UNDER THE BIG POTATO

Dug up the first potato - not many but plenty of weight - remember how they were before I planted them - a little long in the radicle - extreme chitting?

I once did a surreal doodle called Under the Big Potato -

Enough spudfoolery, to more important things.

When we moved the rose bed I found the white agapanthus was more or less dead. I bunged it in anyway and forgot it. After all these months there are small shoots breaking the surface of the soil.

Not all the damaged and possibly dead plants are gone. It reminds one of the urge to live, to survive.

That is not something much of the human population of the world seems to have. As the earth heats up we seem to have a death wish. I apologise to generations to come for the mess my generation has made of this planet.

If we do not do anything then one day we will be gone, wiped out with much of the world's flora and fauna. The world will go on - it will not be the end of the world - just a different world.

Let me talk pond - we are putting off going in and removing the biggest water lily, a wet muddy and unpleasant thing to do - the lily is so big it will take a lot of shifting.

A female Aeshna cyanea, the Common Hawker is laying eggs on the wood at the outlet of the pond carefully placing each one.

She is difficult to photograph until she settles, moving like a miniature helicopter above the water.

Morning, and from out bedroom window R sees two mallard duck and a heron by the pond sharing the lower end with the three iron birds by Adam Booth of Piper's Forge at Kirkpatrick Durham.

Now to unwelcome visitors. On the right bark chewed from one of the white birches - grey squirrel most likely but could be roe deer.
The tree may survive albeit scarred. Do I put a guard back on it - I do not know.

Eating our carrots - so sweet straight out of the ground. The greengages are picked - also sweet straight off the tree. 

Here is Hydrangea Annabelle at it again by the utility door. The blooms are so big that, when it rains, they bow down to the ground with the weight.

And now for two beauties - a Red Admiral butterfly and a lovely yellow rose revived by the recent rain.

I have finished doing the raspberries, tidied the willow around the compost heaps and fed this and that with seaweed concentrate. 

Now I am sitting here bleeding having been attacked by a Rambling Rector! A rose with vicious thorns that needed, needs, severe pruning. In doing so a found a mahonia I had forgotten we had buried in the growth. Then I stuck the pruning on the bonfire and lit it - always a satisfying action - but I forgot to put the big potato in the hot ashes to bake.

Talking about being under things - thunder and rain today, Sunday, and big clouds over the bay.

And so to finish this blog with a panorama of the poppy bed - it is amazing what will grow on rubbish subsoil!

And what messing about with Photoshop and a photo whilst the rain falls can produce.

Rainbow over Coniston.