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.