Monday 19 June 2006

How does it know?

Barbecue. It rains.
We have a secret weapon -
Mike's polytunnel!


Which kinda sums up Sunday. The rest of the week has been lovely, (apart from a damp Saturday, but as that's 'domestics day' it made little difference.
Naturally, for the barbecue on Sunday, the weather decided to be as helpful as possible, and proceeded to chuck it down, grey and overcast, for most of the day.

However - friend Mike had a cunning plan to deal with the problem - he is a resourceful lad - so set up the barbecue in his big polytunnel (he grows organic veg - for our Antipodean readers, he's known as VeggieMike) and we sat amongst the courgettes, warm and dry - if a little kippered from the smoke.

Driving home at about 9.30 last night (still broad daylight - you gotta love Scottish 'summer' evenings!) noticed a hedgerow consisting almost exclusively of laburnum - about 500 metres just dripping with golden chandeliers. It's definitely a yellow and white time of year. Flower colours seem to come in waves - first the white of snowdrops, then yellow primroses, then the blackthorn kicks in, white again. Daffodils are followed by hawthorn, and gorse, broom and laburnum are hard on the tail of that. Occasional punctuation by bluebells and red campion...... and this morning I noticed that the tiny dune pansies are showing along the roadside, blue-violet and palest yellow.

I still haven't put batteries in the camera....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

the polytunnel sounds very useful - many is the bbq I have spent holding an umbrella over the little bbq...never works well.

I too love the change in colour themes - my garden starts off blue - merges with bright yellow then heads white with a touch of pale pink. At the moment it is the jewel colours of purple cranes'foot, scarlet pelargoniums, deep dark pink something or otheres and orange something else...waiting for the yellows to kick in again in a week or two along with the big soft white longiflorum lilies and the vivid orange and pink tiger lilies!

Anonymous said...

Mad, I love your description of all the flowers and flowering trees.
I've always wondered about something. We have a very common wild shrub here that is commonly called "Scotch Broom" or "Bloom". The site I checked out says it is Cytisus scoparius. ( also says NOT to call it "Scotch" but "Scot's" to avoid offending the Scottish!)
Is this a common plant in Scotland? It's actually comsidered a native plant killing noxious weed here but I think it's pretty & there is now a domestic form for gardens.
And GO MIKE for his picnic rescue!
Jude

mad said...

Gorgeous description, Sue!!!

Jude - Broom is indeed Cytisus scoparius, and it can get rather out-of-hand, so it gets dug up quite a lot. It's pretty, and pretty common over here, often in amongst gorse (Ulex europaeus) which has similar pea-family yellow flowers, but has lots and lots of spikes. You can be happily wandering amongst the broom and suddenly OUCH! Broom's poisonous, but you can make a dodgy wine from gorseflowers...

d. said...

gorgeous description and am loving the hoboes. :yes:

(can you tell i'm reading top to bottom instead of bottom to top?) :D