Reasons to be cheerful # 1: the front yard

The first significant rain for - well, a good many months - fell on Thursday and Friday. While it was no drought breaker, it has had a stunning effect on the front garden, restored hope that I will get dahlias this summer, and is swinging the pendulum back towards 'keep planting'.

This is all good, because the front yard is not only a spirit-saver, but it has contributed, however slightly, towards taming the brat-pack and keeping neighbour-trouble at bay. Strangers stop to look at the plants, which is kind of nice.


These foxgloves are some of my favourites. Tough as guts, water hardy, resilient to most threats - and just beautiful, for weeks on end. As a bonus, they are tall enough to break up the suburban vista, yay! In this garden, they've also alerted me to the challenge of providing ladybird fodder, so after a bit of research, I have planted dill for the sweet lil' predators to move onto after the foxglove spikes have gone.


These are Aquilegia: 'Granny's Bonnets'. My Granny grew these, and foxgloves too, but I never saw her wearing either of them. To the left is a rock that my tow-truck neighbour gave me. I am self-appointed keeper of the lichen, and my mission is to keep it, and its friend, some moss, actively growing through the drought. Unsupported, they can go dormant for years. I can, too, but who really wants to do that again if you can help it? So I asked around on their behalf, and my discovery, from a canny local gardener who got the hot tip from an old bloke who ran a ride-on model railway (!) was: 'feed them sour milk and yoghurt'. I'm experimenting.