DRY WEATHER AND LOTS OF PHOTOS

Is this our summer, at least the west of Britain. I read in the newspaper this morning, in the weather column, that the cold weather England has been experiencing is coming to an end. 

Here, in Cumbria, we have had the most glorious two to three weeks with temperatures in the low 70sF (20sC) and I have had to water the garden.

Mowing has been easy as the grass growth has slowed. The woodland through the gap in the beech hedge is full of campion - and not just the red but the white also. Roses are coming into flower and we await the explosion that is the crambe. (Every time I type crambe the spelling corrector changes it to crumb, most annoying.)

There are aquilegias everywhere - real cottage garden stuff - they sow themselves and we let them get on with it. The forgetmenots do the same (as do the weeds especially the broad-leaved willow herb. And the oriental poppies are coming out -
      

The lilac is at its best, the tree full of white foam. Unfortunately this will go brown as it ages and it is a tedious job to dead head the plant - I will probably leave ignore it. The blackbirds in the woodshed have fledged as have the sparrows and the great tits, the robins and the greenfinches. 

We have been away and whilst we were in sunny south Scotland family and their friends were here. The friends have a small dog and it got one of our rabbits. I found the corpse when we came back.

Whilst in Scotland we visited a wood that is like a wild garden at Carstramont Woods near Gatehouse of Fleet - a place of magic. The wild garden can be more spectacular than the planned.
 

As I said last time we have had the water slide out for the grandchildren. (A sheet of plastic on the banking and a hose set on spray.) This launch resulted in the demolition of a tree stake and a sore leg.

I have sown calendulas, Ammi, wallflowers and more sweet peas today. Time to water again as drought threatens!! After our wet winter I can hardly believe it. We are glad we have a borehole and our own water supply.

We have a problem with cats from neighbours. One particular shaggy black and white individual hides in the flowerbed under the feeders waiting for victims. And the garden is full of fledglings - a meal in waiting.

The garden is going through one of its special phases at the moment so lots of pics.

This is one of R' favourites - ranunculus - though not a buttercup as we usually know it.

This year I have put them in a pot outside the kitchen doors and they seem to be doing well.

More poppy photos - these orientals are growing wild(ish) up on the grassy banking. They are from the previous owner of the plot, Tom Jackson.

Mind you poppies can get out of hand and if you throw in a purple geranium there can be an awful colour clash like here.
Oh well, what the . . .
The more the merrier (or not).

I have voted in the in/out thing and when I look at the pro-exit team, Boris J, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, George Galloway - well draw your own conclusions. 

BIRDS, COLOURS AND PESTS

We have a blackbird's nest twelve feet from my window in the log shed. I can see the birds going in and out.

Up in the wood I startled the hen pheasant with her brood of three. I suspect that they will not all survive but can hope. 

The swallows have given up building outside the kitchen but the house martins are plugging on. 


Also, have finally seen a live newt in the pond and a great water beetle. The latter spells trouble for other pond inhabitants as the larvae are ferocious.

I am quite pleased with the banking in front of the house with its greys and blues.

 The rosemary is flowering well - it loves the arid conditions there - and the geranium is such a good blue. The rest of the effect is from self sown aquilegias and a selection of different foliage colours.

Talking of colour, the welsh poppies are a mixture of orange and red with the exception of one plant by the back door (the one at the side) where then petals are white suffused with a little pale yellow. 

We have been inundated with grey squirrels again and I caught 5, 5 days running. I thought that was the job done for a bit but this morning there were three trying to break into the peanut feeder. Like the greys  not everything in the garden is rosey (ha, ha)(in pun) and erupting through the cotoneaster I discovered this - I know some butterflies, red admirals and peacocks etc love this plant but in its place. We did try eating the young nettle leaves like spinach but, frankly, it tasted pretty awful. One weed we have been using in cooking is the wild garlic - well the leaves with the Fodmap diet - added to chives as a substitute for onions, and, you know, it tastes really good - much more subtle. 

Now I must pop out and attack the sawfly on the gooseberries, let alone the mildew.

Problem - some stupid gardener has not labelled the various spray bottles - though he would remember - which is the insect spray, which the anti fungal and WHICH the total stump killer.

Lots of throwing away and washing out to do.

Stress reduction time - a little easy Chris Rea - I thought - but I had left shuffle on I tunes and got Tomorrow Night from Elvis.

Now it's Harry Belafonte's Scarlet Ribbons - I know, I know, I'm a sad old man.

Time to get the water slide out for the grandchildren (and granddad.)

FRUIT TREES AND BERRIES AND WONDERFUL FLOWERS

The Bramley apple blossom is the best I have seen it and for the first year have good blossom on the crab apple John Downie which is good for cross pollination. The Conference pear has put out some flowers but not a lot and the greengage is growing well but no blossom. We will just have to hope for next year.

The strawberries are also full of flower, and promise. Even though they do not make the best setting jam their taste is so special - especially when they are picked and eaten straight away. We have several varieties but I cannot remember what they are all called - Royal sovereign, Cambridge favourite and others.

On the right is the sad picture of the pear tree, half dead and dying. However I remember at a previous house we had a hazel pear, very old, riddled with beetle holes and yet it gave lots of small, rather nutty fruit. On the left you can see the gooseberries are coming on and, so far, no sign of mildew and sawfly - so far. 

I have been at the brambles again and am well nettled and scarred despite gauntlets. However the far garden is coming on. When I have finished I will have to decide what to do with it. One good thing was as I cleared the jungle I found frogs! This is one of our rhododendrons flowering well at the woodland margin.

This is one of the stars of the May garden - a glorious blue poppy.

And we are getting out first roses  - this is Rhapsody in Blue (even though it is not really blue but what rose is.)

Flowers are not the only colour, the leaves of this shrub light up a darker corner especially when the sun is shining. Leaf colour can be so important in a garden - after all the most common colour is green.

Just watched birds on the feeders outside my windows. The tits grab a sunflower seed and head for a nearby twig where they carefully remove the coating before pecking at the contents. The finches take a seed and twiddle their beaks until the coating comes off, then swallow the seed, then take another. 


Here us the cock pheasant bedraggled in the rain - hence the steamed up window through which it was shot (chaffinch for a bonus item).

The yellow tree peony just goes from strength to strength - such a good colour.

And today I started rejuvenating the pots - osteospermums and pelargoniums plus a herb pot on the left - variegated marjoram, dill, puple and green sage and thyme. The pot beside it is apple mint left over from the winter window sill. There is loads elsewhere in the garden as there is rosemary and ordinary marjoram, sweet cicely and lovage.

Today we went to Langholm Mill and then stream garden - our trickle struggles on - envy!

MUNCASTER, HOLKER HALL AND SPELT BREAD RECIPE

Three pics of Muncaster Castle gardens - two of the bluebells and one of the view over the shrubs to Scafell.

Back to earth after such heavenly gardening delights - The Conference pear and to some extent the Bramley apple have, I think, canker, Nectria galligena and dead twigs coated in lichen.

Enough - I am scratched to bits by brambles - still clearing the jungle in the far corner. Just as I was about to start the wheelbarrow had a puncture so had to wrestle with a new inner tube and all that.

I could start a forest with the tree seedlings in the garden - mainly ash and the dreaded sycamore.

Whilst we were at Harlow Carrr, the RHS gardens, the other day we bought 2 good sized earthenware pots (2 for the price of one so R could not resist the offer)(but they were good value) so I have crocked the bottoms and filled them with compost. Now we just need something to go in them. (Saw same offer at Beetham, same price, yesterday).

R decided she would read a Harlan Coben paperback I had just finished but gave up when a woman was shot in the knees - not for R - Miss Read come back, all is forgiven. (Actually my knees are pretty shot at.)

Garden getting dry, the big yellow scabious collapsed and had to be watered. All the pots need regular attention but the weather girl on the BBC says it will piddle down on Tuesday and Wednesday - so what's new?

We have been to Holker Hall gardens - we can get in free as we are both members of the RHS.
The bedding in the central beds was a delight - 
forgetmenots, pink and white tulips. And the wild ramsons (garlic), despite the pong, was in wonderful carpets by the ha-ha and the great lime trees.







We do not have tree sparrows in the house martin nest this year - we have house sparrows. I can see them flying up to it past our  bedroom window as I sup my morning cuppa.

Last autumn my daughter gave me a paper bag full of calendula seeds and I have been travelling the garden looking for bare patches sowing them - we will see. I have also found a jam jar full of poppy seed I collected for cooking but have spread some of that about as well.

The aquilegias that self sow (Granny's Bonnets) are out as are the yellow azaleas, first oriental poppies and wall flowers.
The abutilon has survived the winter and a plague of whitefly and is now out on the table on the paving, fed and tidied.

Come Wednesday morning, it has rained last night, not a lot but I liked it.

As the house martins are trying to build outside the kitchen window and we remember a grey squirrel robbing a previous nest the squirrel trap has been out again - one caught, more to go.

The garden from the west.

Gardening, in fact anything to get away from this stupid referendum - only a distraction from the real politics going on (perhaps that is politics?) - both sides unable to admit the other has anything worth saying - I hope when all is over we can get on with being part of Europe again and business can move ahead knowing where it stands.

Off to the kitchen where I have just baked a loaf of spelt bread - half wholemeal, half white, very easy -

250g white spelt flour
250g wholemeal spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
300ml warm water

Mix it all together and then knead for a good 5 minutes, slap in a well oiled tin and leave to rise somewhere warm - about 60-90 minutes.
Bake at 200C - 25-30 minutes in our Aga.
Eat with melted butter (or marmalade)(or marmite)(or syrup).

YELLOW AND PINK AND WHITE AND ORANGE

Today has been mainly washing the kitchen floor but out in the garden we have had some rain and as the week has progressed it has got colder and colder.  The garden does have some splendid yellows in May particularly the march marigold or Kingcup by the pond and the yellow tree peony which is flowering well.

This is view up the garden over the pond from the decking beside R's writing shed. The raising of the level of the outlet seems to have worked well. Though the stream no longer runs into the pond there seems to be enough run off from the surrounding grass to keep it topped up. 

The magnolia stellata is in fine fettle and covered in flowers.

I have also noticed that the white lilac that flowered brilliantly two years ago, did little last year, is covered in buds again. It is a pity that as they go over they go brown.

I did an experiment in the autumn and, after flowering, I removed the old flowers from one of the three Azalea luteums but not the others. The one where the dead heading was done has many more buds this year than the rest. 

The various pots outside the kitchen are now staring to go over and will need redoing with something or other soon.

I am not a fanatic of bedding plants so may put herbs in one or two. The tulips, after they are done will either get bunged into a spare bit of border or go down to the cutting bed.

Time for an intermission - coffee, birdsong and sunshine - and a read of a book on the Low Fodmap diet cannot do it all but will start with cutting the old onions, leeks and such. IBS is such a pain. Anyway I am going to have a biscuit whatever. (IBS - Irritable Blogger Syndrome.)

This is blossom on the weeping silver pear, understated amongst the grey foliage.

The dreaded bindweed is appearing inserting its sinuous stems through the other plants - nasty stuff.

We went out today and the first campion is coming out, both red and white.

Then in the wood we found pink bells and white bells instead of bluebells. One thing the worries me is that some of the bluebells are looking suspiciously like a cross between the wild and Spanish ones - and there is nothing I can do - it is too late.

Redcurrant and strawberries netted (I don't suppose it will stop the blackbirds), strawberries strawed - keeps the fruit off the ground - and rocket and beetroot sown. 

The two failed pots of tulips have been replanted in a gap in the flowerbeds - you never know, might be lucky (or not probably).

The welsh poppies are coming out, orange and yellow together but - alas, alack -  accidentally snapped off the bud of one of the Meconopsis bailey - the blue poppy.

Have solved the problem of the unreachable algae in the middle of the pond - bought a broom handle and some gaffer tape, attached handle to existing rake and now I can reach - back breaking though - the leverage is a bit strenuous.