How does your garden grow?

 We've been in our new house for just over a year now and with the house came a lovely garden. It's not quite as we'd like it - there is a lot of work to do but after an incredibly full year of work and babies we've finally had a little bit of time for some gardening.

the garden in February snow

I love being outside and having all this new space is wonderful - I never thought I would enjoy the gardening but I've surprised myself! I've been enjoying getting my hands dirty digging around in the border and filling plant pots with new seedlings.

surrounded by trees

the honeysuckle has gone mad!

monster blackberry bush

chives and a huge sage plant behind

finally some sunshine!

Over the last month we've been growing seeds and planting all sorts of different flowers and plants. We got some free seeds from Innocent in their packs of smoothies - sunflower basil and violets and Alfie was given a packet of peas to plant from his school. He has been helping me at every step and he loves to go and check to see if anything has made an appearance. 

seeds from Innocent

easy to plant

waiting for some growth...

the seedlings make an appearance

the basil grew really well!

..and so did the violets 

He also loved the fact that he got to try our first strawberry (actually a pesky bird took the very first one...I blame Mr Blackbird for being the stealth strawberry stealer...it had his beak marks all over it.) 

Last week we had the most enormous thunderstorms and flooding and I really thought this rain would never stop. It was also the day the Olympic Torch came through our town!! 

massive amounts of rain

Thursday 28th June..a new river in the town!

Thankfully as I write this post the back door is wide open and our eldest son is playing on the grass (resembles a small jungle at the moment...trying to get a fine day for mowing has been near impossible!!)

We've also been growing strawberries, foxgloves and californian poppies. Yesterday we also potted some pumpkin seeds and another sunflower...as the first one was gobbled by a slug overnight!

peas

foxgloves from my Dad

California Poppies

Charlie in the sage plant

So far we've had quite a success with most of the plants and we can't wait to see all the flowers appear so we get a flourish of colour. 

I'm just hoping that the month's-rainfall-in-two-days prediction for tomorrow doesn't come true or we may wake up to a boating lake rather than a lovely garden! 

peas continue to grow

lovely strawberries