The Bluestocking women's Pub- spring is sprunging and MN's name generator can do one!

[lcakethereforeIam]

Welcome to the Bluestocking women's pub. Men are directed to the Staunch Ally just down the road. Otherwise all are welcome. Pull up a chair, give your order to the Wait Gerbil or the Gerbil behind the bar.

Don't forget to name change if you wish to.

I had cowslips naturalised in the lawn for years. Mr Magpie and his mother are of the bowling green lawn school of thought and one year he "forgot" to leave that corner when doing the first mow. Alas, the cowslips are no more.

I fancy naturalising the back corner of our lawn with bulbs etc but I think I’d have to make some sort of edging to delineate it, something which could be removed when it was time to mow (or strim and rake) the area). It’s probably something to think about in the autumn, maybe I should take this over to the gardening board in due course.

Morning all, I unwisely overdid things in the garden yesterday and am aching and limping now😒
So I'm going to do the sensible thing and...................................................
I'm going to go out and overdo things in the garden again today!😁
I've decided that it's worth it. Gather ye rosebuds. Make hay. Etc.

I had a flirtation with leaving a 'wild corner' at the end of my garden, but it turned out to be mostly scutch grass and stuff, not very nice. I now mow it [well these days, somebody else mows it] but apart from that let it go its own way.
I'm delighted to see that not only have germander speedwell appeared there, but even some scarlet pimpernel.

Forget-me-nots - as if I could! they are all over the place.
Cyclamen has become an invasive species too, it's everywhere.... except where I would like it to form ground cover🙄
That's the pink cyclamen - the lovely white ones I planted in lots of places have mostly disappeared😠

Gardening is like that, @MarieDeGournay. I find that foxgloves, which I want there, tend to self-seed themselves exactly where I don't want them (cracks in paving, edges of flower beds etc). I usually have a transplanting spree in the autumn. And there are two sorts of snowdrops: 'rampant' and 'flower once and die'. I have rampant snowdrops, and give them to the people who desperately want snowdrops but whose snowdrops thus far have been 'flower once and die'. It almost goes without saying that once donated rampant snowdrops are planted in their new home they... flower once and die.

And @Magpiecomplex, DH is of the bowling green mindset, but has zero gardening knowledge. I managed to stop him doing his ceremonial first-mow-of-the-year scalping of the lawn by doing it myself. He can't prune, he just chops whatever it is down. He is pretty much banned from the garden, other than to walk through it, lounge in it or eat in it. Though he is allowed to mow the lawn, once it's growing nicely.

Tractoring continues today. I saw my first one of the morning at 7.50 as it raced past the house, intent on its next task.

Left to my own devices, Edith, I wouldn't have a lawn at all, so I'm happy to let him potter around doing important things to it. He doesn't touch anything else so it's a harmless distraction.
If I had to have a flattish green area, I'd have a tapestry lawn.

This year the Spring vegetation in England seems to be a week to ten days ahead of us. It's often the other way round. Celandines and primroses and dog violets are only just getting going. No flowers on the wild cherry yet, hawthorn buds are swelling but no flowers. The very last of the three sorts of fancy Dutch snowdrops I bought are fading (the first ones started to flower before Christmas. It's nice having a long Spring but doesn't really compensate for the well over forty days and forty nights of rain.

The ground that I cleared of nettles and alexanders and ground elder has put on a good display of bulbs, some released from being swamped, some newly planted. There are cyclamen there for later, and colchicum, and lots of wild arum. Possibly also autumn crocus, I've been dividing and spreading some very congested clumps and will wait and see. I'm nor sure about May-August.

Wild things flowering in the same place - purple dead nettle, dandelions, celandines, purple sweet violets, herb robert, shining cranesbill, chickweed, a small speedwell, some kind of vetch, ribwort plantain. It needs some pignut. There is ivy that is inclined to encroach, but that is supporting broomrape, so I'll try to find and accommodation,

She's just arrived.

The Walrus has freed the garden furniturefrom the garage and it's now on our brand new top patio. My SIL is coming to drink wine on the patio tomorrow. The Walrus will me in that London working, so he'll miss out. He never goes to actual work any more so this will be novel.

Wild things flowering in the same place - purple dead nettle, dandelions, celandines, purple sweet violets, herb robert, shining cranesbill, chickweed, a small speedwell, some kind of vetch, ribwort plantain.
Now you mention them, Deano, I reckon I have some of those too - well, definitely the dandelions!!

I love the scent of herb robert - isn't it also called 'fox geranium', possibly because some people think it smells like foxes? which it certainly does

A couple of years ago lords-and-ladies suddenly appeared at the end of the garden and have proliferated. I'm not sure what I think of them - they are distinctive and I like having diverse wild things, but they are also poisonous and are a bit too rampant.... I think the novelty is wearing off...

I'm sooooo jealous of Gosie, arriving at Indifférence😁

Poisonous to deter people from digging them up and eating them - fair enough.

Clever at manipulating flies, that crawl down inside the flowers, attracted by a foul smell, and then get trapped overnight by bristles.

Which leads to exploitation by badgers, who munch their way into the flower-bases to get at the flies and eat them.

If they manage to survive all that, the scarlet-orange berries look glorious with pinky-purple cyclamen and colchicums.

I'm loving all your gardening posts, even though I'm just a tad jealous because I've missed all the good weather while prohibited from actual gardening work myself.

However i do have one lovely thing to share, which I discovered late last night. I can see the stars again!! For the last 2 decades, first the right, then the left eye having an increasingly bad cataract has meant that I've really been seeing properly with only one eye. At bedtime last night I decided to check whether the Northern Lights were visible again, so switched off the bedroom light and opened the curtain on the north-facing window. No Northern Lights, but instead I saw a crystal-clear sky absolutely FULL of stars, even here at the edge of the village with its street lights, and realised just what I've been missing all these years. For so long I haven't been able to see the fainter stars, just the brighter ones, until I almost forgot the fainter ones were there. It was a revelation and I went to bed so happy.

That is lovely news, @NotAtMyAge.

That's wonderful, NotAtMyAge! ✨✨✨
Not just the fact that you can see the stars again, but that in the context of most things dis-improving, something has got much better, and something lovely has been restored to you. It's not all going in one direction
Enjoy being a stargazer again!

I went to Tesco to buy compost without checking if we had any. We do. But the Walrus says it's fine as we will probably use it. As we don't garden, I have no idea when we'll use it but it was only £6. Two for £9.50 but that seemed excessive.

I also drove to the garage first so I didn't have to face the big supermarket itself but they only had rock salt. And I realised I would probably never go to a garage again because we have an electric car. And petrol was 142p a litre! It will cost around £10 to charge the car today, partly because our electricity is half price from 11-4pm.

Then I sowed my wildflowers and rescued two ladybirds. One flew in and landed on its back and the other was caught in the dustpan as I was sweeping up. It's not just plonk compost in the trough. It's also break the lumps up and sweep up the spillage and then wash your hands.

Well no wonder I haven’t had a notification for a few days - you relocated again! I would like all the non calorific treats you can muster, bargerbil. I have been very good and lost six pounds in the last three weeks, but as any fule kno streaks like that tend not to last.

Petrol at Costco is currently about $3.50 a gallon and filling up my car costs about $50. Don’t hate me! I do such a low mileage that a tankful lasts most of a month.

It’s not you we might be inclined to hate.

When we were in Amsterdam the week before last I think petrol there was already at about €2.40 per litre - they have more tax than the UK.

Sorry you missed the move, but you found us😄
Actually you were lucky to find us in because most of us seem to be out in our gardens, relishing the spring weather.... while it last, which it won't, the forecast is for cool temperatures and wintry showers😣

Well done on losing pounds, and maybe it will last, be positive!

[My only reason for encouraging Stockingers' weight loss is because you feel you should. You are all lovely exactly as you are]

@MyrtleLion , it was £1.47 a litre in my dad's small town in Wales this morning!

Stopped off at RHS Bridgewater on the way back home and enjoyed the daffodils and blossom. Met a feisty swan and sleepy geese. Mr Pasta's snoring away of the couch now while I think about planting schemes for the veg garden.

Isn't there a village in the same area called insouciance? Attracts the arty set.

Wonderful that you can see the stars again @NotAtMyAge

It reminds me of the final line in the Bette Davies film Now Voyager:

'Let's not ask for the moon. We have the stars'

In our nearest very small town in Wales, it's at least that and diesel is close to £1.60! Sigh...

I envy your spring! Having got rid of the snowbanks last week, today it’s snowing again. We were forecast 4-8” but it looks as if it will be more like 2-4”.

I think the last I looked at our local garage, diesel was £1.64. When I filled up 12 days ago, it was £1.48. We don't use the diesel car all that much...

I'm not even thinking about the cost of kero, which has doubled in price in the past 3 weeks. Luckily, according to my trusty mate the mobile watchman, we still have half a tank, and will be turning off the heating fairly soon. Hopefully normal service will have been resumed by the late summer, when I'll be wanting to top it up for the winter. I am once again contemplating solar panels...

And very happy she looks, too.
An ice cream, to be followed by a delicious three-course meal in the local bistro, accompanied by a bottle of one of the better local wines and perhaps some cheese.