GETTING TRENCH FOOT

In fact storm Agnes which will amuse my sister as it is her first name though she never uses it. In fact she is Mrs Agnes Brown and I am sure she wishes she had got copyright on her name before someone in Ireland had the idea of pinching it.

So sodden everywhere, no mowing, gardener scraped moss and liverwort off the hoggin path today, last damsons picked and the badger has been back.

From the trail camera by the bird feeders. It showed the usual rabbits and pheasants and other birds (and a r*t actually trying to climb the cherry.) Do not tell R. She hates them.

The storm came and missed us, going up over Scotland, just a lot (more) rain.

My cousin H came today with her friend M and taking them around our neglected patch made we see it through other eyes. Never mind, just call it a wild garden. Too much for me now I have to admit. And R has plans afoot perhaps to reduce workload?

That was yesterday so a dry day today and out with the mower only to find it is so wet I cannot get the machine back up to the house from the lower garden. In the end manage a long way around. Much of the garden unmowable. 

The council are rebuilding the road in the village so getting out and in is a long way around too.

And now it is tomorrow and raining again. At least it fills the water bin - the council garden waste bin - as we recycle all it has another use.

So to fruit and pears and apples aplenty.

One big one we took yesterday to P along with some pears.

And there are contrasts like the dying ash tree over the far wall and the rose A and P gave us that lover the trellis by the shed.

And we have light coloured flowers to dispel the gloomy clouds - 

Japanese anemones above and Anthemis below. R and I both want more Anthemis - they have flowered well this year.

But one cannot escape the approach of autumn - Virginia creeper on one of the sheds colouring up and Sedum spectabile coming into flower.

Parsley is still doing okay as are the yellows in the back bed where R would like a load of topiary.

And it is still raining and weighing down the poor Annabelle and Sunflowers,

R upstairs on her bed, warm and writing, time to make her a cup of tea.

PONDERING

 

I can almost hear the leaves breathing in the sunshine and warmth. More rain needed - soft refreshing rain please. 

I have moved the tagetes disliked by R to the back bed where there are some orange poppies and filled the space they came from with nicotianas and cosmos.

Friends have come and I have, with apologies, dumped 20 or 30 back numbers of The Garden, English Garden, Gardeners World and Country Life in their laps. (We only get the latter to look at the houses and mutter, 'Who can afford all these multi million pound houses?'.)

The editorial staff at The English Garden would probably throw their hands up in horror at our "evolved" garden - no parterre, big borders, plenty of weeds, some vague planning - put it in and if it does not work try it somewhere else. In the end plants either find a happy niche or snuff it.

Of course some get too happy and become rampant.

Ponderings - here there is a different flora - meadow sweet (R does not like the heady scent),

marsh woundwort and purple loosestrife, veronicastrum and water lilies, marsh bedstraw, marsh thistles etc etc.

The flowering rush is admired (R would like most of it removed wanting to see the surface of the pond more and our mallard back). 

The gardener has strimmed the banking but had to leave a clump in the middle as the pheasant has decided it would be a good place for a nest.

House martins keep coming and inspecting the eaves but they have not begun serious building. 

Walking up to the top garden is like entering another small world, a good place for meditation or just escaping from this shambles of a world we inhabit. Politicians spout about measures to deal with global ecological catastrophe but I have no faith in them. They will do something but only when it is too late and not too expensive. It makes me glad I am 75 but feel for younger people and this fractured world.

Enough - 

In the trees to the back of the decking we have a clematis and the honeysuckle Halliana. The latter has a wonderful perfume and brings back memories for us of Wolfscastle Pottery in Pembrokeshire where not grew in profusion inside and outside the building.

There is a bed in the corner which a used to weed assiduously but have let go so there is some of the thug pendulous sedge there but also such as primula veris. The stream/ditch runs at the back of this plot and is a thoroughfare for animals and birds to and from the field, especially the pheasants and, less pleasantly, occasional rats. As we have stables next door (very good for manure) we also have rats. Wild yellow loosetrife thrives as does comfrey.

The red currants are gone, most of the black currants picked and raspberries in the freezer for a rainy jam day. Rhubarb is tired but we do have some sweet peas! Not a lot but a small vase or two.

Then when all is said and I am waiting for the agapanthus to flower we have ROSES, glorious roses especially the blowsy Emma Hamilton from David Austin. The only problem it has is when it rains the heads become so heavy and the petals stick together.

Then I go away for a week and it its HOT and it is DRY and plants in pots wither and a rabbit gets into the rabbit proof veg patch and digs a burrow and then we find a young animal dead in the entrance with a bite on the back of its neck . . .  

BUT, if I go away and leave things alone I can grow sweet peas !!!!

RATS AND PONDS AND STUFF

Which I suppose is star.

One of the problems with bird feeders is that they attract other, perhaps less welcome visitors. Pheasants are ok, grey squirrels are a nuisance but then there are rats, a whole family, R's least favourite creatures.

So, I put out the rat trap - with the virus the ratman said to take down the feeders and he would, reluctantly, come out if the family rattus did not go away. And I caught - a stroppy blackbird!

What day is it? . . . . Ah! Yes, it is Wednesday, (I think).

Lawns mown, sown nigella (Love-in-a-mist) where the snowdrops are fading outside the kitchen, eaten asparagus again, we now have a mole invasion beyond the veg beds. Rang the mole lady but she is self isolating as she has asthma. Moles will be happy anyway.

Down at the pond no sign of the ducklings. The nest is empty and the mallard pair are still around. I wonder where she is hiding them?

Bogbean and water lilies doing well and saw my first dragonfly today. 

The stream under the hedge is remarkably clear and not overgrown. I do like the variegated yellow flag iris which is thriving.

The overflow from the new spring seems to run for about ten metres and then the ground dries up. Either there is an old drain or it is the old course of the stream which is taking the water. At least we will not need a drain all the way to the hedge ditch.

The Bramley apple blossom is in full gorgeous bloom. 

Disasters aside, we may get a good crop this year.

On the other hand the seedings in the veg beds are struggling - is it mice, is it pigeons? The ground is so dry it cannot be slugs and snails.
I have one carrot seed germinated so have sown a new row and netted them against the birds. 








I have also netted the red currants (right) against blackbirds (black currants to the left) - I know - put the rat trap down there.

And we walk the lanes - this is the view across Morecambe Bay from just along and south from the house - much like the view from the house.

The fence men are here and replacing the 100 metres between us and the back field - stock proof fencing, 6 stretchers, posts every 2 metres (safe distancing) and a double strand of barbed wire to stop cattle leaning on it.

In the garden we have a very deep yellow berberis - almost Gamboge tint - and in the hedge at the back there grows the wild berberis, now a bit hacked and pruned by the fence men.

Not so many yellow Welsh poppies this year but the orange version is doing well, a plant I like seeding itself (unlike the wild garlic which is getting out of hand.)

All in all then garden is a delight and it is such a pity we cannot share it with friends and family.

A MENAGERIE?

Late June is pressing down on us.
The trees are one green and the garden is becoming quieter. This morning a lone song thrush calls, a young sparrow chirps. The only other sound is the raucous call of the magpies and the chunner of a pheasant outside the kitchen door.
Down the long path, where I covered the seed bed with netting and sowed carrots and parsnips, there are two fat rabbits sitting on the top of the netting. One reaches up and eats a leaf off a senecio that is in a pot (now called a Brachyglottis)(the plant not the pot). I did not know that rabbits ate those shrubs but suspect they eat just about anything. I shall go out soon and try to put better protection over the seedlings.
It is warmer and more humid. We are waiting for rain. My computer has been attacked by a virus that wiped out all my bookmarks from Safari - very strange.

It has not rained. There are goldfinches on the feeders and today (Wednesday) a greenfinch. I have not seen one of those for many months.

Wildlife is everywhere and the untamed grass is taller than I can remember - if my shoulder was not so sore I would be out scything (just an excuse).

The peonies are an explosion of pink and the small deutzia is ten feet tall - where did that come from? Each morning when I go out the philadelphus assails me with scent. The mass of vegetation is a blanket on the garden, almost smothering us. I do wish someone would smother the blackbirds though. They chatter at me in annoyance as I try to salvage redcurrants.

In the rose bed I have found an abandoned pheasant nest with twelve cold eggs. It is but a scrape in the soil and two feet from the long path - what a stupid place to build it.

No doubt the magpies and the rat will dine well so I move them to a far part of the garden in case they begin to smell.

I am sitting on the sofa in the kitchen when there is a loud thump - a young chaffinch has flown in the door and tried to escape through the window. It is on the floor, stunned. I pick it up, weighs nothing, and carefully take it outside to recover. It sits under the feeders, wobbly and shaken but finally flies away.

We have a second brood of house martins in the new nest above the kitchen door - the nest is so close I can reach up and touch it.

Thursday and I walk into the new part of the living room after breakfast. Sitting on the mat outside is a young rabbit. We stare at one another, two feet apart. It cannot smell or hear me through the double glazing. Perhaps it needs glasses?

When I open the door it ambles off - presumably to eat more of the garden. J's sunflowers are but short green stumps and netting is everywhere. It is a good job some of the veg beds are surrounded by a chicken wire fence. I do not know what else we can do other than buy a gun but that is not on my agenda. Pain in the proverbial as the bunnies may be there must be something a little Buddhist in my make up, mind you I did get in the mole catcher so . . ?

The lady's mantle, alchemilla mollis, has finally got going - late but luscious. And, yes, the foxgloves do self seed. If they were not a wild flower we would all be singing their praise as a garden plant.


And the eggs - after an exploration by sparrows and a blackbird the magpies arrived en masse, then, when most of them had gone the rat came.

HIGHLIGHTS AND LOWLIFE

There are places in the garden that cry out for a focal point or for light in a dark corner. This does not have to be an expensive piece of sculpture - a plants will do.
The one that stands out in our garden is, perhaps surprisingly, a variegated horseradish. Of course this will not do much in the winter when the foliage dies down - but for the rest of the year - it is wonderful.

There are others - the glory of a crambe, here not yet in full flow next to an enormous cardoon. The crambe can be left as it has such an interesting seed head, the cardoon will need staking because the flowerhead become so heavy the stems fall over.

At the end of the long path is a scruffy fence behind which is hidden a cold frame and plastic storage box. This fence is now festooned with yellow roses and in from there is a golden choisya, Mexican orange, which compliments the rose.

Other plants that are stunners are the red alstromeria, here in a vase, and oriental poppies, especially the bright red ones.

We have also used the white birches to catch the eye and I intend to underplant them with ox-eye daisies for a summer show.

R made me get a daisy bush which is now in flower and she says they smell of honey.

So, what have we been up to in the garden - I have trimmed the beech hedge. The copper leaves are special when back-lit. We also have a copper beech behind the white birches to make them stand out even more.

The two Rambling Rector climbing roses are really getting going - one twenty-five feet up the old ash which is just as well because J and D, two Church of England ministers, are coming for lunch next week. 
R has been clearing out old aquilegias but leaving those of which she likes the colour most to set seed. 
I have cut down the Rhus typhina and now have the job of dealing with its many and far flung suckers. It just fell out of favour.
I went down to the shed by the pond and staked H's dark rose which had flopped over the bench, turned round and the wild duck was watching me from a few feet away, apparently unconcerned by my presence.

We have been given some sunflowers, thanks J, and I have put them in by the back wall.
















To lowlife - and we are besieged by grey squirrels, taking apart the squirrel proof feeders and being brazen just outside the kitchen door. Here is one sitting in the entrance to the trap eating peanuts. I went out and to escape it bolted into the trap which snapped shut - big mistake!

There is a constant visitor on the peanuts - a female greater spotted woodpecker.

She or her other half more likely has been busy on the
old ash tree. It has several dead branches and a bit fell off one - peppered with woodpecker holes.

And a glory in the garden - the first Rose Emma Hamilton, blowsy and heavily scented. I just wish the flowers would open more. If they get wet they are too heavy and can get sodden and rot.

And it rains.


And we still have flowering camellias.

Apart from that it is all go - first opium poppy 😇, here with the Stachys (lamb's lugs).

The white campanulas - that spread themselves, are coming out as are the herder and the various geraniums - always good value.

Finally the petunias we bought at Melkinthorpe and were put in the pots by the door are doing well.

Finally, finally, this is the dining area under the feeders - wood pigeon, collared dove, grey squirrel and a small (?) brown rat.