Gardening news

A better than usual flower on the water lily - the root of which was substantially pruned over the winter in an effort to get the plant to better fit its tub. None of the lilies that we grow ever seem to stay small leaved. And no more newts following the sighting a week or so previous noticed at reference 1.

For some reason Cortana could not manage the focus on this shot, making a similarly poor fist of it on all half dozen or so attempts. But the fence being down for reconstruction did remind us how different our back gardens would look if we did not all tend to go in for high fences. At least ours are three to four feet, rather than the six to seven of a lot of them. A bit of privacy near the house is good, but does one need it all the way down?

We have a small bamboo plant in a soft black plastic tub behind the garage, recovering after having been badly pot bound in a rather smaller plant pot, as noticed at reference 2. For some reason eschewing the more usual surface escape route, this shoot is trying for one of the drainage holes at the bottom of the tub. I wondered about layering or something of that sort but I don't suppose I shall get around to it.

The next day, I was admiring some pretty pink flowers in some patio tubs in someone else's garden, in Stoneleigh. It eventually dawned on me that they were the flowers of potato plants.

Note the green tub, bottom right. A suburban gardening version of the large carrier bags that builders' merchants use these days for the delivery of loose materials like sand and shingle. Ask Bing about 'gardening bags' and she turns up lots of bags of the right general sort, but the wrong size, for garden waste rather than for growing things. While if I ask about 'gardening grow bags', she turns up lots of grow bags, but not this particular sort. Better luck with Google?

PS: not satisfied with the spacing around the second snap above, I thought I would try 'HTML view' for once. And for once, I got it right. By comparing the HTML for the first and second snaps, I was able to spot and remove the unwanted line feed which the usually convenient 'Compose view' had been unable to deal with.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/series-3-episode-iv.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/bamboo.html.