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.)