ROTTEN BOTTOM

Firstly and most important R is one of the winners of North Cumbria Scriptwriters, and her short play will be performed at the Theatre by the Lake next spring. 

Rotten Bottom is the gatepost at the hinge side of the electric gate so it is roped to the adjoining wall. I carefully capped so many posts to stop them rotting at the top so they re obligingly rotting at the bottom. (Whoops, a touch of boldly going.)

In the downstairs loo the is a cellar spider living behind the radiator. You know, the ones that look like a daddy-long-legs. I have called her Stella. At present I am the only person who goes there as the seat is broken and bites. When I tried to get a new seat I was given the dreaded word discontinued. Have possibly found one and we are waiting for it to arrive.

Anyway, the garden - bit squelchy and R is determined to get in drainage men. I remain unconvinced that it will do much but on having a look found the gunnera and rogersia I thought were dead are not.

So, how are the flowers doing? Here are a few examples -

I suppose the odd on out is the big magnolia flower - R must have been telling it off again for not flowering. Crocosmia, cosmos, the scented white phlox, Japanese anemones and alstroemeria are all in good fettle though the anemone has been banished to the shrubbery for getting out of hand. I must now consider what to do about the white one but as the whole garden is getting out of hand and jungly this is only one of the problems.

And fruit - plums, pears and damsons hanging from loaded branches.

And speaking of fruit here are nighttime visitors eating the fallen plums.

Of course there are fruit elsewhere not for eating as such - I suppose we could make rosehip syrup or split the hips and make itching powder?

One of the willows in the garden has just got too big so come later in the year more firewood. I have also demolished the rotten table we got from Ikea years ago so we only have two benches outside at the moment and nowhere to put the umbrella.

And of course we do have some butterflies but not as many as in past years - a comma and a red admiral.

So off to cut a few sweet peas, pick a few french beans and perhaps dig up a few potatoes.

FLASH AHA!

 The other night it poured down. It is not often the pond goes muddy but silt has been washed across the garden to it. The planks that cross the stream have been washed out and much of the garden is STAY OFF.

The temperature yesterday climbed to a lofty 15C - in midsummer. And now I have done something to my left shoulder. R went out to do some deadheading and stuff and came in again. The gardener is not due for ten days - time to move to a flat?

It is Tuesday and the sun is out. R weeding and tidying, I pruned the overhanging shrubs by the lawn, hoed the veg beds, picked five  French beans, four greengages, three manky plums, two Bramley apples but no sign of a partridge - though the pear tree is loaded with fruit.

Falling in the garden again, never wanted to, what am I to do, can’t help it! 

It is not the falling though this time as I ended up in a black ant nest, it is the getting up again.

Autumn is early. I have noticed the rowan berries ripe and here the hawthorn not far off.

Having a cuppa with the crossword in the extension and fighting the spellchecker, whoa! a big dragonfly came in, took one look and flew off.

Today is Friday and yesterday we had all our good summer in one day - 26C and not raining. Today it is cooler and wetter - again.

Down by the pond ambling about and there is a rustling sound in the hedge, then a buzzard flies out feet from me.

The path at the back of then pond is very overgrown but good news is that the rodgersia and the gunnera are alive and in big leaf.

I try to light the bonfire and fail yet again. It is like Topsy, just grows and grows. I prune shrubs and pick up fallen sticks from the trees and it grows.

A note to say well done Emma on your charity ride to Paris despite someone stealing your bike at that end. I would have joined you but I do not have a bike. (Nor the legs, nor the fitness, nor the grit, nor the . . . well you get the gist. Just berated by R, as she goes off to Yoga, for sitting around getting fatter and more lethargic. Well I am writing my blog.)

So, Japanese anemones out,

A bit of sun dried the seed on the white rosebay and it blows across the garden (and in through the windows).

We have other hydrangeas apart from floppy Annabelle, a lace cap up at the woodland fringe and another nearer the gate and the big white by the cherry tree.

Two plants that need a closer look are the fennel and the wild angelica. 

Lucifer is all but done but that is not the last of the crocosmias.

And finally there is some fruit in the garden - greengages from the tree I and A gave us and the poor old Victoria plum is on its knees, well its branches are down the lawn with fruit. No broken branches yet fortunately. I thin the fruit of the mouldy ones but as they are not yet ripe, not when I can pull one of the tree and sink my teeth into the juice sweet flesh, I must bide a while.

Yoga? A brisk walk? Exercises? Think I will put the kettle on and contemplate my next move. (Stand up and go to the kitchen.)

DAMPISH!!!!!

 The Med burns and we have drizzle, mizzle, rain and it is only in the teens Centigrade.

(All images taken in the rain.)

Much to do but the grass is sodden, trees drip down my neck and the stream, usually dry by now, is chunnering and splashing.

We do have some sweet peas and a derelict cyclamen I stuck out in the rain before we went away is loaded with flowers. The weight of pears bends down the branches so much I have to crouch as I pass. However R's cosmos have done well.

The gardener is about to come and mow but he will need a towel to dry the grass and then use scissors. Wilding is all very well but has taken over. Perhaps that is what wilding is? This year there seems no room for compromise.

The lilies are a disaster and we return to a cloud of red cardinal beetles (and no flowers)(no leaves).

Met another gardener yesterday who has an immaculate garden. I asked how he managed and he replied that he does just by going out there for two to three hours a day! Mmm!

What is even more depressing (than the weather) is that on Sunday we had lunch with excellent friends at Goldstone Hall Hotel in Shropshire and walked their garden which was overflowing with flowers.

Back to the Nook and we do have agapanthus and hydrangeas. I will not show you Annabelle as she is lying prone on the wet tarmac soaking wet.

There are some plants that quietly succeed like the Masterwort or Astrantia. It is especially beautiful if you closely at the flowers and their papery delicacy.

I gave up sowing parsley in the veg beds and popped a whole packet into a big pot of compost - and voila!

And we have plenty of plums ripening, and the beans are doing ok.

And everywhere is weeds and suckers - the damson is bad and the greengage awful. Left alone they would make a Brer Rabbit thicket.

So there we are or rather here I am waiting for the rain to stop 🙏.

I thought I would finish with a pic of one of my more successful plants striding across a chipping path up in the wood - and not a blackberry in sight.