Mid-May in the garden

Ah, glorious May, now properly into its stride, all burgeoning and beautiful. Suddenly things I perhaps hadn’t paid proper attention to for a couple of days seem to have doubled or tripled in size.

To add to the yellow above, and in flower just after the previous posting at the start of the month, this rather splendid tulip.

As previously mentioned, I’ve noticed what seems to be a common experience, that stocks of tulips seem to diminish over the years. I know I had at least ten of these, ‘West Point’, but this year only one flowered.

Perhaps I appreciated it even more because it was only the one. Must think about replenishing stocks of this, as it is very beautiful.

After all that yellow, a bit of blue — Clematis ‘Blue Eclipse’.

A kind lady called Jo found this for me many years ago after it had proved hard to find in garden centres nearby. It is now well-established and joyfully rampant, though it was late into growth this spring and I kept looking at it in a concerned way, thinking it was dead. This seems hilarious now, as I fight my way past its ever-lengthening shoots as they tendril out madly across the path and everything else nearby.

I remember seeing a splendid specimen in Helmsley Walled Garden many years ago, hence the hankering after one of my own.

Did I mention I sometimes grow a bit of veg? Here’s a bit of veg.

All overwintered after being planted last year, which is why it looks so well-grown. Chard and ‘black kale’, and some rocket and chives.

The most obvious thing in the garden at the moment is the huge number of forget-me-nots. I remember someone saying to me that once you get forget-me-nots in your garden you never get rid of them, but then why would you want to.

There’s a lot of them in the foreground of this photo.

I’m amazed by how much they’ve sprung up and filled out and foamed into great mounds of flower. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was transplanting some of the small overwintered plants of forget-me-nots and thinking how spindly and pathetic they looked.

Elsewhere, tidier things in pots, including a few hostas, not yet chewed full of holes by slugs and snails, though no doubt that will occur later, despite my best efforts.

And the cats are enjoying it all too. View across the garden, yesterday evening.

Thanks for reading, and for all the kind comments since I’ve started posting more regularly again.