Flowers and Herbs

 

There have never been many flowers in the garden. There was lavender, roses, and sweet peas. The rest was lawn, shrubs (some flowering but not for cutting), and trees. Eamonn loved the sweet peas. I didn't really like them because they are perennial and without scent.

Every year, I would mix the sweet peas with lavender, so that there was some scent in the house. This year, I had planned to cut some of the sweet peas and mix them with the scented variety I sowed in early Spring. Unfortunately, my sweet peas are not doing very well and have not yet flowered.

This afternoon, I did some weeding, and decided to bring in some of the perennial sweet peas. Gardener's World taught me that if sweet peas (and other flowers) were cut, it encourages more flowers. So, in they came

Another thing that isn't doing well this year, is the Moroccan Mint. I planted it in pots to stop it taking over the garden, but it has barely grown at all this year. After a long session of weeding the gravel in the front garden, I harvested what mint there was - just enough to make a small pot.

I decided to use one of Eamonn's ancestral heirlooms. We found this bone chine cup and saucer in Elliott's Antique Shop when we visited the Elliott homestead in Scotland. The shop proprietor was a distant cousin. She dug out a cup and saucer that was part of the cargo brought back from China by Eamonn's Great Grandfather, John Elliott.

I will have to make do with Lemon Verbena until I can plant some more Morroccan Mint in the garden. Unlike a lot of plants, those in the Physic garden are thriving on all the rain we've had.