HERE WE GO

 The team are here remaking the paths and a seating area.

Blossom is everywhere, wonderful spring.

Chiffchaffs and willow warblers singing like mad and down on the pond a great white egret!!

R has had two swallow/martin boxed put up and hop the tree sparrows leave them alone.

So loads of pics blossom first -

So the petals are falling like snow (and me) making the paths slippery.

Camellias are flowering - we have three, a pink, a red and one which is pink but sports white flowers.

So we are having new paths laid where the veg beds were and a round seating area.

And not all pants that give pleasure are "cultivated."

Golden saxifrage

Ash

Dandelion

Primrose

Cowslip

Ans by no means least Bellis perennis - the good old daisy.

And more soon when I can limp out into the garden with my camera.

PS our new grandson is growing -

OPINIONS

 

Cut that tree down, trim that hedge, organise more and pop goes the wild garden (or is wild garden and excuse for doing nowt much?)

And autumn approaches - hips on the roses, some small and some more luxurious. 

Some flowers are flourishing late in the year but we are still waiting for the Michaelmas daisies.

The sedum line the paving by the house, the blue clematis released to flower by the removal of the bay tree.

But someone is right as I cannot do it all any longer, brain is fading, body shot at, and someone else is fed up doing all the weeding, seeing the ravages of slug snail, mouse, pigeon and - well you get the idea.

We have lit our first wood burner of the year end as the weather cools. Plants have arrived - tulips from Sarah Raven and some ranunculi and hollyhocks from Farmer Gracey.

They need to be planted.

Down in the veg beds are moribund redcurrants  (they only feed the birds anyway), asparagus going brown and wispy, and one cannot eat the holes in the Cavolo Nero. 

The gardener sweeps around with his strimmer but wet grass does not mow easily.

Algae is back on the pond, the Tutsan is berried up ready to seed all over the place and the ash trees behind the bottom shed have the plague (and are just next door).

So on we go, and on and on and on . . . . . 

STILL WAITING

 For summer up t' north.

Yes heat in the south but here rarely escapes the teens in Centigrade. 

And WET!

I have picked our six or so damson trees and almost three fruit a tree.

The blackcurrants are pruned and some of the damson suckers removed. I used some of the pruning to shove in the veg bed for future trees. They root so easily if left alone. 

R weeds on assiduously. 

I know R does not like my Elephant grass but I do. I suppose one day I will come home and find it gone?

The bay tree outside the kitchen window was too big and we have bay elsewhere so out came the saw. It may not be up to Monty Don's standard of lopping but it will do.

The rosa rugosa by the washing line is both flowering and fruiting as is the white version in the top hedge.

And is autumn upon us - the euonymus is turning - too early I cry.

We have eaten our first Bramleys and there are conference pears ripening on the kitchen windowsill.

The big white hydrangea is gathering its pink tinge - ?autumn.

This rose was a gift from our children and is called The Poet's Wife.

Sometimes wandering a garden with  camera one sees interesting shapes and so on - this monochrome of spreading branches was taken at Holker Hall.

And her we have alchemilla leaves and creeping thistledown.

Sometimes when mowing the lawn I have to rest and do so on and old hen box from our previous owner backed against the far wall. From there I can look across the garden through the white birches to the eucalyptus. I am sitting under an ash tree suffering with dieback so that makes two of us - and as it is over the wall in the farmer's field not much I can do.

Hello, it has gone dark again and there is a warning out about thunder and heavy rain - what a surprise!

THERMOSTAT DOWN/UP AGAIN

 The garden is flourishing, perhaps too much? Our white birches stand tall at the far end of the garden as do the swathes of uncut grass.

Time for the strimmer?

There are long shoots and tangled thorny clumps of bramble in the wood and the bottom hedge will need laying, perhaps this winter. Unlike the blackberries in the lane hedges the ones in the woodland might flower but do not bear much in the way of fruit.

But we do have apples and pears. I have been up in the far lawn and cut out two twenty foot high osiers that have been flattened by past storms. I used my small hand chainsaw. The chain can come off and I have to be sure I put it back the right way around.

One gnarled old willow is sprouting vigorously and there are signs of ash dieback in some of our mature trees. To remove them would be very expensive so we watch and wait.

We may not have many butterflies though yesterday I noted a few gatekeepers and a couple of small whites. We do have plenty of buddleia flowers if they are hungry.

I do like plants that sow themselves, well some like the feverfew and mulleins and woundwort. Others seem to grow well even in the untended areas - yellow loosestrife and acanthus. The former is, of course. a wild plant. The red flower on the left is good(?) old Lucifer.

And then there is the gunnera getting bigger and bigger.

Not far away is the pond and wild plants - greater willow herb (though this seems everywhere this year), the fat pods of the yellow flag, meadowsweet and thistledown.

So much going on and so little desire to do stuff. Anyway it is raining again.