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.