My own herb garden
June 2018
I’ve been living in Scotland for long enough now to blend in with the locals when it comes to skin tone. When I was over in the Netherlands at the end of May, my very pale skin made me stick out like a sore thumb! Thankfully the weather has turned sunny and warm and I’m slowly beginning to catch up now.
So is the garden by the way; all our fruit trees are flowering like mad, the soft fruit bushes are laden with currants and everything in general is catching up.
The nice weather also meant I could finish landscaping the garden. Our final borders have been dug and planted and now it’s just a matter of keeping on top of the weeds and perhaps moving a few plants to a better location.
Change of plans again though... the original five senses garden (as I explained on the Beechgrove Garden some years back) has been made into a butterfly and moth border with lots of flowering plants butterflies just love.
The five senses part of the garden has now moved closer to the house. I have 4 small boxes with plants for each sense, while the fifth sense, hearing, is represented by the entire garden. You’d be surprised how much noise nature makes! I just need to make signs for each bed: ‘taste me’, ‘smell me’, ‘touch me’, ‘see me’ and ‘hear me’ which I will attach to the veranda.
I finally have my own herb garden too! It’s divided into four sections; colds & flu, digestion, sleeping and legends. It contains herbs which I also sell in the shop, so now I can make my own decoctions for when I feel a wee bit under the weather (although I hardly ever catch anything!). Anyway, it’s nice to be able to dry herbs like elderberries, sage, thyme, meadow sweet and more for the colder months.
By the way, the big stones are all dug up from our own garden!
The chickens are also doing well. Punky seems to think she’s broody, but she won’t make a good mother because she perches at night, leaving the imaginary eggs in the cold and after she has been sitting on her ‘eggs’ for an hour or so she just walks off to join the rest of the gang. But when she is sitting in the nest and you look at her, she puffs herself out and makes an awful screeching noise, which is really quite funny, to be honest! Even the neighbours were asking if she was feeling alright!
Film & TV Extra news... it’d probably be easier if River City added me to their payroll! I was back in Shieldinch again in May and a couple of days after that; they called to say they wanted me back again! Unfortunately the second time was on a Saturday, which is not the best of days for me; after all, I still have a shop to run! They are on a summer break just now, so no more filming for River