SUMMER STAGGERS ON

Having roughly scythed back the grass and wild plants beside the woodland paths and carted it away I went around with my camera. It is Saturday and very hot for us - 25C and I was surprised to find both the mallard sitting in the sun by the pond. I was but 6 yards away and let them to their rest.
I have picked the first black currants, early, but the crop is very  disappointing so a big pruning is coming, out with the old wood.

By Monday the temperature has fallen though it is very dry and watering has begun.
I cannot understand how plants such as the white phlox are two metres tall and the carrot and parsnip seedings, few in number, are only a centimetre or two. Ah! The mysteries of horticulture.

We continue to have squirrels but the trap keeps being emptied of bait - a mystery till today when I watched a jay enter, scoff the lot and leave without setting it off.

The mallard pair are back at the pond but now and again another drake tries to intervene and tempt her away.

The rosebed is changing, the nepeta out of control, the agapanthus about to flower.

Further down the garden Alstromeria "Red Sensation" is also out of control - for some reason this plant is very happy but try and grow the paler varieties and zilch!

The peonies continue though I have had to support them as they were flopping with the heavy flower heads and Rosey's new pink evening primrose is happy.

Up on the banking the white willow herb is doing well but is just as invasive as the pink wild version.

As far as trees go the white birches light up the far garden, the Aesculus indica "Sydney Pearce", I think that is the one, is growing very slowly but the liquidambar flourishes. 

 Now we are Friday and as I go in the living room the cock pheasant ambles past the windows.
A young grey squirrel sits by the trap and ignores it, seemingly unafraid though I am only a few feet away. 
The garden is settling into summer and a lethargy permeates it - the birds have all but stopped singing - all but the squawking magpies, even the pheasant hardly chunners.

A large cardboard box came today from Ikea containing a small picture frame. I have dismantled it, watered the compost well and then weighed the cardboard down on the top and watered that.
We are almost in drought, the garden needs watering, the pond topping up - three cheers for our own borehole.

The television is all football, Glastonbury, World Cup cricket and now Wimbledon. The gardening programmes are just rehashes of the same old information - if they took sport, cooking, houses and gardening off there would be little left - except the eternal shambles that is Brexit . . . . sigh!

R has gallivanted off for lunch with her sister, her cousin and her cousin's sister-in-law. What to do?
A drink and crisps in front of the tv watching Wimbledon?
Actually weeded the flower beds, trimmed the genista (overdue) and the sarcococcus, cut back the oriental poppies and the pulmonaria, manured the poppy bed - etc  etc.

Time for a good book.