Front Garden Jobs

What could be better than gardening on a sunny Saturday morning?  Nothing, except for gardening on a sunny Sunday morning and then blogging about it!  It feels like I haven't been out in the garden for ages - and it certainly feels like it hasn't been sunny for ages - so I've just spent a lovely couple of hours doing a bit of housekeeping in the front garden.  Now I'm sitting in front of the computer with a cup of coffee - bliss.

A while ago, I sowed some spinach in the salad bed under the dining room window.  What I got was a lovely crop of dandelions and other weeds.

The herbs were in a bit of a state too.  Parsley had bolted, mint was looking sickly and chive was a bit yellow. 

So I dug up all the weeds, sowed some salad leaves, cut parsley back (not sure if this was the right thing to do or not, I suppose we'll see!), nipped mint's tips and tidied chive up. 

I also planted basil...

...oregano...

...and rosemary...

...all of which I grew from seed!  I have been meaning to plant the poor things out for weeks, they've been stuck in pots on my windowsill getting more and more pot-bound.  Hopefully now they're out and now it's sunny they'll have a growth spurt.  I had four of each, so I planted the left-over basil in between the tomato plants in the back garden, and the left-over oregano and rosemary next to the water-butt. 

Then I weeded all the raised beds and removed the weeds defacing my beautiful gravel.  I like weeding...it's very meditative.  I didn't notice until Alastair pointed him out, but I had some feline company when I was weeding the raspberry bed.  Whisk had curled up in the long grass on Yvonne's side of the fence!

Then...I dug up my poor dahlias, aka slug-snacks.  They blatantly weren't going to grow.  I replaced them with one of my colour magic geraniums, also grown from seed.  Any slugs and snails found eating it will die.  Horribly.

Then...I dug up the reluctant gooseberry.  No sign of flowers, let alone fruit so far this year - or for several years - so he had to go (poor thing).

 
Finally, I thinned my love-in-a-mist seedlings.  I've mentioned before that I hate getting rid of growing plants with a passion.  As a result, they looked like this.

If I didn't do something, they were all going to die...so I did a bit of slash and burn.

I hope the remaining plants grow big and strong and flower beautifully.  Because it's been so wet - and because the snails ate my dahlias - there's lots of foliage in my front garden but no flowers.  I'm really looking forward to flowers, and soon!