the way back from Clunes, laden with books, we decide to go through Bacchus Marsh, a market gardening town of boring repute, though Peter Carey was born there. While we wouldn't want to spend a week there, the roadside produce is stupendous, and we stopped to pick a bucket of Fuji apples. The range of apples pales into insignificance compared to what would be grown in an English apple farm, but the standard was tip-top.

As well as the books, we topped up on ewe-poo, $3 a bag, and destined for the veggies and rhubarb.:o

Thinking of tulips, I saw on the news the snow covering spring tulips in the US. However the climate change deniers seem to be having pause for thought.

Ha, I love Ewe-poo ! Went to plan sale this morning and was restrained with a tray of geraniums and a sweet William. Just had another go at splitting Heuchura, they have to be the easiest thing to split and look lovely with primroses by the pond.

Taking Mum to look at a home tomorrow and she says if she likes it she wants to move in. One of the rooms has a little Juliet Balcony so if it happens I'll be after suggestions for some pots as there will just be enough room for a few. It's a new build and they are still landscaping and will be building some raised beds. The other one we were originally looked at had gorgeous garden but with hindsight it looked more for show than for the residents get stuck in.

I have just read that heucheras need to be split every year. Who knew? Everyone but me, probably.

Oh Wynken. That sounds so sad and yet so positive at the same time. All the best for your mum.

I hope it works out Wynken.

I didn't know that about heuchuras either.

Thank you, that sums up how I feel really Maud. I didn't know that about Heuchuras either, I just needed new plants !

I've just dug first bit of flower bed in the back garden which I will extend once the large conifer is removed in a couple of weeks. There was already a rose and I decided to plant the Fatsia I bough the other day. I then scavenged round the garden and have put in some pink geranium, couple of aquilegia , Lily of the Valley, couple of Ajugas, bit of Heuchura, an Iris, couple of primroses and sweet violets.

Madam dog did have a bit of a chew and was told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone. If she does dig or eat it then at least it hasn't really cost anything.