Foxgloves and Roses

Over the last couple of months we've spent a lot of time in the garden just outside of our kitchen (the  cottage garden).  Sadly we lost a lot of plants last Summer as we didn't have enough water to keep them happy and we had some intensely hot weather very early in the season. Which gave we humans and our plants a bit of a shock!!  So we've been putting new plants in and and moving others about.  Some of the plants we moved were a number of foxgloves that were planted under the Meyer lemon tree.   Those are growing okay but are not showing any signs of flowering.   But check out this foxglove that appeared in a completely different part of the garden all by itself.  What a corker!!  Hopefully one day the other plants will flower just as spectacularly. 

 

This is a close up of Digitalis purpurea  - to give the blossom it's official name, which I will never remember - so you can see how truly impressive it is.  

I couldn't resist googling to find out how the foxglove got its name.  The image of foxes wearing gloves that I have in my wee brain does not look anything like the flower.  According to the Woodland Trust in the UK the origins of the name can be traced back to Anglo-saxon times but aren't clear.  Apparently the flowers look like the fingers of gloves.  I buy that. They kinda do.  The theories about the connections to foxes are less plausible though. One is that the foxes wore the flowers on their paws so they could move about quietly. Now I like the idea of floral clad foxes prancing daintily about the place and I'd love that to be true. It fits with the image I already had.  But, a more likely thought is that the flowers grow close to the earths where foxes raise their young.  Oh, and I didn't know this about foxgloves, they are both poisonous and curative. Or, as they say on the Woodland Trust site, "they can raise the dead and kill the living".  Not a plant to be messed with. I hope it doesn't uproot itself and invade our house during the night and start licking its lips and singing.  Like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors!! 

This year we have an abundance of amazing roses. I think we have about 15 or 20 plants and M and J, who previously owned this place, said they took loads out.  There must have been dozens and dozens.  I don't normally pick the roses, or any other flowers come to think of it.  It kind of feels like I'm stealing from the birds and the bees.  But as my lovely mother-in-law and sister-in-law were coming to stay for the weekend I thought I'd pick some to put in a vase in the centre of the table.  They certainly cheered the place up and filled it with a beautiful hint of scent.  And the birds and bees didn't line up and tell me off for stealing their flowers.  So I guess it's okay. 

I have got some more photos of the garden somewhere.  When I get a bit more time I'll post them on another blog.

Oh, we are waiting for our apricots to ripen.  They're supposed to be early apricots and we're supposed to be picking them by now.  No such luck. I am getting impatient. I check them every day and still not a single one is ready to be devoured.  And no amount of finger tapping and foot stomping is making the slightest bit of difference.   Bother, as Pooh would say.