Dahlia

Here is the latest dahlia to come out in the garden, just to keep you entertained today while I will be offline for the day. It was captured at 7 am this morning. Just before the first electricity van appeared!

 

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Staycation page

I made the page for week 30 of The Documented Life Project back on Saturday but there were too many flower pictures to enjoy in the meantime so here it is now. Our task was to: Add receipts, labels, business cards,smash book style. What a good thing that my mother was here and we visited both Peebles and Dobbies Garden Centre that day so we had a wealth of receipts and car parking tickets, otherwise this would have been a much more difficult task. I gathered them all together and stuck them onto a plain paper background. Then I briefly retreated to my painting shed to administer  layers of pink, purple and blue Silk Acrylic Glaze and using a stencil from Stencilgirl added a first layer on top of that of pink acrylic paint. I turned the stencil 90 degrees and sprayed with blue Dylysions. It looked a lot more cohesive after that.

I added the picture of the rose (printed by Printagram) as it seemed appropriate to the garden centre visit and added the small picture stickers to the bottom (also by Printagram). I found the word Staycation in the newspaper magazine on the day and that seemed appropriate for this week. I used my sewing machine to adhere things (my glue stick ran out) and also to outline the edges of the page.

Finally you might not hear from me tomorrow as we are having the electricity pole in our garden replaced. This will mean no electricity between 9 am and 4.30 pm but the last time we had repairs made to another pole the work overran and the power didn't get back till 8 at night. Fingers crossed that won't happen again. I will Blip from that trusty lay-by (where I haven't been for ages now) should that happen but no blog post will appear. Hopefully though all will be well!

More wildflowers

Californian poppy

Cornflowers

Purple cornflower with visitor.

 

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Halmyre Mains Garden

 

I must apologize for not being here properly. I know that I'm producing posts but I'm not writing very thought out comments. My brain is switching continually between 2 languages and that isn't very suitable for cohesive thinking, let alone writing. So once again this is mostly pictures of the garden we visited this afternoon (Halmyre Mains) in what can only be described as glorious weather!

There were wonderful colour combinations.

Gorgeous yellow daisies.

Beautiful begonias.

Tall yellow ligularia.

Great greenery.

Stunning through views.

The garden was a delight but in the end I still decided to blip this beauty, one of the wildflowers from our seed mat. It might still be there tomorrow but I didn't want to take the chance of missing the opportunity.

 

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Kiftsgate and other delights

 

We were lucky not to get any of the predicted thunder and lighting here today. Instead thick fog descended later in the afternoon which hadn't been mentioned in the forecast at all. Fortunately I had already taken pictures earlier today. Above is the Kiftsgate rose that we planted back in 1998. We have had the occasional flower since then but the plant seemed to spend all it's energy climbing up into an ash tree and then jumping into a neighboring tree.

But finally this year a fantastic show of gorgeous white roses has appeared high up in those trees. What a treat!

Meanwhile on the ground the Ballerina rose is also looking very good.

I couldn't resist taking another picture of the wildflowers planted in the cattle troughs. There is an amazing selection of different ones, that came in the seed mats we used.

In the driveway an evening primrose has popped up. So delightful but as you can see the rain arrived up here too after travelling from the south.

 

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In Dawyck

The weather was kind to us again today and we walked with our visitor in Dawyck Botanical Garden where once again I was impressed by the ferocious red thorns of rosa sericea.

And as always also by the beautiful trees all around.

 

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The Gardens of Portmore

It was a day of mixed weather but the afternoon had been promised to be the best part of the day so that is when we went and visited Portmore Gardens, open every Wednesday during July and August between 10 and 4. It had been quite a few years since we last visited and the transformation was astonishing. The place is breathtaking and I would think at the moment about the very best it can get. The Portmore Estate dates back to the 18th Century but had fallen very much into disrepair till the present owners took it on back in 1979. Work to restore the garden started in 1987 and is ongoing. We met the gardener who has been there from the start and this place is clearly a labour of love. 

I took a gigantic amount of pictures, far too many to show you so these are the highlights. I think it's safe to say we will be back, maybe as early as  August so there will be more. Many individual flowers were superb and I took beautiful macro pictures, but I have concentrated here on showing you more of an overview of what the garden looks like. I couldn't resist though to share this eryngium with you.

 And this poem in the wall spoke to me loud and clear as time is something I think about a lot. Here it is:

Time is our chequerboard of dark and bright

with peace & turmoil, grieving and delight

And in the end there is no more time to tell

To make amends; so love and use time well.

(E. Cartwright Hignett)

The beds were laid out beautifully and symmetrically, and interspersed with sculptures and garden ornaments.

 It reminded me most (although of course on a much smaller scale) of the gardens in Versaille.

 It was wonderfully romantic and if it's not too lofty to say it connected to my soul, specially the above vista.

 This was taken inside the Victorian greenhouse which was a riot of fuchsias and geraniums. 

 This shell grotto too dates back to those earlier times.

Even the vegetable garden was a dream of colour, symmetry and delight.