UNDER THE JET STREAM

That is what we are. It is driving low pressures in  from the Atlantic with rain and wind and mediocre temperatures. The lawn never gets dry so the sit-on mower clogs with wet grass - 😖 English weather.

Down in the veg beds I noticed that a rabbit had had a go at digging under the chicken wire fence.

 The asparagus is lush which bodes well for next spring, we have mizuno for salads and white chard. There are still some ripe black currants.

 The Hydrangea Annabelle is full of flower and getting big. When it gets wet the heads bend to the ground.

 The white rosebay is over and sending its feathery seeds drifting across the garden on the breeze. When it rains they become a soggy mass.

Big news - I have been to Mountain Warehouse and bought a snood to use in shops as a mask - but it is hot so comes off as soon as I leave.

Yellow flowers, a rose and evening primrose light up dark corners but the garden is in one of those gaps where we are waiting for a new flush of flowers. 




We do have lavender and the white phlox though.

 Say a prayer for the Victoria plum now supported by posts as the weight of its fruit threaten to break the branches. I have thinned them out but still . .  





One shrub that self sows all over the place is the hypericum, now with it red fruit after yellow flowers. It needs regular yanking out.

 Down across the pond is the red rose P gave us climbing up the holly in the hedge. By the pond the astilbe is the same colour - a plant R does not like. The national collection is at Holehird just outside Windermere, I think, so we will probably not be going there, at least for the astilbes.

Anyway the hedge will need laying this winter and I will have to remember to tell the men not to cut down the holly and rose, the wild plum and the big oak. The rest can be dealt with. It is a field boundary and we need to keep the sheep and cattle out.

Finally got out to a big garden at Holker Hall and tea and cake on the courtyard after - all socially distanced. The gardens were escaping along with four of the seven gardeners laid off. Grass unsown, spreading shrubs untrimmed, but it was good to sit in the Sunken garden and no one else around, except for  darting vole. They have planted a few more eucryphias since we were last there but the whole ambience was of reluctant letting parts go until this virus retreats. 

Back at The Nook the rose on the shed is glorious and the alchemilla that was flattened by the rain is like a yellow waterfall onto the tarmac.

On coming back R has decided the bed at the back of the house by the front door (which is at the back) needs totally revamping. Perhaps a job for S the gardener. Take most stuff out and put in a load of manure, then plants we have with nowhere to go? A job for the autumn.

Have mown the lawns and they are wetter than I can remember - wellies sinking in, mower wheels spinning and no way can I use the sit on mower. We are back to the usual good old English summer - cold and wet.

IT IS A NEW WORLD

Starting to look like summer is over again - R needed hot water bottle last night. 
Lay in bed this morning listening to our three clocks chiming the minutes away and thought of being in the Hall Arm Narrows of Doubtful Sound listening to nothing but the occasional Tui.

Then I thought I could just wander up the garden to the far lawn and sit on the bench and listen to the football rattle of a cock pheasant.

There we were trundling along but now this virus means the world will never be the same as it was in 2019. It is an event that changed the world. 

Back to gardening - the plants have not noticed the change - the old raspberries are pruned out and new canes tied in. Still picking black currants. In the autumn I moved our gooseberries, plagued by sawfly and mildew, to a dark corner by the mower shed and we have had a dozen small fruit, but that is all. Then I noticed fresh earth behind the shed. I have found a rabbit warren! No wonder things get eaten! Having attacked the big rosemary and big brachyglottis (we still call them senecios) we now have a big scar on the banking in front of the kitchen - yet, at least, we can now see the pond and the heron fishing for newts. (Too many 'bigs' there.)

The pond is getting a bit overgrown and more plant culling will be needed. R has taken off the big pods from the yellow flag iris, the meadowsweet is well out. In the lush growth the flying birds by the blacksmith Adam Booth from Kirkpatrick Durham are becoming hidden.

Elsewhere there are some bold colours appearing now - Crocosmia Lucifer, the vibrant orange day lilies and still scattering of self sown opium poppies.

       

  

The lower garden is full of long wet grass so when S the gardener comes I will get him to cut it back beside the paths so legs keep drier. At some point we will need to go haymaking -  after any wild flower seed has fallen.


This is Rose Grouse, a ground cover plant I got from David Austin - it works but is an evil thug, needs thick leather gloves when pruning.

Lit the wood burner last night! July and 15C. Wild fires and record temperatures in Siberia. It is raining again.

UPDATE FROM UP HERE

Down through the jungle to the pond, the writing shed on the left is now a sort of potting shed and I must get the scythe out to trim the long grass.

The Albertine rose is almost done and its last scent is cast over the path by which it grows. 

There is something special about roses.

Also, the white campanula beloved by R has self sown again. It is such a pure white. I do like really white flowers like this and the mallow which also self seeds.

The hebe is in flower and Welsh poppies continue - the orange ones seem over but the truly wild yellow persists.

I am still waiting for my order of Zinnias from Thompson and Morgan - sent them an email but no reply though they did acknowledge they received it.

The trees are now one green with the May/June variety of leaf hue over. Some trees/shrubs have only flowered poorly - deutzias, big magnolia, olearia - perhaps the long dry spring?

There seem to be a few butterflies about - mainly the whites though the odd red admiral and tortoiseshell.

The poor old Victoria plum is sagging with fruit despite some fruit fall - as is the Bramley Apple. Most of the damson trees have little or no fruit - the blossom must have been hit by a frost earlier in the year.

We are back from checking on the grandchildren in Oxford and Herefordshire - my how the grass has grown, the weeds have grown, the work needed has grown!

House martin update - nest 1 no activity, nest 2, there are two dead chicks under the nest but still activity. All the rain may have prevented the adult birds getting enough insects to feed them. Nest 3 active and had to move bench seat away from underneath to avoid dropping droppings.

No it is not a wasp, this is a fly but a whopper on the mower shed door.
So much to do and so little enthusiasm but have picked yet more black currants, just need to go over them now before the freezer or jam or pudding or something.

Finally get the zinnias and got them in where I could.

So the virus goes on and will go on, the traffic seems to have recovered but the motorway service stations are eerie, half shut etc. When we got to the Chester services they had shut the petrol station! Good job we had enough left to get to the next one.

The plums are not ripe yet but there is some fruit fall - natural thinning - the apple too. All we need is a little sunshine but this is England and here it rains a lot.

Friday picked more black currants, night and Gardeners' World on tv and Charles Dowding again with his no dig method - fascinating, have his book.

Saturday morning and RAIN!

At least the rhubarb will like it.
 

The experiment to cut back after the first flush has worked.

Enough.

DAISY DAYS (AND SPIKE JONES?)

Got that song of his going through my head - Mairzy Doats - very sad. Spike Jones and the Wacky Wacketeers (he was also with the City Slickers). I think my parents must have had a 78rpm disc of it, possibly with Three Little Fishies on the other side?

Back to partial sanity.

Daisies, such a huge family of flowering plants - daisies of all sorts and plants that look like daisies, feverfew and olearia, erigeron by the paving down from the house, and daisies, proper ones -in the lawn and ox-eyes in the long grass.

Just been down to the damson trees to check on the pocket plum - Taphrina pruni - a fungal disease, and there are a lot of mite galls on the leaves. At least the latter is harmless.

One thing that a garden can bring is flowers into the house. (Is or are - lots of flowers but 'one thing' ? Grammar, grammar.) And at this time of year that means roses. Roses with alchemilla and geranium, roses with roses and roses with lovage.

 

Not forgetting pinks. Yesterday I noticed a shrub that was a but boring had produced white flowers. It had done nothing at the back of the house so I stuck it in the lower banking. Then I realised it was a eucryphia about which I had forgotten. You can just see the flowers on the right of the small pic.

Nearly hacking back time for the geraniums - cut them back to the ground and they will burgeon forth with, possibly, another flush of flowers in the autumn.

Some flowers in the garden, especially pale pink ones just quietly get on with it. Like this pink evening primrose and the Allium Christophii. The latter appear from long grass, amongst the Rosa rugosa, in many places where they have been forgotten.

Friday/Saturday and it is raiiiiiining so bag of Seville oranges out of the freezer and making marmalade - 

To the recipe - 9 Seville (bitter) oranges, one sweet one and a couple of lemons, squeeze out juice, put pips etc into muslin bag, put peel and pith through a mincer. Shove the lot into a big jam pan with bag of bits hanging in it. Leave 24 hours.
Bring to boil and simmer till rind soft - say a couple of hours.
Add 8 pounds sugar (I warm it in the bottom range oven first) and stir over low heat till all sugar dissolved, Boil hard for 10 minutes and begin testing by taking off heat and putting a small spoonful on plate chilled in fridge. Push with finger and when ripples - done. You may need to repeat this a few times if not yet ready, boiling for a minute or two and then testing again.
You may need to do it in 2 batches depending on pan size. 
Put into hot jars and seal, label and eat.

Breakfast and open a jar and there is an earwig running about on top of the jam. Now it could not have been in there before I opened the jar - too hot - jars sealed when jam very hot. So?
I had been in the garden and the insect must have dropped off me after I opened the jar. R shudders and says there is no way she is eating that marmalade. I take the earwig outside, then return to my bread. At least I have not eaten bread and earwig.

Sunday and a novelty as we walk the 1 mile into town after breakfast and enjoy a coffee outside the Farmers' Arms pub after having temperature taken. On the way back we meet good friend NC who tells us that there is a juvenile heron standing in a field by the road. It just stands there and ignores us. The herons that visit our pond usually fly off at the slightest thing.

Picking last of red currants, more raspberries and black currants. Threatening the raspberries with the bonfire seems to have worked. Lots of pears, plums and apples to come. And first of chard for tonight. Lawns too wet to mow. 

Did nothing in garden (well picked more raspberries to go with meringue and cream).