Planting up my pots for the terrace

First of all, this photo was taken at a local walk a few weeks ago, called the botanical trail. It's full of lovely wild flowers in the spring and usually, lots of butterflies too. However this time we walked to the end of the path having seen only one white butterfly! That was really very odd. At least there were a few more on the way back and we finally saw one Orange Tip, a few Cleopatras, a blue of some sort and a Wall Brown.  Even so we normally see far more than this. What made up for it at the end were several Owlflies flitting about together, always a lovely sight. No photos of anything with wings as everything was too flitty. Oh, heard first cuckoo too!

Back home and I spent a fortune in both a garden centre and the local nursery buying plants for my pots, to replace all the ones I lost to the sudden freeze. It took ages to pot them all up.

I have put a few plant pots out the front of the house but there are plenty here and I hope by the time we come back from our holiday they should have bushed out and be a riot of colour! I've gone for more pinks and purples this time to make a change, as I had a lot of yellow and orange before.

I now have three plant stands in black cast iron (or faux cast iron, probably) which I have picked up from brocantes (flea markets) in our village, and the most recent one I found in a brocante shop. The most expensive was 5 euros and the most recent only 3 euros! Bargain! You can see the other two in the previous photos - they just take one plant.

Our Pyracantha hedge is covered in flowers, but it never seems to have as many berries. Possibly because it doesn't get trimmed until the autumn as we are not supposed to cut hedges during bird nesting season, which is a very good thing. Of course not everyone takes notice but if just some of us take note then that is a help for birds. Anyway, it then is not so easy to prune back without losing some of the berries. The yellow labels are marking where the orchids are - right now there is a mass of Pyramidal Orchids coming into bloom.

This is my Meyer Lemon which lost all its leaves after minus 6.5C and I thought it had died at first. However, there were some branches that were still green, not brown, and I was over the moon when it started sprouting. Now it has really healthy leaves all over, even on the trunk, and even one flower bud! It has never looked so healthy before.

We bought a new Kaffir Lime - I wasn't going to but Keith spotted one in the garden centre and we decided to get one after all - but from now on I am bringing it inside to an unheated room in winter. There isn't much room as my huge lemon grass goes in there in the winter, but I'll make space for it somehow.

I’ve planted out three cherry toms, one courgette plus two chillies which I bought - yet I'm laughing as self seeded tomatoes are appearing in the new veg bed from our own compost! I thought I’d try to keep a couple, if they survive this holiday, as they are too small to tie to a stake yet. The poor toms are shivering as it’s been really windy and we are going through the usual mid May dip in temperature. 

Well they will either live or die, I do have a housesitter who I hope will water regularly though!

I don’t have time to finish the Italian trip before we go away as we’re off to Croatia (and briefly, Slovenia and also Mostar in Bosnia) for 4 weeks on Sunday.  I’ll sign off now and see you in about a month!