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.