PONDERING

 

I can almost hear the leaves breathing in the sunshine and warmth. More rain needed - soft refreshing rain please. 

I have moved the tagetes disliked by R to the back bed where there are some orange poppies and filled the space they came from with nicotianas and cosmos.

Friends have come and I have, with apologies, dumped 20 or 30 back numbers of The Garden, English Garden, Gardeners World and Country Life in their laps. (We only get the latter to look at the houses and mutter, 'Who can afford all these multi million pound houses?'.)

The editorial staff at The English Garden would probably throw their hands up in horror at our "evolved" garden - no parterre, big borders, plenty of weeds, some vague planning - put it in and if it does not work try it somewhere else. In the end plants either find a happy niche or snuff it.

Of course some get too happy and become rampant.

Ponderings - here there is a different flora - meadow sweet (R does not like the heady scent),

marsh woundwort and purple loosestrife, veronicastrum and water lilies, marsh bedstraw, marsh thistles etc etc.

The flowering rush is admired (R would like most of it removed wanting to see the surface of the pond more and our mallard back). 

The gardener has strimmed the banking but had to leave a clump in the middle as the pheasant has decided it would be a good place for a nest.

House martins keep coming and inspecting the eaves but they have not begun serious building. 

Walking up to the top garden is like entering another small world, a good place for meditation or just escaping from this shambles of a world we inhabit. Politicians spout about measures to deal with global ecological catastrophe but I have no faith in them. They will do something but only when it is too late and not too expensive. It makes me glad I am 75 but feel for younger people and this fractured world.

Enough - 

In the trees to the back of the decking we have a clematis and the honeysuckle Halliana. The latter has a wonderful perfume and brings back memories for us of Wolfscastle Pottery in Pembrokeshire where not grew in profusion inside and outside the building.

There is a bed in the corner which a used to weed assiduously but have let go so there is some of the thug pendulous sedge there but also such as primula veris. The stream/ditch runs at the back of this plot and is a thoroughfare for animals and birds to and from the field, especially the pheasants and, less pleasantly, occasional rats. As we have stables next door (very good for manure) we also have rats. Wild yellow loosetrife thrives as does comfrey.

The red currants are gone, most of the black currants picked and raspberries in the freezer for a rainy jam day. Rhubarb is tired but we do have some sweet peas! Not a lot but a small vase or two.

Then when all is said and I am waiting for the agapanthus to flower we have ROSES, glorious roses especially the blowsy Emma Hamilton from David Austin. The only problem it has is when it rains the heads become so heavy and the petals stick together.

Then I go away for a week and it its HOT and it is DRY and plants in pots wither and a rabbit gets into the rabbit proof veg patch and digs a burrow and then we find a young animal dead in the entrance with a bite on the back of its neck . . .  

BUT, if I go away and leave things alone I can grow sweet peas !!!!