A GARDEN IS A SMALL PIECE OF HEAVEN

Having watered and fed the asparagus with a little Growmore we ate our first strawberry each today. It is really too hot to do much, even a walk around the garden is tiring. The temperature at 4 pm is 27.5C, a lot for the damp cold Lake District, and no sign of rain.

So we sit outside the kitchen in the shade drinking tea, doing crosswords and reading. 
The pond has both red and blue damselflies, pond skaters, whirligigs and water boatmen, frogs, newts and snails, freshwater shrimps and water beetles. Today we saw a big blue broad bodied male chaser, Libellula depressa, patrolling the water and then a female (on the left). 
She is yellowish brown and sitting on last year's reedmace - I should have cut these out by now. I suppose we can expect lots of little chasers now - not good news for the other inhabitants of the pond.

This is the planter we purchased from Canon Frome a few years ago. It is made from the base of a hot water cylinder.

This year I have planted it with an osteospermum in the centre surrounded by thyme, two types of sage, dill and marjoram. I have also stuck a piece of rosemary in there that snapped off the nearby bush.
 

Then I hear the cacophony that is a wedge of geese flying over. They go north to the Duddon and not long after come back again - it is a bit early for flying geese?

The garden at dusk is a quiet place apart from a blackbird or songthrush. The white of the lilac tree seems almost eerie and blues seem to dominate.

When we were in Scotland we went to the wonderful Cally Gardens - the old walled garden for Cally Palace - now a hotel. It is stuffed with plants - some rare and exotic collected by the owners from around the world. We have a berberis from there - panlanensis Cally Rose - it has red and cream flowers and is viciously thorny.

Not all things in the garden are gaudy - the grasses, though common, can be beautiful when backlit.

Thursday - the first house martins have fledged, the swallows seem to have built four or five nests, all unfinished - don't seem to know what they are doing.
Went to Holker Hall gardens and saw a hedgehog - now becoming increasingly rare. Outside the kitchen I sat and watched a small toad watching me watching it etc.

Fruit is on its way - were are already eating lots of strawberries as are the slug and snails. Here are young plums, damsons, raspberries and mildewy gooseberries.























The asparagus is past its best, will be fed, watered and left alone.
I have cut the beech hedge with some very old electric hedge cutters that belonged to my father-in-law who died in the 1980s - and they still work fine.

There seem to be a lot of reds and pinks in the garden at the moment - both wild and not.

Red campion, alstroemerias, foxgloves and Sweet William (or if you live north of the border - Stunkin' Wullie!"
(Something to do with the Duke of Cumberland?)(Led the Kings army at the Battle of Culloden - 'nuff said.)

It is Saturday and it is RAINING! Pouring off the roof. I can put the hosepipe away for a while (probably for the rest of the summer.)