Gardening, May 2015.

I can't show you progress photos of our new house yet (It's still in the 'it gets worse before it gets better' stage! It will get better, right? Right!?) but progress is definitely being made in the garden.

I can't do painting or sanding, because I have pretty bad asthma, so whenever Joe or my mum are at the house doing painting I come too and do a spot of digging.

My main job has been digging out the grass and weeds that had grown over this raised bed thingy.  I've nearly finished the first half, there's more weeds out of shot on the right hand side of this photo, but I'm going to dig them next year I think.

I even did my first bit of planting, some mini-pops baby sweetcorn and some chives.  I started making a wigwam for sweet peas to grow up too.

I want the garden to be mixed flowers and vegetables, not in rows, all mixed up.  I can't find any online photos or inspiration for this though, only the book The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler.  If you garden this way or can point me in the way of more info or inspiration I'd really appreciate that!

I've been kept company by this baby blackbird, mummy and daddy blackbird, and lots of robins.  Also a huuuge rat, but I'm trying to poison her (I don't usually mind rats but this one is huge, not scared of humans and comes too close to the conservatory doors for my liking!).

There's a lovely white lilac at the end of the garden, and this pink flowery tree I can never remember the name of (it's something that starts with 'ooo' or 'yoou').

I spent a long time sorting this honeysuckle, that had completely slumped over and taken the trellis off the fence with it.  Once I'd cut it back a bit, I found that there was a rose under it!  I've put wires on the fence and I'm trying to train the honeysuckle to cover it.  I found a neglected clematis in a pot, and some ivy so I've planted them too to cover the two tone fence. 

It's funny, cos someone obviously loved this garden once, there's a shed full of tools, piles of pots and canes and some lovely plants hidden under the weeds.  The only things we've bought for the garden have been a lawn mower and some seeds, the rest has been provided for us by the ghost of gardeners past.  It's sad that it's been neglected for a while, but I'm enjoying making it look like a proper garden again.

I've planted some seeds in some pots full of weeds I found at the back of the garden (I removed the weeds first!).  In the pots below there are sunflowers and livingstone dasies, courgettes and competition sunflowers (that's not the variety, me and Joe are having a competition to see who can grow the tallest sunflower!).  I've got a mini nursery in another corner, with kale, cabbage, lettuce, broad beans, garlic chives and borage sown, so I have seedlings to plant when I've finished my last bit of bed digging.

What's happening in your garden this month?