RAINING CATS AND CATS

Today is Tuesday and after a cool but sunny day yesterday we are at the mercy of storm Francis, rain and gales. Being fine yesterday I mowed, dug up and sorted the potato crop - slugs had got at about 30%. The good ones are in a hessian sack in the shed after drying, the rest in a trug. Perhaps some will be edible.
The ground was soggy yesterday but now !!! The top grass in the wood is usually a bit thin because of shade but the wet weather has made the grass sparse. (Mm, grass sparse).

It seems the badger cull in Cumbria is to go on. Obviously must be cheaper than immunising farm animals against TB. We have not had a badger on the trail camera recently but have had a fox again - 

(apart from pheasants, grey squirrels, rabbits and the animal that kills everything - cats.) The RSPB estimate that cats take 27 million birds a year in the UK (out of a total prey count of 100 million.)

The house martins continue to whirl out side the kitchen, hungry I think as the rain will stop insects flying. At least their nests up under the eaves are safe from cats - but not squirrels which run along the walls as if they were level ground.

And autumn draws on - elderberries are not yet ripe.

So what to do when it is pouring with rain - make raspberry jam - the Mrs Beeton recipe, very easy.





And there are more autumnal signs around - the hypericum foliage bright red already and the rose hips in abundance, ready for picking, whether to make syrup or itching powder though - ?






The cardoons with their heavy heads have needed staking but are still canted at an angle. The only dahlia is blasting out its red above the almost black foliage.

The buddleia need dead heading but there is still enough blossom for the butterflies.

It is not all wet weather though - well not quite - sometimes we can actually see south over the bay.

Friday and I am woken by the sound of heavy rain. I lie in bed planning what I can ask the gardener to do on Wednesday. Firstly there is no point going into the lower garden. It is so wet doing that will only cause damage. A list grows in my head, then the clock strikes 8. R has been up for a while, had a cuppa, had her breakfast.
Today's a big day - my second haircut at the barbers since the onset of the virus. It is also the day I fill my loyalty card and get a free cut. I had considered having a cut like Doc out of Back to the Future but that was vetoed. Anyway I do not have enough on top.


And the Annabelle hydrangea's heavy heads are flattened with the rain.

Yesterday I weeded and transplanted Erigeron down the side of the path from the upper area to the lower path as R requested. Then I moved two of the struggling roses from under the cherry. These have been refaced by the erysimum from the pots by the door. The pots now have Euphorbia Glacier Blue planted. 
R has weeded the asparagus bed

Enough!

THERE IS AUTUMN IN THE AIR

And it is only August.

Outside the kitchen doors the house martins have fledged and are hawking for insects (or just flying for the joy of it). 

Above the house five buzzards are circling and calling, two adults and three young.
The first changes are already appearing in leaves with green turning to yellows and browns. The windfall apples are attracting rabbits and  squirrels.

And it is Friday with a lot of windfall as a gale blows through, pots on their sides and twigs in the wood all over the place.

The damsons are coming, slowly, not ripe yet but soon.
Yesterday I nipped out to do some mowing but much of the garden was wet so there are tyre tracks in the wood and the lower garden, muddy marks of my passing.

S the gardener came and removed the aquilegias from the rose bed as they were choking everything. The cherry is shading it too much so two limbs will have to be removed to let the light in. Yellow plants like the primula by the pond and the black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) do break the darkness.

The tops of the potatoes have died back so I must get them up, dry them and put them in a hessian sack in the shed. Tonight we eat chard with some of George the fish van man's own smoked haddock.

Fruit is on the way -
 

 Victoria plums which I thinned, honestly I did, Conference pears, damsons, coloured but still not ripe and Bramley apples maturing nicely.

The birds, when we had the feeders up, in pre rat days, managed to scatter sunflower seeds several of which have germinated like this one sharing a pot with a box.









And there are flowers around - gladioli and Emma Hamilton (the rose).






And hydrangeas have loved this year - whether the weather has suited them I do not know but they are loaded with flowering heads.

So, Saturday, blog part written and now, no I won't, go in the garden - raining again. I had thought to prune and tidy the bay trees but . . . 

There are flowers in peculiar places - pink Japanese anemones and crocosmias in the long unkempt grass of the banking - and this acanthus - one of the most vicious things in the garden - definitely a case for gloves.

I am glad this year we have managed to rear the Cosmos Purity, have failed in the past due to the many nibblers we have, as it really lights up the garden.

All this wet weather is depressing - after such a glorious spring (despite viruses etc,) so here is a depressing poem - bears no relation to reality of course. (Mmm!)

THE BLACK DOG

He had no warning of decrepitude,

just a gradual loss of health, of fitness,

a lack of desire to exercise, walk,

a load of can’t be botheredness,

of wearing the same clothes for days.

All the blood tests came back normal,

so the sleeping and lethargy 

were depression - they said. “Age,”

he thought limping to the lavatory

for the fourth time that morning.

It was easier when the sun shone,

somehow. Coming winter hovered 

like a thunderstorm, lowered overhead,

but lightning never struck, nothing rumbled,

darkness just trundled in relentlessly.

So he sat down and wrote several

depressing poems like this one

hoping they would be cathartic.

They weren’t. He sat in the kitchen,

opened a book and went to sleep.

CARRY ON UP THE JUNGLE

It is Tuesday, thunder, lightning and RAIN last night, Midday temp 29C and humidity 83%. Phew.

Got out mower yesterday and found the bottom garden was 9" (20cm) of liquid mud. Mower is still sitting, bogged down there. Two of us could not get it out. Now awaiting a tow rope, a son and a van to try and pull it out. Access to it difficult.

This has stimulated a rethink of the garden with an area left to bog (did find an old drain under the mower but it must blocked), mow any bottom garden where gets wet with small mower and just do drier areas with sit-on. If we can get it out otherwise it will have to be an unusual ornament.
Come Wednesday and it popped out like a cork much to the amusement of all. There is a video of me driving away on Instagram and everyone laughing. https://www.instagram.com/p/CDzOHnAjQh7/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
  Actually am a bit fed up with -"J has loads of courgettes, so-and-so's plums are ripe and juicy etc etc" so I might just give up all but lawn and beds near house and sit in the garden and drink zero alcohol beer and eat crisps, whatever my heart thinks.
Perhaps the heat is getting to me - I know, I will jump in the pond -  (no, cannot face the slime and algae and newts between my toes (and elsewhere)).

We have roses, a few and looking at the yellow one I see there is dead heading to be done.




There seems to be plenty of white around in the garden as the cosmos are thriving - hooray! Something at least.

Other whites include the phlox which is splendid, daisies of the traditional kind, both the white hydrangeas, Annabelle on the ground from the rain - the heads get so heavy, and the Paniculata lighting up in the shade of the great white cherry.

Then there are the erratics as I call them - the wild flowers that intrude - I will remove a hogweed buy the wild angelica is glorious and covered in honey bees.  

And so to other colours - orange day lilies and fennel -

Orange crocosmia, blue shrubby clematis and white achillea (Dorothy's double sneezewort). Yellow this and blue that. Pink Japanese anemones discarded into the long grass of the lower banking, The Fuchsia magellanica that reminds me of Irish hedges growing by the gate.

I should never have mowed the lawns yesterday - now it is Sunday 16C and showery.

So a final note of sympathy for our poor Victoria plum - getting a bit like me, bent and bowed with the weight of the world (well plums) all too small and not ripe enough to eat - yet.

I WALK THE LANES

That is lanes not line, any way I do not have many black clothes.

The garden reaches certain points in the year when there is a lull in flowering, but there is another show in the local hedge banks.

What is this? It is the nasty hogweed - beware the blistery sap. The same plant and four variations. Also known as Copwflop in Cornwall and Wippul-Squip using the hollow stems as drinking straws in Devon and Somerset.

And then there are apples - horse apples they are called. 
My mother would keep a bucket and small hand shovel in her car for such items, take them home and put them on the roses. Why she did this when were a dairy farm I have no idea.

Flowers in hedge bankings - R loves the yellow dandelions. And left greater stitchwort or poppers - so called because when the seed heads are dry a gentle squeeze and POP!

Scented flowers, well those with an aroma, on the left meadowsweet, (known up here in Cumbria as Courtship-And-Matrimony from the difference in scent before and after crushing the plant), on the right garlic mustard or Jack-by-the-hedge.
The latter is the feed plant of the orange tip butterfly. It is largely over by now but lines the local roads in the late spring.






Of course it is edible as are the wild strawberries - this is not the earlier barren strawberry but both are potentillas, and look at the beauty of the awns of wild grasses. Many flowers may be insignificant until you look more closely.





Pink flowers - the abundant red campion, Granfer-griggles in Dorset and Plum-pudding in Suffolk, and assorted small cranesbills. this is the shining cranesbill not the doves-foot.







R is quite proud of the fact that she can identify vetches which is made easier because they are a persistent weed in the garden, in one place climbing all over red currant bushes.

 Earlier in the year the dark leaves of Cuckoo Pint, Jack-in-the-pulpit, the wild arum appear to be later by the sheath of the flower (and later the red poisonous berries of Lords and Ladies). 

Not the only plant that is poisonous, even the beautiful foxglove can be deadly if eaten.


Not all flowers are down by your feet - the honeysuckle clambers over the hedgerows and is attractive even when in bud.

Yet, down on the ground the yellow stars of lesser celandine, ranunculus ficaris lights up a dark corner. This is one of two kinds, has bulbils in the axils of the leaf which fall off to become new plants.

And then in the darkest corner is the wood sorrel, Soukie-sourach in Inverness, Hallelujah in Somerset, one of the prettiest and daintiest of flowers. The plant is edible, just pick it and chew - tastes bit sour, almost lemony.

I can recommend Geoffrey Grigson's book, The Englishman's Flora, if you can find a copy which lists the regional and local names for wild flowers. It makes fascinating reading.

When I was nobbut a lad I would botanise (is that a word) and have several entries in the Atlas of the British Flora. My great find was Meum athamanticum, spignel, which really belonged to my mother as she sat on it and said, "Oh! What is this?" It had last been noticed in that location by John Ruskin many years before and not been noted since. Later it was claimed by a lady from Barrow-in-Furness who came to check my record. I managed to correct that in the end with the subsequent editions of the Flora of Cumbria.

Been away in Wales, get back to soggy lawns and plums weighing down the tree, our one greengage gone mouldy and lots of work to do.