IT IS AUTUMN, NOW SUMMER, NOW WINTER

 It is Sunday and an early post of the latest blog. It is dark, grey clouds scudding form the west, a stiff breeze blowing, rooks falling like black rags from the ash trees, one of which, the trees I mean, has lost its leaves already - ?dieback.
All in all a depressing morning and not one that fires me with any urge to go gardening.
Yesterday I dug up some of the excess aquilegias and dumped them under the winter flowering honeysuckle to survive, or not. They have taken over too much of the flowerbeds.

It is Monday and we have a short bout of warm weather, 21C. However the grass is slow to dry, so out with the smaller mower, set it on mulch and do the whole lot! The Victoria plums are ok but do not have the flavour of previous years, much fruit on the ground and not all ripe. The seat we bought years ago from IKEA has gone a bit rotten and unsafe. Perhaps I can jerry rig it?

It is Tuesday and 26C. I weeded the veg beds, well, some of them but then come in and sit in the extension out of the sun. R is struggling away at her blog using Squarespace. Blogger seems easier but I do not like the new version so tend to revert to the old one. Sometimes simpler is easier. Anyway the parsley is thriving we know who wears the boots here.

It is Wednesday and much cooler if sunny. I opened the garden box to find a wasp nest, now quiet.

The sun is shining but it is cooler. Lots of fruit like the Conference pears but also on the thornless hawthorn and the guelder rose, small beautifully coloured berries.

It must be Thursday, market day, shrimps from George, sunny again and JP came to get the trophy he won from the Photo Society. What can I say - after a guided garden tour where he admired everything from figwort and bogbean to a pair of Southern Hawker dragonflies which flew up to investigate him and revealed to R that he actually had read this blog - always welcome. He went home clutching not just the glass trophy but a plant pot of Bramley apples.

So my sweet peas, no matter how I grow them, plugs, seed, whatever they do not flower - but I will not give up. Next year try again.

It is at this point I go balder as the new version of Blogger is driving me to distraction and I am tearing my hair out. It will not do as I want and suddenly all my typing is in the middle of the page and . . . 😩😠 it will not let me preview the page now so I will stop and hope for better things tomorrow. 

Today is Friday and J and J have been for damsons and apples. I have picked the last of the not too ripe plums, a pound to freeze, the rest to cook. As I picked they cascaded onto the grass. Time to prune the tree coming up. 

Up the garden, for some strange reason, the red rhododendron is flowering, there is even blossom on the ponticum. 

Every morning this week I have watched rabbits on the top banking first thing in the morning. So I went in search of their burrow and found several attempts under the Rambling Rector but still not the main one. 

No rain - the mower in the shed is restless.

It is Saturday and last night in a fit of pique because the Victoria Plum had so many squishy fruit I pruned it heavily - I know should have been done midsummer and it will probably get silverleaf. 

So today we went to Abi and Tom's nursery at Halecat and I bought a Gunnera and some violas. Then to the studios and a chat with fiona Clucas before walking thew sculpture trail. Finally to Grange-over-Sands and the garden centre in the car park for R to get an Aeonium Schwartkopf. This time the cold weather will not get it.

And to conclude and answer the "Is autumn coming question?" here are the Euonymus and Virginia creeper.