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 -