Gardeners' World and the Mystery Tree

Goodness me but we watched Gardeners' World for the first time ever last time. How our lives have changed. We've certainly never been drawn to it before, but what a pleasant little programme - thirty minutes is just about the right length for me, as I couldn't have taken a solid hour of nourishment. It would have been way too frightening. Though I was rather scared when the presenter suggested that you should add urine to your composting bin to improve the flavour (or words to that effect) and then proceeded to show us the bottle that he'd been collecting the team's urine in for this very purpose. The sacrifices one makes for a TV career, eh. But, dear me, I came over all peculiar whilst doing the ironing and had to take some smelling salts. Or would if I had any. Hmm, urinating for the sake of the compost quality would definitely be a boy's job, I feel ...

Anyway, another thing we think we have in our garden is jasmine:

And we now believe (thanks to Sue!) that the Mystery Tree might be a cotoneaster:

At least we believe so, though ours doesn't have any fruit, though K vaguely remembers white flowers earlier on in the summer so we think it must be at least a possibility. The leaves are certainly the same. So thanks, Sue, for this very useful link which helps to identify your trees. Worth its weight in gold really. Meanwhile K is considering taking cuttings from our buddleia so we have lots of little buddleias to go along the fence. Very good for butterflies, but we apparently need lots of clean pots and plastic bags, so won't be able to do that today.

Besides, later on, we're off to Glyndebourne for the opera, yes indeed, but we're taking the opportunity to admire the rather beautiful gardens and maybe even get some ideas, ho ho.

In addition, my golfing partner, Marian (thanks, Marian!) has suggested the possibility of garden courses at Merrist Wood, though they do look rather too high-powered for us at our current stage - maybe they'll do beginners' courses at some point? She also says that our local garden centre, Secretts, has a woman who occasionally runs beginners' gardening courses. Will definitely have to keep an eye out for them ...

Anne Brooke