Strawberries with cream

Enjoying the fresh organic strawberries from my garden. I am harvesting like a small bowl a day and wondering how long this will keep up.



My favourite recipe is to cut them into two pieces (after washing them of course). Sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar and pour a bit of cream in.

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Garden Update and Creepy Crawlies

My roses - the pride of my garden, even though I only have three bushes.



My tomato is getting bigger and bigger but I am afraid that it shows no sign of ripening. Worried that it might be too late as the weather is getting colder and the leaves are showing signs of wither.


And as Halloween is nearby, here are pics of some creepy crawlies in my garden:





And not so creepy: A ladybird - sign of a healthy environment:


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chubskulit

Discount store lilies

Some months back, I bought some lily bulbs from a discount store in Coventry city centre. I was not even sure whether they would live or what the flowers would look like if they did survive. So I planted them around my garden and today morning I got the first bloom.

It looks lovely and I now regret not buying more.





Have no idea about the name of these lilies. Help anyone?

UPDATE:
A friend of Facebook informed me that it is not (scientifically) a Lily but an Iris.

Did some Googling and found out that it's common name is Blue Flag and belong to the Iridaceae (iris) family. It is also known as Blue Iris, Liver Lily, Wild Iris, Flag, Poison Flag, Snake Lily, Water Flag, Dragon Flower, Dagger Flower and Fleur-de-Lis.


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A plant to brighten up the bathroom

Our bathroom was looking a bit dull and as I was cleaning it up this Friday, I decided that maybe I should introduce a plant to the room, just to brighten it up a little.

This is Flaming Katy, a Kalanchoe. This succulent needs little care and is long-flowering. Just ideal for the bathroom and it cost me only 98p from B & Q.



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Strawberries

My strawberries are really doing well. 100% organic. It initially started out with 2 plants about two years ago and now I have a whole patch.



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Gardening, blogging and Pink roses

Some people like playing golf. Others would rather lie down on the couch with a cool beer and watch football on TV. Well, my favourite pastimes are gardening and blogging (and recently twittering) - not necessarily in that order. Sometimes my wife reminds me that I am doing a PhD and that I may be doing these things when it is not exactly my "pastime".

Anyway, it's a sunny Sunday here in Coventry and I am doing two of my favourite pastimes - blogging after spending some time in the garden.

I blogged about my yellow roses last week and these are my pink roses that just started flowering.


This is a Hybrid Tea rose - Doris Tysterman.

I had planted some flowers in the front of the house as well but haven not been taking care of them and as you can see, needs a fair bit of weeding.

Petunias and Begonias

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Yellow roses

I have only three rose plants but they are doing really well. I expect to have all three bushes blooming by next week.



The yellow roses have a slight pinkish tinge on the edges. What do you think?


Hybrid Tea Rose - Sunblest

My herbal garden is doing really great as well. Besides my mints and rosemary, I now have basil and coriander growing as well. Nothing beats fresh herbs on your dishes.

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Azaleas brightening up my garden

The small garden in front of my house was looking a little dull and I found the perfect flower to brighten it up - dark pink Azaleas (Rhododendron sp.).

Bought these flowering shrubs at the green grocer near our house. I have no idea about the variety or the species of Azaleas. Don't they look lovely?




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Spring is here when daffodils bloom

I haven't done a Green Thumb Sunday post for quite sometime because I haven't been doing any gardening at all.

Anyway, the first flowers to bloom were the narcissus. They look lovely.



Over here, the yellow daffodils flowering everywhere signal that spring has arrived.

My daughter's daffodils which she planted from bulbs also started flowering and I helped her transfer from the pot to the ground.






I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD by William Wordsworth (1804)

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


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My hybrid tea roses

Really nice colours



You can understand why Roses are my favourite flowers.


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Nasterium flowers

The only remaining plants still flowering in my garden is this Nasterium bush. There are a few roses as well but can see that the cold is getting to them.



I planted the Nasterium last year and it withered in winter. I thought they had died but they miraculously sprouted up again in summer this year.

The shiny streaks on the leaves in the picture are the slug trails.

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Gardening in a rented house

This post is kind of related to my previous post. I have had several guys ask me why I spend so much time, energy and of course money on my garden, when it's not even my real house. One of them happened to be a former neighbour of mine. He was renting the house next door (the house on the left in the pic below).




This pic was taken last June and you can see the mess in the neighbour's garden. It's worse now and looks like a jungle. He told me just before leaving, that one of the reasons he was moving out was because the landlord didn't want to clear the mess at the back. "The landlord should clean it up. It's his house", he told me.

A lot of of my friends who are also renting houses here in the UK seem to agree with that. Of course, there's always the excuse that they are too busy with their studies or work, that they don't have the equipment and so on but I guess the main reason is that gardening is not simply their thing. It's different in my case.

Some people play golf in their free time, I do gardening in mine. Plus the hobby does not cost as much.

Even though I know it's not my own house, it's where I live and I would like to live in a house with a well maintained garden. I don't want to feel like I am living in a dump. I am also thinking about my kids. At least they can go and play in the back rather than on the road in the front.

It's wonderful if you have a landlord who cuts the grass (or has someone do it for him) regularly but even if you don't, I think you should do it yourself. After all, you are living there and it's your home.

Clearing up the front of the house

The small patch in front of our house (can't call it a garden) have been neglected for a while and was slowly turning into a jungle. I had been planning to do something about it and today I finally got the chance. I bought a used strimmer today at the Long Marston car boot sale and like everything you buy at car boot, was not sure whether it worked. Well, it worked and the garden (I can call it that now) looks much better now.



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Garden needs weeding

The rains have started and the weeds are coming back with a vengeance. Guess I have to get my hands really dirty when I get back:




Some of the weeds have beautiful flowers. I am not sure why but all of them in my garden seem to have pink flowers.

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White Lilies

These are white lilies in my garden - my wife's favourite flowers. I bought them at a car boot sale and they only started flowering yesterday.





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Strawberry season

It's strawberry season again. The fruits are 100% organic and they taste delicious. However, it's not the first time I am tasting the 'Fruits of my labour'.





My Green Thumb Sunday post this week.
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Roses in Bloom

My Valentine's day roses are blooming again and isn't that colour wonderful. I have to say that roses are my favourite flowering plants for a number of reasons. First of all, the flowers are sweet smelling. They last long as well and the plants flower several times in a year. You also don't have to replant them every year as I have to do with some of my other flowering plants. Last of all, they are quite hardy and easy to propagate as well.



The two hybrid tea roses (one with yellow flowers and another with orange flowers) I bought at a car boot sale last Sunday are doing great as well.

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Pink flowers

Noticed a strange plant coming up all over the place. Uprooted most of them and I don't know why, left this one. Quite recently it started flowering - beautiful pink flowers. Like usual, I have no idea what this plant is. Now I am regretting cutting the plants. The amazing thing is that I have no idea where they came from.




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African daisies and dahlias

Took my mother-in-law and the kids to the Furnace End car boot yesterday morning. My daughter obviously enjoyed herself on the bouncy castle and the merry-go-round.

Saw these African daisies on sale and got three plants for £2/. Hopefully they will later look as good as the pictures of the flowers I look in Cornwall.



My mother-in-law liked these miniature dahlias and bought two of them as well.



Took the pictures yesterday evening. I had wanted to post them up as part of "Green Thumb Sunday" but couldn't as I slept early yesterday.