We're ready for the sun!

I shared pictures of our outside areas in this post, and we went to the garden centre a few weekends back and bought a few plants to put in our courtyard garden. Then I've been gradually getting them into pots and planting seeds.

I moved the table to underneath the window as that area gets the most sun in the afternoon and evening, and this is when we'll be using the garden the most. Luckily every part of the garden gets some sun through the day at different times.

Lined up against the kitchen wall are our edible plants, from left to right, first planter onions and rocket seeds (not grown yet), planter with the trellis in random one left by landlords (We're going to see if anything grows in it, if not we'll hide it somewhere), the small pot next to the broom has basil seeds and the long planter is our herb garden containing parsley, mint, coriander, garlic and thyme, next to the door are tomatoes.

The two long planters are the only new ones we bought so far (the others we already had from a previous house with a gravel garden) and they're pretty good as they have a reservoir at the bottom you can fill to keep your plants watered. I think they were £8.99 each, but unfortunately the receipt for these and our new plants fell victim to a leaky water bottle in my handbag so I'm just going from memory!

Then on the other side are the flowers and shrubs

There's an evergreen in the corner that the landlords left, then our indestructible ivy (I left it behind when we moved and went back to get what I thought would just be the pot, but it was still alive!). Then the new plants are the lavender, the yellow shrub which is a forsythia and should fill out to be a couple of feet tall and wide, the pot next to that is an old herb pot but it only has some leggy mint and straggly parsley left in it so I'm going to use it for some flower seeds I have planted on windowsills once they have grown, then the blue pot has a new clematis plant and the one on the end was left by the landlords (I have no idea what it is).

I also took the tarpaulin off the barbecue and the bikes to move them into the corner, as they were in the middle of the wall so hogging quite a bit of space. I also managed to get them back under one tarpaulin rather than two so they are a bit more streamlined.

All the plants behind the barbecue are ones from the landlords. That area is kind of a no man's land as far as I can tell, our bit ends at the steps but I can't see them using that patio as they have the rest of their garden and patio (their patio chairs are on the other side of the house) and there's a large hedge behind this patio (you can see it better in the photo above) that visually separates our part of the garden from theirs. We'll see once we all start using our gardens a bit more who uses what I suppose!

Once the plants all fill in a bit and the seeds grow I think this little area will look a lot brighter. It's already much better just having some plants out there and having it ready to use for eating outside, barbecuing and sitting in the evening with a glass of wine...

Another cat photobomb, I swear Minty had some kind of challenge of how many of my photos she could get into today!