BLOG 904

 Yes, this is my nine hundred and fourth blog! And apart from and odd poem and recipe it is photos and chitchat about the garden.

The weather remains unseasonably cool and dry.

R has cleared the pond of plants so we can see the water so I moved the heron. "Come," she called, "There is a white egret by the pond." Alas it was only our anaemic plastic heron.

I am reading Robert Macfarlane's Underland - another of his wonderful books.

Outside clouds drift past, there is a dragon, there a face and then nearer the flash of white of a house martin. There are three birds I think of straight away with that flash of white - the martin, the bullfinch and the wheatear.

It is my grandson Robin's birthday soon and Charley has suggested binoculars and a bird book. The binoculars are too small for me but have autofocus. I hope he can see some interesting life in his Oxford garden.

We are picking black currants and raspberries, there is more rhubarb but the carrots and parsnips have not germinated. The gooseberry bushes I abandoned in a corner because of sawfly and mildew have a few fruit.

I thought I would look closer at our plants, perhaps when not important nor in flower. Grasses and seed heads, close-ups.

Allium seeds, scabious in detail, and the lovage.

Of course there are still roses and geraniums -

The creeping jenny is taking over the rose bed and sowing itself elsewhere - where it is not wanted, the alchemilla, one of R's favourite flowers is also coming up everywhere. The former is fairly easy to uproot, the latter not so.

And so to two oddities - the variegated New Zealand flax that Pam gave us is flowering and some, the potato in a bottle flourishing.

Let me finish with a shot of opium -