GARDENING ON

No, I did not watch all the football, too stressful. They did OK but the best team on the night won (Italy). Now tennis is over and it will be golf. 

We have had rain - so the grass has grown, so the weeds have grown. 

It also means that the bonfire is not lit  - as wet, and the stack of paper from sorting out the year's accounts has not been burned.

Sitting with a friend S by the garden doors we saw a stoat and then a nuthatch on the feeder. 

The canna lily has flowered again and we are eating broccoli and broad beans from the veg beds. 

The black and red currants and the raspberries are  poor, when I can get to them first, before the blackbirds and thrushes.

I woke this morning, window open, to the scent of the philadelphus Belle Etoile which wafts through the house in competition with vases of roses.

Just been in shed and found sack of old potatoes well sprouted so now on compost heap. (The potatoes I mean).

We have been given a pink phormium and I have planted it near the osier.

And the roses bloom on -

I thought I had dug all the alstroemeria from the cutting bed - wrong!

And by the gate the two fuchsia planted to remind us of holidays in Donegal are thriving.

Just picked more raspberries and now have 2 1/2 pounds which is ideal for Mrs Beeton's wonderful jam recipe.

The petunias flower and flower though I am not sure how much I like the colour. I have put some tagetes in one of the flower beds and R definitely dislikes them and their colour so I will have to move them, somewhere, but where - time for a think.

The lilium regale have survived the beetle attack and are looking splendid, flowers out, scent out and many more buds to come. They have been in the same big pots for five or six years

The cosmos Purity and astrantia (masterwort) are a delight both lighting up dark corners in different ways, the astrantia delicate, the cosmos brash.