It’s Saturday morning, the air is changing and you can feel the garden starting to settle into a slower pace of life. If you have been reading this blog you know of my front garden, the area I deem “the land that time forgot.” The funny thing is that by doing nothing, nature takes over and that in itself has magical rewards.
For today’s Six on Saturday, I wanted to share the joy that stems from doing nothing at all. I cringed when I walked in and out my front garden and over the summer this slowly changed and here are the reasons why:
Butterfly Haven
The main reason we live in a magic cottage is down to these beautiful painted ladies and other butterflies. Every time we walk in and out of the cottage we are encircled by butterflies. They sunbathe on the wite of the cottage, the gravel path and taunt the cat. On Friday we had a group of children wander around the garden trying to catch butterflies, marvelling at the amount on our Buddelja. Squeals of joy and laughter and all from doing nothing at all.
Bees, Bees Bees.
Is there anything like the sound of bees? It was ridiculously hard for both myself and my husband not to pull up the dandelions and other weeds but within days of them blooming we had a bee on every open flower. Our weed patch was alive, colourful and full of happy insects. Well, until a cat barrelled through but still…
Spiders
It is spider season but here our garden spiders have been busy controlling the fly population. It’s fun to watch them catch and roll a fly. My kids watched quietly completely mesmerised at how they moved their legs and worked their web. I don’t love spiders but they play such an important part and being able to show the little ones all the insects and bugs were worth neglecting the garden for a season.
Mushrooms
This area is in the back garden but the mushrooms are blooming! We have so many and they are in love with the dappled shade beneath the hebe. We slowly cleared an area this year and up popped lots of mushrooms. Unfortunately, as some were partly hidden they got mowed over :/
Tomatoes
Well, this year I got an answer to my question,” will I still get tomatoes if I don’t tend the plants?” The answer is yes but you really don’t want to do this. Life got in the way of gardening this year so my tomatoes are more than a little wild. Still, juicy fruits were harvested, along with some forgotten strawberries too. (We reuse takeaway containers as much as we can so less plastic goes in the bin)
Dahlia
The story of my dahlias this year is one of recklessness. I didn’t lift mine last year and the result is they all survived, bar the one I split in two with my spade by accident. Their season has been much shorter and this is the first full bloom from this beauty. I even had to run out and save them from the storm winds on Thursday. This year I will lift these though so I can start them in the greenhouse or indoors in March/April 2020.
That’s it from me this week I hope you are all enjoying this harvest season in your gardens. Do make sure that you pop over to The Propagator ‘s page to check out more wonderful gardening posts and why not search the #sixonsaturday tag on twitter too to fill your feed with beautiful blooms. There is also a participant guide here if you would like to join in too. Looking forward to catching up with all of your garden posts this week too!
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