You say litchen and I say liken!

This week the garden and plot have had hardly any attention at all for a whole host of reasons/excuses.

1. The weather has been horrible gales and rain.
2. We had a lunch date
3. The weather was awful
4. We spent an afternoon trying to sort out a friend's laptop
5. The weather was awful
6. The final Formula 1 race was at the weekend (sadly Mark Webber didn't win!!)
7. The weather was awful
8. Visit to the dentist (happily only a check-up)
9. Did I mention that the weather was awful

There's more detail about our awful weather on Martyn's weather diary blog here.

The garden wasn't completely forgotten as I spent a bit of time visiting a few nurseries, (not garden centres that look more like grottoes at this time of year!!), proper nurseries. 

I thought it was too late to add some bulbs to our perennial flower bed but after watching them plant tulips on last week's Gardeners' World I decided to go ahead and plant some. My sister also wanted a few more winter bedding plants for her tubs and troughs. As stocks were getting low we had to visit several nurseries before finding what we wanted. I found three colours of tulips that I think should compliment one another well - the creamy white ones have a slight purple tinge along the edge of the petals. My bet is that they will all flower at different times just to thwart my colour scheme.

The bulbs had just begun to produce shoots and are now safely planted so time will tell whether I get the planned display or not.

The cyclamen that I planted last week are standing up to the full force of the weather and are a highlight of the garden. The weather appears to have treated us kindly in the garden with no real damage done but as yet we still have to go and inspect the plot so fingers and everything else are crossed.

One type of plant that is thriving on our plot at the moment - is lichen. To be accurate I shouldn't say one plant as each lichen is a colony of at least two plants. The lichens are loving the conditions and are growing well on the branches of our plum trees. The damp weather has also made the lichen growing on the concrete paving flags in the garden stand out.

After taking a few photos and getting a close look I  was fascinated by them so decided to do a bit of research. If you would like to share what I found out then I have posted an article here on my website along with lots of photos of the lichen growing on our plot and in the garden. So which do you say 'litchen' or 'liken'?

I also have posted an article on how we grow our garlic on the website so again if you are interested it is here.

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