Unusual lawn

Sunday saw us oversleeping and missing church unfortunately, but there was an afternoon planned where we were going over to my daughters house to have lunch with them, and then tidy up their garden. They have had to survive in a tiny flat with their two children for a number of years, but have finally moved into a lovely house, with a door opening onto the rear garden. The house backs onto a golf course and so offers them an extended 'planty' view. The rain came in, as it seems to a lot at the moment, and so gardening plans were halted, but not before my grandson eagerly showed me his three pots of seeds that were germinating, even if they were planted a little late. Marigold and Cosmos are doing well, Lobelia are just showing, and so no blaze of colour this year I think. Not bad for a four year old though eh? The family gardening business is going to be in safe hands I think!

Monday was a day of getting as much done in the rain as I could to avoid any backlog, and managed to get through that one by the skin of my teeth. Amanda looked distainfully at me on my return as I got my mud, leaf and grass stained body ready for entering the pristine white shower cubicle.

Yesterday promised to be better weather wise, and so I headed up to Barton-on-Sea for my first job of the day. Most people, including me in the past, take the short route though Bournemouth, Christchurch and Highcliffe to get here, but traffic is so heavy nowadays that I take a much longer but quicker route through the surrounding countryside. Nicer views as well! I parked up opposite the property to have a quick cup of tea and to enjoy the view of the sea.

After five places done, my last one in Highcliffe, and the weather not looking too great from the back garden. I looked across at 'The Needles' and the Isle of Wight to see very dodgy weather indeed coming my way, and so press on I did!

From a distance this lawn doesn't look very special, just your average lawn that looks a bit neater when striped with a mower. But if you take a closer look you will see that it is made up entirely of Thyme. I have worked on most types of lawns, including a wonderful couple of Camomile ones, but this was a first for me. I took over the place some thirteen years ago, and have worked to keep any grass from taking a hold as the place is surrounded by wild grass area and neighbours with ordinary lawns. Each time it's mowed, one gets a heady aroma from the oils released by this pungent herb, and twice a year it is allowed to grow a little so that purple flowers are produced, turning the whole expance vivid pink......very unusual!

Close up of the Thyme.

As you can see the weather didn't only miss me, but cleared to give a beautifully sunny sky. The piccie above is from the house looking across the neighbours garden and out to sea.
One final call into a garden all they way back in Poole, and a discussion about Rosa rugosa and it's merits and drawbacks then home, whereupon I cleaned myself up, made a coffee, and had the dahlias in our garden catch my eye. I may have mentioned previously that these, along with Chrysanthemums etc, don't in my book have a given place in the design of any garden. I do however like to put them randomly throughout the shrubs to fill gaps and give colour as most things at this time of year in the UK are starting to look tired and lacklustre.

I was asked to remove these from a garden and dispose of them, and dispose of the tubers I did, straight into our garden. I'm not mad on pink flower either, but the cactus form of this one helps I think.

I absolutely adore this clear and pure yellow/white one!

White flowers...no, no , no........but Amanda likes them and so compromise Gary.

We both didn't quite know what to do with ourselves now, and so we took ourselves off to Soho's coffee shop, and spent a very agreeable few hours deep talking, whilst Amanda had her Earl Grey with lemon, and I had a couple of tall glasses of Peroni....very nice! An episode of West Wing and then it was sleep.......TTFN!