GARDENING ON (BIT OF A LONG BLOG)

Thursday, overcast, worried about our paeonies as the buds seem not to want to develop. Given seaweed feed and water. Picked 8 different roses for a vase, we have about 12 varieties if you include climbers and ramblers. (Also wild roses).
 

The Golden Showers on the left is now full of blooms and the Rambling Rector is just getting going. We have two of both. One of the latter sprawls through a clump of flowering currant, the other twenty feet (6 metres) up the old ash tree I can see from my computer chair. There will be more photos of this rose as it explodes in white up the tree. 

Friday morning and R is doing Zoom yoga on the kitchen floor whilst I am doing the crossword in the extension. The heavens open and it hails. Two cock pheasants fly in heading for shelter in the shrubbery. Then the sun comes out and the garden sparkles in the washed air. I dash out with the camera before the rain comes and drives me in. Just a shower but welcome to a dry garden. The weather has always been a talking point in England but it seems to have lost the plot recently - washed out and flooded in February, record rainfall, and now the driest spring/hottest May on record. I heard today that the average temperature in Siberia has been 10C above average. At this rate we need not worry about any virus as the weather will get us anyway. 

With the rain, lack of contrails in the sky and pollution from vehicles the light is so sharp even some of the leaves, wet and back-lit are stunning. I have picked up the larger stones from the track to the house and barrowed them away. The plants I put in Monday are OK but we have lost one cosmos - neatly chewed to a stem. I have been to the shed and only about six of the parsnip seeds have germinated so far. One would expect more to so do. The sweet peas are the same. When you pay through the nose for the seeds you would expect a better percentage success. And yes I soaked and nicked the sweet pea seeds.

One lot of plants that are good value are the perennial geraniums. We have five or six different ones including these two. After flowering shear them back and you can get a second flush later in the year. 

Saturday, rained in night. I am getting fed up with all the restrictions, they do not announce the many thousands that die of cancer or heart disease every day - we live with that and get on with things. We are going to have to get used to this bug as well. 

Enough - lots of flowers out, Gladiolus Byzantinus, a white veronica, good old chives, red hot poker (Kniphofia) and Allium christophii. The white rosebay is coming out on the banking and swamping our poor old fig. I have cut down the 1.5 metre tall chard as it is going to seed. Shed roof repair time and D is coming today or tomorrow or Tuesday or sometime. The house martins are in the nest and making it bigger. Have not seen the ducks for a few days.
R dragged me out for the three mile walk at back of Penny Bridge - Smithy Green, High Farm, Scathwaite, Bowstead Gates, Ashplants and Toppin Rays. Saw first swifts, now need a rest (again).

And so to Sunday but not as overcast most of day - mowed lawns ducking under the branches of the Victoria plum heavy with fruit, wondered how the field maple Sue gave us has got so big, thought I would show you the last of the aquilegias as R is dead heading them (and chopping back the flowering chives).

Monday, gardener S is here, finishing the spring drain but found another spring nearby! Everything has grown so much since the rain - especially the weeds and long grass. He is now putting small chippings on the paths. 

In afternoon tidied the rose bed then trimmed the knotted willow - and fell over into a hole with my feet above my head. Could I get up - only with difficulty after working out how. 

In the wood are the remains of an old engine and S said he might come and take it for the scrap man. The harden used to be a small-holding and there is a place in the brambles where the previous owner dumped stuff - bottles, old tyres and the remains of an engine.
  
Tuesday and dry (for now). D is replacing the shed roof, the shingles were rotten. Now the shed roof, the old one, is burned. 
This is the rather chaotic half of the cutting bed I have not yet got to. Sweet Williams in front (Stunkin' Wullies in Scotland)(Duke of Cumberland) and red alstroemerias behind (that R does not like much).
There are also some struggling gladioli, white phlox and other things, somewhere.
It needs digging up and de-weeding, then replanting.
    

Just finishing in the garden when I found our resident wasps nest in my garden trunk! They are going in by the padlock (and out). And one of them found me - amazing how fast an old arthritic man can run!  Winegar for wasps please!
 
Wednesday and rain.

Thursday, grey day, windy, can't be bothered to garden so publish blog.