Nelly's Garden

One of the sweetest things about living in a rural area is not having neighbours or, at least, not having them live too near to one's...

It occurred to me a week or so ago that Bert and I are not spending enough quality time together. I have blogging, he has the clarinet and w...

Ballymena is the town closest to where I live. I wasn't born there, I'm not from there but it's The Town. It's where my moth...

It's October, autumn is well and truly here. I'm going to up the posting and try to update the blog for the entire month. Sure I mig...

We spent some time yesterday digging out astilbe and Johnson's Blue geraniums because they had got far too big for their space. The asti...

Remember my lament about being unable to source a Stag's Horn Sumach? When I wrote that post I was rather hoping that someone would cont...

Chrysalis on tomato support frame in the polytunnel Bert went a-wooding on Saturday to begin dealing with the big beech tree that b...

How hard must it be to find someone selling this shrub for less than £30? I first bought it in a 2litre pot at Ballymena Market. back when...

Product Name Stock Code Quantity Price Bargain Basement 10 packets 1327 1 £ 3.25 Eremurus robustus 513B 1 £ 2.38 Canna indica 269 1 £ 3...

One of the more wonderful things about the internet is how easy it is to source hard to find books. The poet James Fenton's A Garden...

Today we went to The Range garden centre, where Evie wanted to have her photograph taken at all the stands.  She insisted on two angle...

These pictures were taken on the eve of my sixty-fifth birthday. They had to be taken yesterday as Katy, my middle daughter, was heading ...

Not Able To Come To The Phone The telephone makes me cross. That's because it's ALWAYS ME who answers it. If I'm showerin...

Just a little self-sown sapling at the edge of the growing area that has succumbed to the Chalara ash dieback fungus. Bert spotted it a ...

Evie and I had around an hour to use up before we collected Martha from school, so we went for a walk, our eventual destination being the...

Holders of the title Most Beautiful Baby in the world, nos. 1, 4 and 5 That was the story I told Evie today on her mum's birthda...

This past week I've been doing one of those interactive thingies on Facebook where you tag other people in the often forlorn hope that t...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/17223773@N00/sets/72157683091126321 One of the best things about Flickr is albums. I've been gatheri...

Last night Bert, Zoe and I went to Belfast to see a film. To say that the three of us had a fair good idea of what it was all about would be...

Our environmentalist friend Rachael called round yesterday and had a look around my garden. She was absolutely delighted with the number of...