PLUM TUCKERED OUT

Actually had a couple of sunny days! Weeded the courgette bed and found some carrots and basil I had forgotten. We have a lot of courgettes this year but there is only so much you can do with them. (Make vegetable animals?)

The year's moving on - the heron is back at the pond.

Eating the first Victoria Plums - there is something special after a hard slog in the garden, walking up to the tree and picking off a ripe plum, then sinking teeth into it. (Beware gorging wasps tho')

The garden is finally home to butterflies - apart from the whites others include Painted Ladies, Red Admiral, Peacock and Small Tortoiseshells.
 

On the left a gingko. Just found this primitive tree can live to 3500 years so we might not make its final year! On the right the eucryphia in all its splendour. I know - they can grow to eighty feet but it is still early days. The scent is a bonus. It its good to have a flowering tree this late in the summer - an added asset to the garden but perhaps it would have been easier if I had not planted it in the lawn.

The rose Golden Showers is also flowering abundantly again down on the fence by the veg beds.

And here are some weeded beds looking rather empty at the present.

We have just had a lovely afternoon drinking tea and eating biscuits and visiting a lovely garden at Lowick - but they have the same problem we have - some plants just do too well and go rampant.

Now, no wonder we have no rabbits any more - fox in the night again exit stage left - but why always from the backside?

Pondering the world as I shaved this morning (I still need to shave) I noticed that the beard (if that's what you can call it) on the right side of my chin grows faster then elsewhere. It is funny how the inconsequential can seem relevant - the comment is not, has nothing to with gardening except when I notice that the weeds in one party of a flower bed thrive whereas elsewhere are wispy and scraggy like much of my beard.

Friday - it rained until evening. Saturday and it is raining in through the open window, gales - not going to Rutland Show - field will be a bog? Anyway sunshine in the garden if not literally. The crocosmias and nasturtiums by the path are an explosion of hot colour. As you can see there are also some "lamb's lugs" (stachys) there to give a little relief and a different texture plus the shrubby blue clematis at the top. I am not sure the white double achillea goes so may need to move that for next year.

So the storm passes, the wood is full of fallen sticks and the Bramley apple is leaning precariously over the black currants weighed down by fruit. I have put two props in to try and hold it up. I think the soil has become so wet that the roots are losing their purchase.

Tomorrow will tell.