THE PLATINUM REPORT

So Platinum Jubilee, party for locals at the house - we even had sunshine - and I got to mow what was needed. You can see all the yellow rattle in the meadow area, some sorrel but not much else yet.

Having visitors makes one look at the garden with different eyes. Then I saw the bark chewed off one of the white birches - deer or grey squirrels? There are flowers still on the Magnolia stellata, still on the camellias and the sycamore flowers had quite abruptly become seeds! 

And so to the story of the potato from the veg cupboard. I stuck in on top of this glass container filled with water and waited. As I was proud of its root display I brought it into the kitchen just before the Jubilee do. It did not last long and was back in the utility immediately. R, obviously, did not appreciate its finer points, especially when it is backlit by the sun.

We do have some glorious roses - this is one called The Poet's Wife.

Back to the garden, I had forgotten the Clematis montana Albert up the old Christmas tree and am pleased that the red campion is out in the wood (even in some of the flowerbeds) and that we have one or two white variations. The Rose Rambling Rector took a hammering in the storm but is now staring to flower where it has survived. I had also forgotten the Gladiolus nanus in the main rose bed.

S the wonderful gardener had been just before the do and strimmed the lower banking (so the pond could be seen from the house). He left the Hedge parsley and the Comfrey. No duck or pheasant nests there this year.

He also finished the central path in the veg beds with chippings over a permeable membrane. Not far from there is the greengage tree we were given by our daughter and son-in-law - we are a bit far north for lots of fruit but with global climate change we hope. We do have a few fruit this year and pray they survive.

There is plenty of colour, poppies and camassias, alliums and geraniums and, we hope, much more to come. The BBC said that it had been the fifth warmest May on record - I wonder where that was? I must go and pot on a few struggling pot plants.