THE NIGHTS ARE DRAWING IN

The world is getting too jungly?

We have veg and a few fruit - yellow courgettes, french beans, newish spuds from the ones that sprouted in the kitchen and I buried, Cavolo nero, kale, a slug ridden cauliflower plus some juicy plums and nearly ripe pears and damsons.

P been today and strimmed the flower meadow. Then I started to mow it but too damp and claggy so only did two thirds before I put my foot in a boggy bit over my shoe. Sylvia's lonely little oak tree actually has acorns.

R has been tidying away and the heaps by the wall are getting big. She is cutting back yet more of the alchemilla now it is over. The blackcurrants have had all wood older than two years removed.

Now Sunday and rain forecast tonight - which I learned about after I had watered the pots and veg! At least got most of the lawns mown - the sit-on only blocked up three times. Old plants cleared from the banking by the kitchen and R was in the pond again hoicking out plants. 

Some flowers -

One shrub we were given when we moved in was this hypericum and it sows itself all across the garden appearing suddenly from within existing shrubs. Its yellow flowers and glossy fruit have their own charm but I wish it was a little to less "wild".

The Magnolia grandiflora has been listening to R's threats to cut it down by flowering - a bit. It usually does so in August.

Elsewhere we have one calendula and the anthemis doing well.

And so to fruit, pears - one an interesting shape and plums, one being consumed by a butterfly - well it has found a hole made by a wasp and is sipping the sweet juices.

Enough - the white rosebay is in full seed - glorious -

SOME RAIN AT LAST

Except it makes the grass grow and difficult to mow.

The potato has had its chips and succumbed - so to the compost heap.

We have had P doing the paving last R's request, redoing the grouting.

It is Thursday afternoon and rain is falling - as I have heard in Ireland - a soft day.

When we were away we visited a few gardens on the way home - Aberglasney and Powis Castle.

Two images from Aberglasney - one of the fountain and one of a gunnera flower - hope our plant will one day flower but too small so far.

At Powis Castle we admired their hollyhocks and enormous hedge - I am glad I do not have to trim that.

I came home yesterday to find a cormorant in the drive. It struggled through the fence into the horse paddock. I could not see any injury - perhaps it was just tired?

The amount of work in the garden just seems to grow - weeding, dead heading, cutting back etc but I do not yet have the courage to really let parts go. There is an inbuilt desire just to keep things under control.

We still have opium poppies in the garden and I am letting the seed heads be - for more next year and anyway because I like the link of them. The pink Japanese anemones are also coming into flower - all a bit earlier this year including hedges now full of blackberries.

Some plants are often not welcome in a garden like the nettle, urticaria dioica but they are a feed plants for butterfly caterpillars, flying flowers, so a patch is always worth keeping. A garden in a way is itself one large complicated organism with flora and fauna interacting. Neglecting one part can well affect others. I am not taking zoology nor botany but ecology. It is always interesting to observe the interactions between different aspects.

Not many plums but eating those we have from the tree. The apples are a flop, the pears look good and we will have some damsons - and the rhubarb is BIG!

Here and there is the self sown white mallow my sister gave us - still thrives both ibn the flower beds and on the wild banking.

Paving pointed the "wildflower meadow" has been now strimmed and the cuttings left to lie for a few days so seed can settle. 

Still picking the seed peas -

IT AIN"T HALF HOT

 - 31C and we are back after our holiday in Wales and I am surrounded this morning by a whirl of house martins. Everything has grown, has come out, is over, cannot keep up. The stag has been scraping velvet from its antlers in the wood, on the ground in the bushes.

One intrepid spider has made a nest and now the web tangle is full of tiny arthropods. You can see the tiny creatures in the left hand image.

So R has been deadheading and cutting back, I was hedge cutting, took down the dying white lilac 😒 and have mown the lawn.

R has bought six white petunias for a pittance at the supermarket so they have been put with the euphorbias by the back door.

Hot and getting hotter. Watering the garden - no ban up here and anyway we have the borehole. R cutting back when not eating the greengages off the tree. These are Victoria Plums though.

We are all threatened with drought, hosepipe bans and so on. The grass may go brown but it will recover.

The Lucifer is all but done but there are other crocosmias doing Okay. R likes this orange one very much and uses it in vases in the house.

The day lilies - the orange one does not cut well as the flowers only last a day.

We have sweet peas!! A change from previous years, but not the ones I tended through the winter which did not survive but the ones from the greengrocer.

Here are some other flowers - 

pinks and pots, agapanthus and roses.

Some wild flowers seed themselves and my gardener's mind says, "Dig 'em up!" But I don't.

Hogweed in the shrubbery - looks quite good - must not let it seed though.

We have an explosion of hydrangeas - Annabelle the most spectacular.

Finally the white rosebay is done and seeding with amazing abundance as the feathery seeds drift in the breeze across the garden.

Time for a very cold drink - or perhaps a cuppa tea?