The house leek is flowering

Hi there. I have been in a low mood on and off all day, for no particular reason. What a waste of a day off, this has annoyed me that I couldn’t snap out of it. I was cheered up by the sight of our house leek flowering for the first time. We had no idea this was even possible.

It used to look like this:

Now I am sad again as I have just read online that once they flower, that’s it, it’s all over folks and they die. So that’s nature I guess, but I will miss this little guy amongst our pebbles.

The garden never fails to lift my spirits. I pulled up a few weeds and listened to the birds and felt a bit better. Early evening every evening we can see “Mrs B” as I call her, the female blackbird. She’s usually hopping about merrily gobbling up worms. (Obviously you don’t always have to be the early bird to catch the worms!) “Mr B” meanwhile is usually either hiding in the hedge where they live, or else up in the tree doing his choir practice. He has a very tuneful song. The other day we saw a speckled fronted brown bird that at first I thought might be a thrush, but then we realised it was a young blackbird, Mr and Mrs B’s son or daughter, as it was opening its beak wide for Mr B to deposit food into its beak, so there you go. We’ve had Mr and Mrs B in residence for several years now, but never noticed any young ones before, only young blue tits in the box the other side, which clearly has nothing to do with them.

Before I witter on about birds until the cows come home (as they never will, as the cows that used to live in the fields behind our house are now long gone.. ).. I’ll show you a few pics from the garden today.

Firstly I present to you the hanging baskets…

Then we have the jungle like veg patch. Potato craziness, pumpkin, rhubarb, tomatoes, lettuce and herbs on the wall. Most of this lettuce tastes horrible by the way, really bitter 🤢.

The hostas are still lovely, if you like that sort of thing (which I do!).

The delphiniums are still blue.

Look at this we’ve had to do to protect our pots from naughty Squirrel Nutkin! He was visiting every day digging up everything in our pots, very very annoying. We put metal grids on the top and now David has cut holes in these so the begonias can grow through.. honestly, what a palaver! We don’t dare to take the grids off as I’m sure Squirrel Nutkin is still around, jumping through trees with his fat belly full of nuts.

So that’s all the Waffle for now. It’s going to be fresh fish for dinner.. I think it’s smoked haddock which I’ll poach in milk in the oven, I may make a little cheese sauce to go with it, and serve with ready prepared new potatoes and carrot and swede mash from M & S. I buy these ready prepared veg sometimes when they’re part of a meal deal, quite nice for a change. Back soon Wafflers. Enjoy the rest of your week Xx