PECKING ORDER

Not grandchildren, children, wife, myself, but blue tit, coal tit, great tit, chaffinch, greenfinch, greater spotted woodpecker, squirrel. Then all scatter for sparrow hawk. And other things - chaffinches often on the ground with dunnocks (very shy but promiscuous), pigeons, collared doves, robins, blackbirds and thrushes; greenfinches virtually never on the ground, wrens in the shrubbery and pheasants plodding around, burbling away looking for scraps.

This is Mrs Pheas, very quiet and reserved unlike her husband in all his finery. He fusses around her like a mother hen (? that sounds a bit odd) clucking and so on.

So why am I inside typing this blog - well, believe it or not, it is raining! I have tidied the flower bed by the shed and recovered a pair of gloves from beside the veg beds that I left out overnight.

Yesterday I weeded all the veg beds and carefully placed the big marrow (two feet long now)(2/3 of a metre)(66% of a metre)(why can't we use cubits and els and all such things like pecks and bushels?) If we used bushels I could hide behind one - where was I, yes the marrow has been placed on a plank to take it away from the soil.
I wouldn't want it to rot.

I have done the same with the lowest trusses on the tomatoes, except on a flat stone. We have baby butternuts but I am not sure if their pollination was any good - must keep and eye out for end rot.

Talking of rot (as usual) the wisteria are both still alive, barely. One lot of leaves on each. We watch and pray.

I have heard it said that one cannot have too much of a good thing but the sweet peas are all over the place and so many flowers - lovely scent though.

One plant that has flowered all summer and continues so to do is the catmint, nepeta. yes it gets a bit straggly but such a good space filler and looks good under the roses that are now in a second flush, especially Emma Hamilton.

I have hacked back the giant lovage and carefully cut the hollow stems to make pea shooters. They are on a sheltered window sill drying. One of the stems/shooters is bent. I wonder if it will fire around corners?

R continues to disappear off to her writing shed and Cawthwaite.com carries on fuelled by tea and biscuits during long sessions from yours truly.

The garden seems to be waiting - it is motionless and silent. The trees hang leadenly and only occasionally a leaf twitches from a drop of water.

I have dead headed the anthemis and we will get another show of flowers. Even the geraniums and alchemilla will recover from their shearing. I have also topped the big creamy scabious but that is the lot this year with that plant, I think.
Shallots hang up outside the kitchen door, small bulbs selected for next year and the scruffy bit put out to compost. Oh! Yes, I turned the smaller compost heap in an attempt to get it maturing.

The grandchildren and daughter, I, have gone, my sister I is here with us at the mo' (what a lot of Is) and C and P (son and d-in-l) are due at the end of the month. Our niece A has had a little girl on Sunday night - it is all go!

So I will go and put the kettle on.