Standing in my garden, basking in this brief sunny spell here in the UK, the thought arose that we don't have a gardening chatter thread here.
I'm no Percy Thrower and corners of my garden look decidedly shabby but what I do have is rewarding at the moment.
My Victoria Plum is absolutely weighed down with developing fruit, many will fall undeveloped, but I think a good crop is certain this year.
My problem is that they all ripen at once so it'll be jam making time, I must make sure I have enough jars collected to bottle that.
Panning round I have a variety of flowering shrubs in blossom - I'm that good a gardener that I can't tell you the names but they look pleasing heralding the onset of summer.
I have a modest garden so when I bought the house I planted two apple trees with the heavily limiting rootstock which only provide a small upright tree with very short side shoots.
I plumped for an eater and a cooking variety and used the blossom guide to ensure they blossom and cross pollinate each other, however that plan seemed to be in vain as the cooking variety steadfastly refuse to blossom year after year.
Now they say that talking to plants is beneficial, I wonder however if plants are more susceptible to thoughts as I gave serious thought to uprooting the cooking apple this spring - within two weeks of considering that it blossomed fiercely for the first time ever and now bears promising fruitlets.
I built a silly tiny deck in one spot years ago and placed a rusty old bench I found in the garden when I arrived on it, that never get used so now I have covered the bench with potted strawberry plants and am looking forward to a decent crop through the summer.
I bought a fig tree and mentioned it to a colleague soon after, I got a disparaging "you won't get that to fruit this far north".It's a shame I changed jobs a few years ago as I'd like to present her with some of the fruit developing at the moment. I never knew figs were a bi-annual crop until I bought this one with the fruit devloping in the autumn, over wintering before developing to ripeness the next year. The tree has come back from near death as local wildlife attacked the stems to reach the fruit the winter before last.
I have a tiny plastic greenhouse and after messing around with bedding plants for a year or two I have turned it over to more vegetables this year with a jalepeno pepper plant in residence already. I'm waiting to get to local car boot this week to get a couple of tomato plants to join it - my local supermarket gardening section has some but at silly prices.
I want to try a method shown on Gardeners World this week using a grow bag, but instead of following the usual guidelines, cutting it in half and standing each half on the end to form a deeper "pot" - it should water better and will give more depth for the roots.
Anyway enough of my ramblings, as you can see I lost my labels years ago and don't do Latin names so if anybody else wants to chip in and share where their garden is at this time of year feel free to do so on equal terms.
If you do do Latin names and can help some of us along do chip in 
Martin
ops: 
Oh, I also have vegetable garden and grow many type of veggies and of course lots of tomatoes!! 
Last year unfortunately the zuccinis became victims of slugs! *ewww* 
: 
But they are lovely to look at. My climate is probably similar to yours where I live.
