I am still bashing along weeding the gravel. I keep thinking that one more day's work will finish it. Maybe tomorrow really will be the day. This will be a swift blog entry (and therefore potentially riddled with typos and examples of lexical facilitation, although since Con Coughlin used the phrase 'pet projects' three times in as many paragraphs in the Telegraph I should say anything goes nowadays) as I have been nominated as officer in charge of supper, on the grounds that it is chicken pie from the remains of the weekend's roast and I know how to make pastry.
There is quite a bit going on florally in the long bed. The perennial wallflower 'Bowles Mauve', of which I have written before, is still blooming away. The bed is not very rigorously colour-themed, but the far north end mostly contains pale blue, pink, white and yellow flowers. Trotting out there just now to collect some flowers I came back with a handful, and could have picked more if the chicken pie hadn't beckoned. Verbascum nigrum does well in the light soil. This is longer lived than some of the hybrids like the Cotswolds series, let alone 'Helen Johnson', and gradually bulks up to make a many-stemmed plant. The caterpillars of the mullein moth attack it occassionally, but not too often. The flowers, held in tall typical verbascum spikes, are individually small, and a rich shade of yellow. I know that some people consider it a mark of good taste not to have yellow flowers in their gardens, but I like them myself.
The shrubby Potentilla fruticosa are flowering. Again, some people despise them because of their associations with municipal planting, but they are good tough plants with a long flowering season. I mostly stick to the whites and yellows. The single flower I have brought in with me is a beautiful thing, looked at objectively and forgetting it is a potentilla. Five rounded soft yellow petals surround a boss of dusky yellow stamens. In winter when they are out of leaf they do look astonishingly dead, but they will actually take very low temperatures, and I have read that they are popular in the scandinavian countries. They can be clipped to form low hedges, though you rarely see them used in that way.
Gaura lindheimeri is trendy at the moment. This is a skinny plant, that produces tall spikes of white flowers that open from the bottom of the spike upwards. The unopened buds are pale pink, which gives an overall effect of soft pink rather than stark white. The petals are slender and held upwards, while a bunch of white stamens protrudes, and the effect is often compared to butterflies. There is a cultivar called 'Whirling Butterflies', but mine are the straight species, raised from seed. Gaura has a reputation for being short-lived, though the pink cultivars are said to be worse than the white. However, in my experience G. lindheimeri is pretty long lasting given very free draining soil. The leaves can be oddly spotted, a feature commented on (somewhere) by Christopher Lloyd, but mine are looking very green and healthy this year (so far). It will seed itself modestly if happy.
There is a useful Campanula, which I think is C. alliarifolia (I'll look it up later when I have time, and confess tomorrow if I have got this wrong). It has wrinkled, roughly heart-shaped leaves, white bell-shaped flowers, and seeds itself usefully around shrubs and at the base of hedges, where it tolerates drought, root competition, semi-shade, and looks exactly right for a country garden.
The Catananche are great. They form rosettes of narrow, grey-green leaves, from which cornflower shaped flowers rise on wiry stems. The base of each flower is a cup of overlapping papery scales, each with a dark rib up the centre, which is as pretty as an everlasting flower. I have the blue form, and some white ones, which don't spread as readily as the blue. The season lasts a long time, following which the dried flower heads are quite architectural. It seeds itself generously, but I am grateful for things that do so well on such light and starving soil, and just pull out the seedlings I don't want.
The news is that we let the black cat out for a couple of hours. He has been looking increasingly energetic, and bored in the house. He sunbathed in the long bed, then lay under the hedge, then went back inside and we shut him in so that he wouldn't wander off. We wouldn't want him overdoing things, and he can spend another night or two safely locked in the study with his dose of anti-inflammatories and his special luxury food. It will be an immense relief when he is judged fit to go out as he pleases, and we can leave the inner hall door open again.
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