IT IS JUNE AND FLOWERS EVERYWHERE

Get well Gillie, take a dose of a beautiful garden.

The gardener has been digging the drain for the new spring top take the water to the ditch stream and away from the grass. 

The source of the water on the left and the trench on the right. The turf will be put back next week if all is working ok. As we are in a drought it is surprising the spring is still running (unless it is the overflow from the septic tank soakaway?)

It is Wednesday morning and the weather turned last night. We have had a little rain and when I stepped out of the kitchen doors to check the temperature it was 11C. Turning, I looked up at the latest attempt at a house martins nest and, though unfinished, there were two small bird faces peering down at me.
It has not rained a lot - there are dry areas under the trees, but any is welcome.

Now is not a time to park cars under trees as the greenfly are hard at work and their sticky excretions make the leaves shine and the car windows covered in sweet glue.



Walking the lanes the wild honeysuckle is rampant and R picked some wild parsnip and brought it home. In the heat it almost collapsed but we left it till the next morning by when it had perked up. Only trouble will be hundreds of small white petals everywhere later on.



The potatoes are thriving - at least something is growing in the veg beds, but the chard from last year has finally gone to seed. I do have some more seedlings coming on, pests allowing. I went to the local garden centre for some veg seedings but they had sold out so I bought R a Convolvulus cneorum (a shrubby bindweed) which she has always wanted but seems to die in my hands too easily - here we try again.

  
It is good when guests bring plants one does not have - in this case Lamb's Tail, Chiastophyllum oppositifolium, though they will probably change the latin name soon as they keep doing. Thank you P.

The long grass in the lower "lawns" is full of meadow buttercups and there is a large patch of ragged robin. 


I walk on down to the pond where I am watched by the ducks though they do not move away.

ROSES

Finally we have roses -

The yellow one is The Poet's Wife given to us by the children for our golden wedding last year.

We have Albertines in the house filling the room with scent and the white Rambling Rector is just starting to get going.

Red flowers

The quince still flowering after six months.

Yellow flowers

Orange flowers (Rockrose) with bees

and wild flowers - some of the red campion massed in the woodland.

And then here is a plant you thought I would only mention with a cry of anguish as there is more of it in the lawn than grass. But if you look closely at the flower of the ribwort plantain (I know, a weed) it is beautiful. 
". . . and the ribwort plantain in the space
of an eight day early summer
has made new constellations
of its irregular twin star anthers,
its white crown of thorns."
                            Antony Christie