What im reading...

Gardeners world June edition.I have not opened bag it came in yet but i will.I love the heavy magasine with beautiful glossy pages and pictures.Normal peoples gardens, plus articles from garden writers like Alan Titchmarsh (of ground force fame, formally presenter of gardeners world the BBC garden flagship program every friday night at 8pm).
I read an article by Amy Stewart about why english magasines are better than American.She says its because we have more focus on gardeners, then plants,
http://dirtbyamystewart.blogspot.com/

I loved her articles about Manhattan attempts to grow something.A good quote from my english gardens book is
"There is not a noble or pleasent seat in England but hath its garden for pleasure and delight; scarce an ingenious citezen that by his confinement to a shop, being denied the priveledge of a having a real garden, but hath his boxes, pots, or other receptacles for flowers, plants,etc...so great do men take pleasure in it"
A guy called John Worlidge wrote that in a pamphlet in 1683. Even people with no garden can grow things such as a pot on a fire hydrant, or a rose bush in a cage. Window boxes, pots, planters. Even when your yard is entirely concrete you can fill it with plants and flowers.
The English love the plants, flowers, trees, growing fruits, and vegetables.I am still reading that garden history book.Each age makes you want to find an example of that periods garden to see what it looked like.A few Medaeval ones exist, a few tudor, and more 17th century gardens.
I wrote before how the activity of gardening stretches back a thousand years, and how it connects people in different centuries, and now blogging connects us through different continents now.
The English love humour, and the best writers have a flippancy, and love irony.They tell of successes and disasters. One and the same, just different sides of the coin.
I have a list of about thirty garden blogs which i go through daily.To see what people are growing, and what they look like.
Someone wrote that blogging was like having your neighbours peer over your fence into your garden. I hope my neighbours see whats growing!
I like the blogging garden community reading each blog, leaving comments, and provoking comment, debates.Like the eternal question of slugs....
How to deter them from devouring your prized plants?I am not a budhist I prefer my plants to slimy slugs.I have use pellets but i dont want to poison birds.I am putting bird seed up to bring them to my garden so they can devour rogue slugs and snails.I leave long grass beneath my hedge making a micro environment for hedgehogs etc.
I dont like killing snails.I think they are quite sweet with their shells on their back.My pellets dont distinguish between either species.Copper tape, upturned grapefruit, beer in a bowl, and recently coffee grounds from starbucks.
I dont know which works best, but at the moment the slug attacks have abated.The hostas are intact, and the forget me nots are flowering so its laissez faire slug control.
Reading about other peoples daily struggles and seeing their successes inspires me to go out and look at my own garden.New ideas, new plants, new slug controls.Environmental issues, organic gardening.
Its nearly 3am!!This is one very late (or early post).I go to work and go past hundreds of gardens.Big ones, small ones, individual pots, a hanging basket, trellises, shrubs, and big old tree's.Even my hospital is built in tree lined grounds with gardens between departments.
As i travel to/from work i am absorbing all the views.I dream of tulips, daffodils dying down, cherry blossom tree's, new grown buds on tree's, summer pansys, violas, rose bushes growing leafs, clematis scrambling up trellising, an archway over the path thick with ivy.
It is my passion the garden, and all things connected to that.Hurray for printed words, pictures, and blogs!!