THISTLEDOWN

 Teacher - Right lad what is Thistledown?

Lad - Er, sir, raining like hell?

And boy has it been raining, so much the surface of the road in the village has risen and is partly blocked pushed up by water.

Been to Connemara so no blog for a bit but gardener has trimmed the lower garden - a bit hard with it so wet. 

Paths flooded and the spring in the middle of the lawn has returned. I have been out raking clear streams and so on.

The image on the right shows then usual stream out of the wood with two adjacent new springs.

The sweet peas have been flattened and the paths are strewn with sticks blown off the trees.

Than the sun comes out to light up the very full pond, the euonymus already starting to show autumn colour and give us a little sunny hope.

That was yesterday, now the heavens are open again and decanting their load onto us.

But when the sun shines some things catch the eye - like the lichen on the great white cherry. So out to pick fruit in the rain - it has knocked all the plums off the tree but we have pears, damsons and the Bramley apples are huge.

And the Elephant grass is over ten feet tall and still growing! R does not really like it but it does give me some rather thin bamboo-like canes to use elsewhere. My son has done up a house but found bamboo in the front garden. I looked up how to get rid of it and the main advice was get in a digger and grub it out. This is not feasible where he is. Would injecting Round Up into the top of the cut stems work - like they do for Japanese knotweed - we may see, fingers crossed.

Sun is out, no it is not, yes it is, I give up - coffee time.