How has it come to this?

Nearly seven weeks since I reluctantly forewent going birding. Now there's a word I've never used before! Forego, forewent, foregone. Oh well, I'm sort of getting used to it - staying home I mean. The garden keeps us both sane - coupled with some model-making and playing trains. Like a good little schoolboy!

Time for the latest flower and plant blog. I've been photographing the garden more than I've ever done before.

Here goes!

Paris polyphylla [Can't resist the idea that this is where the names 'Plaster of Paris and 'Polyfilla' come from!]

Stipa

Flowering ribes aureum

Red helianthemum

Shooting star or dodecatheon. Primula family.

Geranium phaeum

Rubus 'Benenden' or a variety thereof. 

Rodgersia

Echeveria - hardy in this trough. What trough? I hear you ask! Well they're in an old ceramic kitchen sink that's been covered in hypertufa so it looks like old sandstone. Honest!

Primula japonica by the stream. 

Cercidiphyllum japonica 'Rotfuchs' ['Red Fox' - a German introduction] Compact fastigiate tree.

It has lovely leaves and smells of toffee in the autumn.

Giant redwood - now the biggest thing in the garden. We brought it back from Bodnant nursery in North Wales many years ago when it fitted in the boot!

Meconopsis cambrica 'Frances Perry' - the red flowering Welsh poppy. Returns each year in the same border.

Osteospermum - African daisy

Hostas in hypertufa sinks. What is hypertufa? It's a mix by volume of sifted peat [through a very fine riddle], coarse sand and cement.

Drumstick primula denticulata and farfugium japonica foliage.

Deutzia 'Strawberry Fields' and dwarf deutzia 'Nikko'

Dicentra

Wisteria 'Black Dragon' 'floribunda Yaekokuryu'. Grown here as a standard - it took many years to start flowering but wow, how it flowers now!

A strange twisted weeping willow - very slow growing. It hangs strangely over the path. I have to persuade Sheila not to cut it off!

A sprawling small-flowered clematis whose name escapes me!

Anometheca! There's a red one somewhere.

White erinus or fairy foxglove.

Clematis seedhead

Wild garlic, purple erinus in a real stone trough and alpine strawberry

And that's about it again. I'll finish with a shuttlecock fern.

Stay home, stay safe. Be careful: there's a UK government planning your demise!