Garden: Oma's Garden

Arjan and I have been spending a lot of time with his Oma (dutch for Grandma) recently and we've been helping in and out of the house.
I love spending time in the garden and, with the weather as nice as it's been, everything is bursting with life.
A couple of months ago we did some major planting, lots of seeds and bulbs went into the ground, I wish I had some before pictures so you could see the difference, but it slipped my mind at the time.

One of my favourite additions to Oma's garden is these beautiful violas, she bought a big tray of tiny wilting plants with barely one flower each, but I planted them out, watered them and rigorously deadheaded every few days and in no time they became this riotous explosion of greenery and petals.

Another half-dead, garden store purchase was these lobelia, I just crammed most of them into a couple of pots hoping that at least one or two plants might survive but yet again, they surprised me and have flourished!

This messy green patch may look like a patch of weeds, but it is actually the result of a packet of wild-flower seed mix. Arjan got to pick a patch of dirt to sprinkle them over and just chucked the whole lot onto this little corner. A few tiny flowers have begun to peak through the foliage and there was a beautiful poppy standing off to one side, but its petals have already fallen off, so I'll have to try catch the next one that blooms. I'm excited to see what else erupts from this patch of unkempt wilderness.

One of Oma's regular garden features has yet again made its appearance this year. We planted several dahlia tubers around the garden and after laying dormant for quite some time, they have become fairly sturdy little plants, one even has two tiny flower buds poking out. It'll be nice to see what assortment of colours we get.

And finally, this is a little row of forget-me-nots, a childhood favourite of mine. I planted them from seeds along with some royal mallows, but when I planted out the little seedlings the mallows were mysteriously eradicated by mice/mini landslide/Oma's disapproval at their placement, we will never know. These forget-me-nots are bulking up beautifully though and I think they'll blossom quite nicely.

In other news, I'm currently testing out a rather pungent garlic and onion aphid repellent on my sweet peas, so far I've seen far fewer but I'll just have to keep spraying and pray that the smell doesn't linger…