Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena)

 

 Summer daze.

 

 Wild Clary (Salvia vebenaca) in the wildflower meadow at the music school. This is a seeded meadow (before my time) and I imagine it must have been a mix of generalists e.g. Ox-Eye Daisy and chalk specialists like the Clary.

 Curiously I have noted the absence of S. vebenaca in past years and considered trying to introduce it. And suddenly here it is! Then again the meadow is usually a mass of Ox-Eye Daisies yet they are sparse this year. Wild flowers are tenacious but highly variable in their growth from one year to the next. Weather is key: no doubt the warm dry spring has favoured some species, others less so.

 

 As mentioned recently I transformed a neglected former veg patch at the music school into a herb/kitchen garden. [see entry dated 16th. April] 

 This included transplanting a row of Rosemary bushes running East-West into an informal hedge/screen running North-South. Robust as it is Rosemary does not like root disturbance and is prone to 'transplant shock'. Nonetheless I decided to risk it: the key is to lift a large enough root ball of soil thereby minimising damage to the root system. 

 I wouldn't attempt it with knarly old specimens but these were only planted a couple of years ago (though they are already quite tall and woody). As a precaution I took 14 stem tip cuttings the day before I lifted them to propagate more plants if replacement is required. I got them going two to a pot; now they have started to develop tiny roots I carefully teased out each one to go into single pots to grow on. 

 Time will tell if the transplants prosper, if not I will replace them with new ones. In fact I might do that anyway. I have enough for a closer spacing and can prune them to be more hedge-like from the outset.

 I recently replanted the Dahlias at the music school. I lifted them last November and stored the tubers indoors in an unheated room. What to do with Dahlias over winter is debatable. They may survive in the ground, then again they may get cold and damp and rot. Take them indoors and they may get too dry and shrivel up.

 These were on the dry side when I looked at them about a month ago so in the interim I put them in large pots of soil in the greenhouse and kept them well watered. This seemed to do the trick, they plumped up nicely and were starting to sprout.

 When lifting it's important to label which clumps are which because there's no way to tell from the tubers. Dahlias generally look best planted in groups of the same flower and foliage rather than mixing them up.

 Clumps can be divided before planting but it's vital to make sure each division has an 'eye'. A tuber without an eye will not produce a stem. I simply cut several clumps in half with a very sharp knife. I dug  the planting holes in advance and filled them with well rotted compost mixed with top soil to make a rich mix and gave the ground a good soaking after planting. 

 Probably Common Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) going by the bluish flowers. This clump is growing next to the stand of Russian Comfrey I mentioned a few days ago. As noted Russian and Common Comfrey cross pollinate freely so it's moot whether they are one or the other or a bit of both.

 Each flower of an Ox-Eye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is many i.e. composite. At the centre is the multitude of yellow flowers (disc floret) and the surrounding petals are flowers too (ray floret).