win some, lose some

I don't think we are winning in the war against the rabbits.  The new gate proved not to be making any difference, as the Systems Administrator discovered on going out at dusk recently and seeing rabbits in the drive.  They scooted towards the gate and dived off to one side, disappearing into the undergrowth.  It took me the best part of a morning chopping back the brambles by the gate to establish that there was a ten foot run where there was no wire, and make good the deficiency. There used to be some ornamental hurdles, many years ago, but they'd rotted away.  Luckily we had half a roll of quite tall wire netting left over from something else, and even more amazingly I knew where it was.

This morning, emerging from the greenhouse and heading back to the house, I saw a large rabbit scampering about inside the gate, in broad daylight.  It ran out into the neighbour's field when it saw me, but things are getting pretty desperate when they come into the garden in the middle of the morning.  The gate has to stay open during the day, since we can't expect the postman or any other delivery drivers to get out of their vehicles to open it, let alone shut it behind them on the way out.  A new generation of cats seems the only solution, sweet little kittens that Our Ginger and the short indignant tabby will have time to get used to before they grow up to be huge ravening beasts.  That's assuming they do turn into ferocious hunters.  After all, the short indignant tabby didn't.  She doesn't even really approve of grass, much preferring man-made surfaces like concrete, or better still staying indoors.

The Amateur Gardening readers' offer lavenders arrived with today's post.  I wasn't expecting them until the end of the month, but never mind, I was here when the postman called, and they were all potted up into two seed trays by lunchtime.  They were tiny little plugs, but that's what you get for £5.95 for forty-eight plants, and they were very bushy, with multiple shoots from ground level though still less than an inch tall.  I wondered how they were made. The lowest leaves were a different shape to the others, rounder and with wavy edges, so definitely not minuscule cuttings. They might have been seed raised, though named varieties strictly shouldn't be, and then I thought perhaps they were micro-propagated.  They came in four strips of a dozen plants, each strip consisting of a row of blunt-bottomed V shaped pots, divided down the middle so that you could bend the two halves apart to release the small rootball, and held in a moulded flat plastic box inside a shiny cardboard sleeve for postage.  It worked, the little plants arrived in perfect condition, but it was industrial plant production.  How very different to the Plant Heritage propagation mornings and plant stall.

The flower on the Plant Heritage Clivia in the conservatory is opening.  It consists of a cluster of individual trumpet shaped blooms at the top of a fat stalk, the general arrangement not unlike an agapanthus.  The petals appear lustrous and slightly fleshy, in a luminous shade of orange.  I think it is marvellous, very glamorous.  I've fancied trying one for years, but not seen a plant for sale before.  Of course now I've got the ordinary orange sort I covet the rarer yellow form, but conservatory plants in general are not the easiest things to track down.  I suppose it is such a small market.  Most conservatories are used as garden rooms, with soft furnishings, and plants don't get much of a look in.