Just pottering...

As the temperature has continued to be beautifully warm over the last few days, general pottering has been the order of the day rather than nose to the grindstone hard work!

I am pleased that I have finally managed to clear of bluebells the corner turn of the border outside the vegetable patch, which has been irritating me for a while - I didn't want them to spread any more and make more hard work next year... In the process I discovered a clump of aster, not yet really getting going, and a label!  This clump rejoices in the name of Aster novae angliae 'Purple Dome'...which according to Claire Austin Hardy Plants, is easy to grow with no special requirements...sounds promising, so I've tucked it back in carefully with fingers crossed!

Here are my celebratory pictures of having completed the bluebell digging on the whole north side of the circle bed - hurray!  I must say however, that it looks even better now as I have edged the lawn properly and sheared the shaggy grass edge neatly.

A few cloudier hours encouraged a bit of long overdue greenhouse pootling - now all the pelargoniums are spending their days outside, hardening off alongside the gauras and dahlias in readiness for being potted on in to larger pots to go on the patio for the summer....

...and enabling me to snuggle the tomatoes and cucumber into their ring pots and grobags, and not a moment too soon!  On most of them the first truss of flowers is opening - this greenhouse is so much lighter and hotter than my old one, I'm going to have to keep my wits about me or I will forget to water enough, spray the floor with water against red spider mite, and probably have to shade it in the next few weeks...unheard of in the old garden.  Hopefully it might mean earlier and better tomatoes too.

It was such a gorgeous sunset I found it hard to bring myself indoors...

so I stayed out and was treated to the aerial acrobatics of the bats as they started to emerge from whereever it is that they are roosting.  It must be very close by, they definitely look like they are only just dropping and swooping when they cross the garden from the hedge by the northern boundary.  I saw 2 different types at least - one very small which kept circling the lower lawn for ages (probably circling me as I was attracting the insects, I fear), and one much larger one.  I love this time of the evening, it's like handover time - the dayshift still murmuring its lullabies, and the nightshift just warming up.