gardening society

This month's garden club lecture was about plants for pollinators, but the speaker's grasp of insect biology turned out to be patchy, so we will skate quickly over that.  It was good to see my old gardening friend from Writtle, and I paid for a couple of garden visits, feeling very organised that I had written a cheque and put the names of the gardens on the back, only to find that I should also have put it in an envelope.

I am feeling even less optimistic about the potato competition than I was before, since one of the recent cold nights has been cold enough to nip the leaves of the potato.  They look alright underneath, but the top ones are shrivelled and blackened.  Ah well, it's the taking part that counts, and the lovely tea that people tell me we get at the potato day.  If I'd realised it was going to get that cold overnight I'd have put the pot back in the greenhouse.  The emerging dahlia leaves in the dahlia bed have been hit as well, and a couple of borderline hardy herbaceous salvias in the back garden.  I am hoping that they are all sensible enough to keep some viable buds in reserve and will shoot again, rather than having sent up every potential stem they could make all in one go.

Next month's garden club topic is currently unknown, since the speaker who was booked to talk about pond life can't make it.  I expect they will send an email round once they've found somebody. The chairman looked entirely poised and in command of the situation, as she always does, but it must be hard work.  Before then there's the garden club plant sale, held every other year to raise funds for the club.  The one held two years ago raised the best part of a thousand quid, which is necessary to pay for speakers and the annual supper, otherwise I suppose they'd have to increase the membership fee.  I have offered to take some plants.  It's generally the way with cuttings and seeds that they either fail completely or you end up with many more plants than you need.  Maybe I'll find a taker for one of the collection of sheep eating Puya which are currently taking up rather a lot of space in the greenhouse.  I should hate to throw them on the compost heap, but I don't honestly need fifteen of them.