Greetings from Liverpool, where we are enjoying a good spell of warm dry weather. The paddling pool is full of refreshing cool water, the hose pipe is out ready to water the garden beds, and dining table is neglected in favour of garden picnics and barbecues.

Most of May has been quite different, and one day recently I heard that it had rained every day except one in May so far. There was plenty of sunshine, but often snatched between showers, so that the sun shining on the garden at breakfast time was falling on plants freshly wet from the shower that had fallen during the early morning cup of tea. Everything looked very fresh and green.

May the tenth was a particularly fine morning, and I visited some friends in Fairfield, and the garden looked especially beautiful. They have a hawthorn tree at the front of the house, with bright reddish pink blossom, whilst at the back the bluebells were still out amongst the shrubs and tall trees at the back of the garden. Best of all the Clematis Montana was a mass of blooms, as was indeed our own, except that theirs was growing freely into the branches of a conifer and high into the lower branches of a tall sycamore tree. It all looked very beautiful on a bright clear fresh sunny morning.

The Chilean Potato, or Solanum, is looking particularly good this year. It had grown quite large so we cut it right back last Autumn, now it is growing quite strongly and carrying quite neat little pockets of flowers. Each pocket is a profusion of small delicate violet blue flowers with an orangey yellow centre. Growing beneath the bush is a mass of Californian poppies that have come out in the last few days. These bright orange blooms close up each night, and open up to form a bright display each morning.

The rest of the garden has a fine display of flowers growing in the six to twelve inch sort of height. There are geraniums, some types of daisies, saxifrages, potentilla, and many other flowers I cannot put a name to. There is a large bloomed clematis growing tall, and there are fresh leaves on the Fatsia and on the Eucalyptus tree.

We have been enjoying red roses for most of the month, and just in the last few days the yellow blooms on the David Austen Rose by the front door have been coming out. These are very ornate blooms, each flower a mass of petals. Most of the front garden is taken up with the Hypericum bush, which is bigger than ever, but not yet in bloom. The Weigeila bush, with its dark maroon coloured flowers is doing well.

Elsewhere in Liverpool, there are still the last of the bluebells to enjoy. I think it has been quite a good year for bluebells, they seemed to have been around in more places, and for longer than I remember in previous years.

Mike Pendray
1 June 2003