I now officially love mum's heated propagator :) everything grows so much quicker, its really noticable. The corn poppys i put in were about half an inch tall, whereas the ones on my windowsill were barely chitting. The verbena was grown to about 1.5cm after a week when the website i ordered the seeds from said they'd take 20-90 days to germinate.

I even have little lavender seedlings (although i've lost my packet of seeds for those ):

My windowsill is growing greener and in dad's greenhouse i even have some alyssum popping up, the french marigolds have been up for a couple of days, the clarkias growing and even the sunflowers and nastursiums i put in aaages ago are finally showing signs of lIfe.

(I would take pictures but left my camera at a friends house on tuesday)

The clearing of the front garden borders is still slow-going, but the rains stopped (finally) and the grounds dried out a little - before all the roots were snapping off. I'm gonna have to burn my big piles of ivy i've been tugging up soon. Instead of getting the whole garden done by the end of the holiday i now hope to just get the first side sorted, then will have to start working evenings after college on sorting the rest.

Went to tatton park today and had tours of the amazing mansion and old hall, which are really fantastic and incredibly interesting (i would reccomend going), we went breifly into the gardens but its that time of year when nothings really out yet and we were too knackered to appreciate them by then so have decided to go back later. I'd quite like a rhodedendrum now though...
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Mum bought me a plant with thin purplish leaves and which is supposed to have purple flowers, i think its called a Hebe, or something like that. Mum suggested planting it in the big border at the opposite end of the garden to where i am atm.

I also have a mystery seedling amoung my first little batch of verbena, its about twice as tall and has two little spade-shaped leaves which are a normal grass green and branched out from each other, compared to the verbena which have slimmer, pointyer leaves which are a darker shade. I'm interested in finding out what it is :)

Last but not least have finally re-filled the propagator, with most of what i've planted already, have tried some seeds that werent reccomended for there but which have been growing sloooowly/not at all on their own (e.g. columbine, echinachia, nigella.....) It may have an adverse affect but i would like to see.

The Ipomoea which i tried softened over night in warm water, and not softened is showing the difference, but not by that much.

Softened: Tops of all three seedlings, one raised above the soil with the leaves ready to unfurl
Unsoftened: Top of one seedling.

Rain + clay soil = weeding nightmare

The rain continues its relentless downpouring and i've resigned myself to having to deal with tougher weeds; our ground is very clay-y and with the rain it makes it impossible to weed without snapping half the roots off so any attempts at clearing the borders are counter-productive.

My tallest sunflower is about 2 1/2 inches though :) and its top little leaves are open.

The mini rose on my windowsill which i (almost) killed in the frost is surving on one of its parts :) there were four shoots comming out of the ground orignially (dunno whehter it was four separate plant or just one...?) but three died when i left it in the car over night during a hash cold spate, but i have loads of new leaves on the surviving part :)

even if one of the bits i had to cut back has gone mouldy...

Lots of things seem to be going mouldy this year. Mum says its because its so damp and cold at the moment and there's loads of moss around where we live so the spores make it worse or something....? don't know how true that is, but laods of my seeds are going mouldy and the roots of plants. Part of me isn't sure whether the ends of baby seedling's roots are supposed to be like that, but its a bit frustrating. Just hoping they'll grow through it because i can't think of anything i can do.

Put some lavender, verbena, cosmos, corn/field poppy gys... something or other in mum's heated propagator yesterday, so hopefully in a while some of that will come through. Not entirely certain how many of those should have gone in it, so i put some pots of the same in dad's greenhouse (which is now apparently mine, but due to the dead tomato plants, big thing of woodshavings and massive box of tool-type stuff i have to step over it still seems very 'dad's' to me. Will be interesting to see which comes up first :)

Also experimented with some Ipomoea, because i read you should soak the seeds over night in warm water because the shells are quite hard, so i did that for some ''morning glory'' ones and they doubled in size and you could see the pale bits of seed showing through, so i planted some of those in two pots, and some un-soaked ones in two others, put the big pots in dad's greenhouse and the little ones in my room so they can have a race aswell.

My yellow carnations are comming up and the first two of my third batch of ''inkspots'' ipomoea (the purple and white ones that mum originally got for me). the old sutton's sunflower seeds appear to be dead though :( might have to buy some more or try another of mum's packets.

The nasturshiums (excuse the spelling) from best before 1989 have moulded though, but the bedding stocks from 2001 are doing just fiine :)
-apart from the ones with the furry roots like i said earlier in mum's greenhouse.


Weeding yesterday i also had troubles telling appart some of the young buttercups from the peony. Think i killed a couple of canturbry bells aswell becaue i thought they were one of those annoying underground nettle roots or yet more ivy. Bunged them back in the ground anyway so they might survive....


Its the annoying thing about weeding someone else's garden thats been left alone for too many years... theres just the odd cluster of plants dotted around that have somehow survived and spead and i'm obliged to do my best not to kill them. Can't help having a certain amount of respect for anything thats survived our garden though....