ALMOST JULY ALREADY!

 Where does the time go?

We have been to other gardens like Sizergh Castle and its lake - bit big for a pond - and the steps were covered in Erigeron (Mexican Fleabane).

We have all but lost our gardener which is a bit of nuisance but he has a young family and their needs come first.

So, to cheer me up here are some flowers -

Right, after a plethora of birthdays, the rain and wind has flattened one or two plants. A sudden turn for in the weather plus it is only 13C today means the peonies are done.

Without bright sunshine - well only intermittently - plants in darker areas can come to the fore - bronze fennel, rhubarb stems, hypericum and poppies hidden away under the magnolia.

On the windowsill in my room the potato on a bottle is doing okay but what happens if the roots inside the bottle start to grow tubers I hate to think. The small book of poems was a father's day present from my daughter. One of the poems is by Henry Constable and I have a book of his poetry by Joan Grundy who lived just across the field from us when she retired and was a patient of mine. (Ten Poems about Gardens introduced by Monty Don, Candlestick Press.)

More white, so important - the unpruned cut-leaved elder is enormous and the Philadephus loaded with flowers and scent. Up on the top banking the patch of white rosebay gets ever larger. As age creeps on if we can have much of the garden looking good with ground cover and minimum effort the good.

My son C bought me an insect nesting box but I do not think the many wasps scraping away at our green oak beams will be interested. I have not found the nest yet (nor the rabbit hole where the many bunnies come from to eat the garden.) But things change - the lack of swallows and house martins - and some things never change - weeds and growing grass, ungerminated seed in the veg beds, slugs, snails and blackbirds eating all the currants.

First buddleia out and here comes that brachyglottis (senecio).

OUR GARDEN

It is lovely to get praise, especially if one is a lazy old *** but this is not MY garden it is OUR garden. I will stuff a plant in here and there but R says no, it needs to be there - and it does. I may be the blogger but she is as important as me.

Sometimes plants are a match made in heaven - catmint and alchemilla.

To move on - so, I thought, let me weed the autumn raspberry bed - and did so. I noticed that one of the logs beside the bed had a red ant nest under it. On my way back to the house - OW! One or two had crept over my shoe, across my sock and up my trouser leg. Between that and the nettle I grasped I am well formic acided.

The Allium Christophii are splendid - such a geometric masterpiece.

And the orange rockrose, if the sun is out and the flowers open is a blast of colour. The whites are also coming on well - this year I have not pruned the shrubs between the upper and lower garden and they are ten feet tall.

Elsewhere the crambe is out, the white willow herb on its way and the peonies stupendous. Forgotten things are appearing like this eremurus.

But we are approached drought - the stream is dry. the pond low and some wilting appearing - so to water?

Perhaps we should just go away but - no trains and planes, we can still see the Isle of Man ferry coming and going from Heysham.

R has decided to point the paving. I suggested we got someone in to do it but she is adamant so while I sit here with my cup of tea writing a blog she is slaving away on her knees outside the window.

Now everywhere in the garden the odd wild seedling flourishes but if they as wonderful as these foxgloves, why not.

Up in the wood the grasses are a bit too tall and falling over the paths - work to do - but in the light they are lovely. It will be necessary soon to trim them back as walking through thigh height wet grass is not pleasant. The big strim will come later in the year after any wild flowers have set seed.

The crambe is out and looking good beside the cardoon and not far away is a purple rose the name of which I have forgotten.

Speaking of roses - here is Rosa rubrifolia or glauca. This is a sucker from a plant My Aunt Phebe gave me from Wormleighton Manor garden. Is this the true rose of Lancaster?

And I cannot move on without another photo of the Rambling Rector clambering forty feet up the old ash tree.

Now, when I went out the last time to check on the wildlife camera I opened it and it was full of wildlife. You can see a few remaining earwigs at the bottom left. R was delighted as she hates the things - most irrational.

The camera caught nothing special but rabbits, or so I thought, until I looked carefully at the left and saw someone eating the lower leaves off the damson.

And so to a finale - nothing better that the fabulous peony by the lilac.

THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR

 So, there I was going to the new veg beds, newly surrounded by chicken wire fencing and about to sow some Sweet Williams and wallflowers for next year when there was a disturbance and a large rabbit jumped the fence and scurried away. Where I had planted some broccoli there was a big hole and no plants!

That is all I need - leaping rabbits. I mean sheep and deer are bad enough but - 

I love this time of year, May and June, the birds still singing, everything growing, light and shade though this photo is a bit of a cheek as it is of the Green Lane at Orcop Hill in Herefordshire!

It is Sunday and I look up the garden from an upstairs window. There are four rabbits on the lawn! Two adult, two smaller and they are eating the grass. Later I walk down to the compost heaps to empty the kitchen waste bin and then search for a rabbit hole. Nothing! As R says they are coming in from all sides to dine on our luxurious plants.

So to flowers, flowers and a few favourites -

This is one called The Poet's Wife and given to us by our children.

Of course, having a wild garden (jungle) we have wild flowers too - The simple meadow buttercup, foxglove and green alakanet.

Do not talk about veg beds - no germination of carrots or parsnips, some signs of beans, chomping slugs despite nematodes though first signs of potatoes albeit put in late. We have let the asparagus go, there are signs that french beans are appearing and fruit is on some of the fruit trees. The currants look good but they will also look good to the blackbirds.

Sometimes it is not colour and contrast that catches the eye, shape and design can too like the Allium Christophii.

At the moment I am reading Time Song by Julia Blackburn about the lost world of Doggerland in the North Sea. It makes one realise that everything in the garden is so transient as is life in general. It has been suggested that we are heading for a new Extinction like with the dinosaurs (though they fly around the trees today - birds) but this one is caused by a plague called humanity. Actually a dinosaur is still pecking on our glass doors.

Cheer up lad, the Rambling Rector rose is flowering in the old ash tree and has survived the winter storms.

So I leave you with rabbits, again - a small one having breakfast by the pond.

It is only when the wind gets up that you realise what you have forgotten to stake so job to do.