Saturday

I managed to spend some money yesterday. After looking up about raised planter bed thingies, I had a little ponder about the gap left by the severe pruning of the bush that thought it was a tree (Black Beauty) and the space next to it that had the sunflowers earlier. It does look very bleak and bare there right now.

I gather Japanese anemones like shady places (which that bed certainly is) and they are beautiful and have some height, not to mention autumn flowering. I looked online and found an offer of six plants for not very much money, not baby plants either, two white, two pale pink and two deep pink, so I ordered them and, hopefully, they will come at some point next week when I can get them into the bed. I'm preparing the soil by digging in some 'well rotted manure', as it says on the bag! Three will go where the sunflowers were, so I can see them from the window and the other three will go out at the front where they will provide some much needed height at points along the narrow strip in front of the house. Around the temporary (I hope) stump, I wanted temporary stuff so off I pootled to B&Q and Wyvale and got a couple of chrysanthemums and a box of six pansies which have filled the gap nicely. I'm hoping that Black Beauty will have sent out shoots to cover that area by next spring/summer, fingers crossed. I managed to destroy one pansy while trying to get it out of the polystyrene container, three went in the space in the bed and the remaining two ended up under the apple tree.

While I was there I also bought a few packs of bulbs. Every year I mean to plant out some bulbs in a systematic way and every year I don't. Ridiculous. So perhaps this will be the year I do. I have random snowdrops and hyacinths that were pot gifts planted out afterwards, but not a lot else.

While in B&Q I noticed some plastic paint - that is paint that will go on plastic surfaces. I have a couple of manky low plastic tables that have been outside so long that they are grey and really yucky. If I could paint them, it would give them a new lease of life and be nice to stand containers on. So I got some paint! Maybe I will, maybe I won't . . . :0)

I also looked all over for some 'vertical blind slat hanger replacements' - those little plastic things that go in the top of vertical blinds and fix the strip to the bracket. Do you think I could find anywhere locally that sold them? So I came home, Googled, and within ten minutes had located and bought a pack of them. I reckon I spent more on the petrol looking around locally than I had to spend on the postage and certainly would have spent more on public transport, which is why so many people now don't even try to use local shops - they just don't have the necessary, it's a lot more hassle and it actually costs more by the time you've taken travelling into account. A lot of people have vertical blinds, they must get damaged from time to time, so it's not good that a local specialist curtain and blind shop doesn't stock replacement bits or be able to get order some in when needed.

My readers may remember that earlier on in the year I took some rosemary cuttings. The reason was that my rosemary bush is getting a bit on the large side for where it is and will need to be cut back or replaced in the next few years. Knowing my luck with cutting rosemary back (I killed one several years ago doing just that) I decided to take some cuttings so I have a replacement. I ended up with twelve cutting which I duly potted with a hope and a prayer. Amazingly, all survived, Mum and Dad took two and the others have been growing healthily all summer. Well, I don't need ten, do I, so I posted a message on a local free re-cycling group on Facebook and within a couple of hours all six on offer had been snapped up. Three were picked up yesterday and three are due to be picked up today. That leaves four - one for my friend S, whenever she manages to come, one for the front, I think, and two to go in containers.

I think I must have very late developing green fingers!