SUNSET STRIP

So 77 is here, click click. I can comb my bald patch. As it is my birthday it is an overcast day with rain.

Gardeners' World has said I should be thinning my carrots but as they have just germinated due to the drought and are about 1 cm high it is a bit early. The blackbirds are eating all the red and black currants and something has chewed its way into the squirrel proof seed feeder. 

We have been given a wisteria so better luck this time. We will try to grow it along the front of the house.

R is feeling a bit faint as I have tidied my room, well, do not open drawers and cupboards. Anyone want a didgeridoo or a rainstick?

I put the trail camera on the pond and got 300 damselfly images and one heron. Well the plastic heron now so white it looks like an egret and then a mallard too.

In the garden light is so important casting shadows, illuminating plants and adding an extra dimension. Here the white rosebay competes with the afternoon sun.

The sun on the grass in the very top area accentuates the sense of sanctuary.

And backlights the white birches.

One thing I note is texture especially in bark - the peeling on the birches and here I have found the big eucalyptus has developed cracks, perhaps after the drought? They seem quite deep and apparently when rains resumes the tree grows rapidly, splitting the bark. The tree should now produce resin to seal the wounds.

We have red colour, valerian self seeding on the way in and by the path Rosa mundi. The latter was several cuttings from one plant, a favourite of R and I propose to take more later in the year.

And yellows - loosestrife between the pond and the hedge, several senecios - whoops now called brachyglottis I think - below the house with the contrasting grey foliage.

So as the wheels of time grind on and our garden, once bare, now seems to becoming a small wood, I shall go a chase the blackbirds from the berries (not that it does much good), watch the pheasant with the limp and swear at the grey squirrels as they climb our cherry and not only eat the birdseed but the feeders as well.

Time for a cuppa and a chunk of lemon sponge cake for my birthday.

IT RAINED

 For a few minutes and then the sun came out. No measurable rain for a month and plants are dying, leaves are shrivelled and falling off some shrubs. At last it is a bit cooler. 

I have not lit the bonfire for fear of setting the whole place alight. The pond is low but we do have our borehole for watering. 

The mower will come back on Monday I hope. Seeds are not germinating and one of the cock pheasants has a bad limp.

Yet the Rambling Rector roses and the peonies are magnificent.

The fox has been through the lower garden but the rabbits from the field next door are thriving.

I think the Guelder rose tree will have to be severely pruned as it is growing so fast it is suffocating nearby shrubs like the Ginko. One for the gardener?

Thunder forecast for tonight - so will probably flatten everything. The goosegrass is so rampant I have just pulled it from the lower branches of the big damson tree.

The wild meadow, Mmm, is moving on with the ragged robin going

Mainly buttercups, yellow rattle and sorrel as well a the odd ox-eye daisy and limulus up from the pond area. There are a lot of yellow flag iris in the lower garden too.

The sycamore is covered in green and white fly and the leaves are shiny with their excretions. I walk underneath and am assailed by the tiny insects.

Apart from the white climbing roses we have a pink one behind the shed but it seems to like showing most of its flowers to next door.

And the old rose I was given by my aunt from the garden at Wormleighton Manor is thriving nearer the house.

At the back of the house the golden showers rose I got as a freebie with an order from David Austin loves its place against the wall.

More pics, lambs' lugs, the daisy bush by the cattle grid, golden sedge by the pond, the Beauty bush and friends by the lawn, a red rose, an oriental poppy, 

And finally the banking of wonderful white rosebay doing its thing.

PHEW!

 We are sitting outside the kitchen in the shade and its is 28C. We are in need of rain and fortunately have a borehole so I can water the garden a bit.

The mower (the little one) has decided to stop and is going in to be seen to.

The May blossom is over as is the hedge parsley - suddenly everywhere, then over. Here are a few images of it at its best -

There is still a little hedge parsley in the garden - I let it sow itself (up to a certain point).

The aquilegias are going to seed and will need cutting back but I will leave them till they have scattered some of their seed. R likes the pale pink ones best.

The wilder areas are doing well, campion in the wood and ragged robin in the grassy bottom garden.

The rhubarb has collapsed in the heat and despite watering will need to be pulled for a new crop.

Elsewhere we have poppies, alliums and camassias on the way to the wood and the elder, unpruned this year has GROWN and is covered in flower. (? fritters)

This is one of the stalwarts of the perennial garden, geranium x magnificum, on the dry banking below the house and elsewhere.

Geraniums are always a good bet to do well.

So Boris is gone (for now)(wait for the memoirs)(though what he will remember might not be what everyone else remembers), and Donald is swinging his clubs at anything and everything - why these two are unable to the a good look at themselves is beyond me.

Time for a bit of 'do unto others' in the world.

Think it is lunch time so off to the kitchen for a sandwich and a cuppa.

And another stag night.