How to annoy your neighbors part five

Where I live you don’t need a permit to have chickens, it is advice that you ask your neighbors but… So maybe I should get a chicken coop, very cute and country-ish, especially with a rooster that crows at seven in the morning.

(Picture found here)

And they’ll give me eggs and fertilizer for the garden. I’ve also heard that chickens eat a lot of bad bugs in the garden such as ticks for example.

(Picture found here)

Haven’t been looking forward to this but…

The pictures look pretty darn nice. Well, Johnny looks intense and creepy, a little like Elijah Wood. He might give me nightmares.

Anna looks divine, makes me want to go blond which has never happened before. I would probably look freaky as a platinum blond…

Helena looks great, love the eyebrows and heart-shaped mouth. And the hair is killer, maybe I should go red?

The gardens look amazing; I think there’s a little crazy gardener in Tim somewhere. He can fix my garden if he wants to.

I love this house!

Groombridge Place (some might recognize it from “Pride and prejudice” ) in Kent seem to have it all, adorable house, with a moat, a secret garden, a drunken garden and a ghost. I wonder what a house like that would cost…?

Groombridge Place, official site
Groombridge on Wikipedia

Gardening

All gardening things will (probably) be posted on The Burtonesque Garden from now on because I have been bitten by the gardening bug (again, and a dead wasp ouch!) and feel like spamming like crazy.

Burtonizing the garden

I fear that the garden bug has got me once more, I want a Burtonesque garden (I just promised myself not to waste money) and a Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ is in my opinion very Burton so I have to get me one of those. And it’s cutting time, have to remember to take my garden shears with me and get as many cuttings as I possibly can of boxwood, yew, privet and lavender (and whatever I have forgotten to mention).

Picture from Nzplantpics

Lady Bird

Yesterday I could see that they were about to bloom so this morning when I woke up I was like a kid on Christmas and immediately looked out the window to see if they were in bloom, and they were! My “Lady Bird” (Papaver commutatum) is so cute, looks so fragile and delicate with the big flowers on the small stems. I wish I had more of these, next year I will.

Poppies!!

I actually managed to fail with some of my poppies, guess I didn’t water them enough this spring? Some made it though and they are in bloom, love them! And I’ll get more and treat them better next season. (I'm collecting seeds if anyone wants some)

Love the color of this one. The mother looks like the one below, opium poppies (papaver somniferum) I found on a meadow around here. For some reason a few decided to be pink and I want more of them.

Frilly purple opium poppy

Corn poppy (papaver rhoeas) "Shirley double"

More corn poppy, same seed mix, "Shirely double" but not double

Not in bloom yet, Papaver commutatum "Ladybird"

PLANS FOR TODAY

1. Get off the computer. Spending way too much time doing nothing… just looking at pictures and day dreaming. Having a hard time leaving Susanna’s Sketchbook.

2. Clean my room (?). It’s a complete mess and I think most of the stuff is just junk that I never use or is actual garbage like socks with hole in them and balled up paper.

3. Making an inspiration wall above the desk, fill it with things to make me work on my story (so so close on giving up on it, again.)

4. Laundry (and try to remember to read on the back and make sure not to use more washing powder than necessary)

5. Find flowers for June-July, there is nothing in bloom right now. My peonies are too small to blossom…

Picture from Susanna's Sketsbook

Poppies in bloom

Finally, after a long wait (sort of my fault because I mistreated them) my sowed poppies are in bloom! Not that pleased with the orange/red color normally but now I don’t care, I love him, he’s such a cutie.

The smaller unknown poppies (update, it's Welsh poppy) are in bloom too, don’t like yellow flowers but… they are such easy plants. My plan for next year, or perhaps fall is to but ALL poppies I can find (at least the perennial ones), I want to have more of them. It’s very easy to start collect flowers.

(The yellow one is the one I have seeds of Aimèe (or anyone else) in case you want some. Need photoshop on this computer...)

Ew!

I forget to check the lilies daily and yesterday I spotted this nasty little bug sitting on my Tiger Lily.

It's a bee! (or something)

My allium is in bloom and it seems like I’m not the only one that appreciates it. I have to remeber to get more of this...

I got a crush

I love this tree! It’s called Jacaranda and if of course not hardy here in Sweden I think I might have to leave Sweden just to grow this tree.

Picture from Gulfcoastliving

Picture from Jene's Tropicals

SPRING TIME IN MY TINY BATTERED GARDEN

Vitsippa Anemone nemorosa
The lawn, covered with daisies
Some kind of allium
Bleeding heart (love the english name)

SPRING TIME IN MY TINY BATTERED GARDEN

TULIPS
For some reason the deer left some tulips this year, which I’m very pleased about. Haven’t seen them in awhile and I thought I didn’t like them, maybe to protect myself since they usually gets eaten? Anyway, I like tulips and I’m buying some more for next year and I hope the deer is continuing to be nice to me.

They are taking my plants!!

It’s hard to be a guerrilla gardener. I planted some violets and some Blue-eyed Mary (Omphalodes verna) and now they are gone! So is the cute little pansy that was growing there, I hadn’t planted it there. There’s no trace of my Silene coronaria either, someone is taking them! So far my daffodils are okay but that’s probably because they are not in bloom right now. I don’t want to plant more stuff is people are taking it…

Boxwood vs Lavender

Trying to make something out of the “backyard”, it’s a mess but I spent the entire day yesterday digging and pulling weeds and there is an improvement. I want a nursery/kitchen/herb garden with cold frames and everything, little stone paths so that there’s no grass that needs to be mowed.

I want to make little borders to the flowerbeds and I think I want boxwood but lavender is nice too, but boxwood is evergreen, but lavender smell nice and is easy to sow… What to do? Maybe I can have both or perhaps that will make the flowerbeds too wide? My heart says boxwood but it would be a lot easier with lavender. Tricky, tricky…

Boxwood, picture from Odla

Lavender, picture from Burgundy Experiance

Guerrilla Gardening

Love the idea of Guerrilla Gardening! There are so many places that need to be fixed up around here. I would love if people didn’t throw trash on the street, smashed the bus stops or throw their garden waste in the woods but they do… May 1th is apparently the International Sunflower Guerrilla Day so I’ll arm myself with as many seeds I can, I know just the right place for them too!

There’s also a book on the subject, could be interesting. I might do that whole sunflower thing in stages, start today and continue. It might rain tomorrow so it would be good to get the seeds down right away.

I’ve wanted to do this for sometime but I would go a step further and have the lovely Laura Satana make a log and stuff. (When is her web shop coming, waiting and waiting…)

Poppy Porn

Found some more poppy-porn in Tyras Garden. A really nice combo by the way, maybe I should do something like that too…

Picture by Tyra

Poppy Time

I have bought so many different poppy seeds I don’t even know how many they are now… or where to plant them if when they grow. I think I have at least seventeen different kind of poppy seeds! Where should I plant all of these?! Since I have at least seven different kinds of grass maybe I should plant them with some grass? I have some weird attraction to poppies…

Very pleased today when I saw some of my poppies peeking up, Oriental poppy “Carneum” and “Royal Wedding”, let’s hope the rest of them start peeking up too.

On my Poppy wishlist
Oriental poppy “Coral reef”
Oriental poppy “Miss piggy”
Oriental poppy “Central park”
Oriental poppy “Manhattan”

I guess this is my porn, I go on the net and just look at garden pictures. I have folders full of pictures and magazines everywhere. When I was out on the net I found this cute site called, Everything French Gardening where this cute picture is from.

Just placed an order…

For five different kinds of poppies, still this weird obsession about them. But I don’t know what I will do with them, and I also know I’ll order more poppies from this other company later. Not good, or maybe it’s great, maybe there will be poppies all over my garden this summer instead of weeds?

Photo by me, from Nyckelvikens garden last summer