THE TURNING OF THINGS

Yes, things turn - we are past midsummer's day, age is wearying me, the weather has turned for a usual summer - wet and dismal - after such a glorious spring, albeit locked down (should that be locked up?)

  I am probably picking the raspberries before they are fully ripe but if I leave them they will be gone, inside a ravenous blackbird. Anyway they will still make good raspberry jam, the best jam.


 

 Come Saturday, suddenly I am 74 and the weather has gorn orf, low pressure steaming in from the Atlantic with gales and rain - and also thunder. It rained so heavily the water overtopped the gutters and fell in a cascade outside the kitchen doors. I stayed in (apart from dashing to pick raspberries and red currants, and all the alstroemerias for a big vase.)

The crazy camellia is still flowering.

Sunday it is still windy and wet. I am glad I mowed the lawns before this came but where the grass has been left long it is bowed down by rain and wind - makes trouser legs sodden.

I have added extra support to the lilium regale in their pots.

The local rookery have moved to our ash trees, gathering without social distancing and making a din. I go outside and two loud handclaps disperse them up the field.

I have been given a bonsai starter pack by my son. Now I can bring a little garden into the house.
But do not hold your breath, brown fingers, not green, are still with me.

This is a sad rose.

I bought some calendulas - the wrong ones it seems, not tall enough for R - but they are very orange - her favourite colour. The green bits are seedlings not weeds (so I say). 

The white plant to the right is my sister's mallow which seeds itself every year and lights up dark corners

I have it on the finest authority that the weekend has been the wettest weather since mid February. I know it was dry in the spring but it is nearly July and it was so miserable yesterday that I lit the log burner. Now Monday and the pond is full and it is still raining. Summer has arrived! Look at the battered Californian Poppies (escholzias) with their petals blasted off and soggy.

Another surprise mullein  has been flattened though this is not a yellow one.
The raspberries are, fortunately, tied up and I now have enough for some jam.

Sometimes plants appear totally out of keeping with the others close by like this fennel, one tall stem in a low growing bed. However it will stay there for now - I rather like fennel for its feathery foliage

The seasons turn, the weather turns, the clock turns and I know that there are many jobs that need to be done but . . .

One worry I have is that there seems to be parsley growing in the garden (which may mean I no longer wear the trousers in our house (did I ever?))

One of the troubles with gardens is that things GROW and GROW and suddenly one is overgrown - tress and shrubs too large, perennials spreading too much.
What was once an open area with a few trees at the top side now feels like we are living in a clearing in a wood.
I have cut back the oriental poppies to the ground, taken some cuttings off the white lilac and generally deadheaded, especially the foxgloves that are over.

And now we are past the cuckoo day - never sings beyond the first day of July - and most other birds a silent, the music has gone from the garden, just a coarse rook, magpie or pheasant to disturb the peace.

THE WILDERNESS EXPERIMENT AND RAMBLING ON

Well not quite but a lot of lawn is now long grass.

Saturday morning, our new parasol has arrived and it is pouring with rain!

Up in the wood then long grass and wild flowers are a treat. There is what I can only call a clearing at the far  end of the garden, surrounded by trees and with a view out over the countryside to the west. There is an old square fence post as a seat and it is a retreat from the hectic world (well not so hectic now we cannot go anywhere.)

 However down in the lower garden where I would mow the grass for extensive lawns, the grass has been left with only a scattering of paths cut through it.

 I would like more wild flowers in there but it is early days. We did have yellow rattle but it seems to have gone so that will have to be corrected.

I was surprised to find how many yellow flowered plants there were by the pond - wild yellow loosestrife and there are large clumps of yellow flag iris some of which has variegated leaves and the mimulus, monkey flower, has self seeded itself as usual. In fact a few plants have appeared by the compost heap.

 Further up on the banking are the large shrubs of Brachyglottis and hypericum.















In the long grass area there are three grey foliage trees - Eucalyptus, weeping silver pear and grey poplar.

I have begun picking the red and black currants - very early this year but it is war! Me versus the blackbirds.

The roses are doing well, you have already had the Rambling Rectors pontificated about but there others - The wild dog rose, Climbing Golden Showers from Davis Austin Roses (we have two), a rose we call the Kirk rose as it was our son-in-law's parents who gave it to us and a red rose on the shed also given to us - by A and P. This last rose is entwined with Lonicera halliana and a clematis montana. 

 
 

The lawns were wet yesterday so no go with the sit on mower - it just clogs up - so out with the other one and a long walk. Still it always looks tidier after a mow. 

S been again and found the source of the spring is under the roots of a willow tree! Being a willow it will not mind.
I have cleared out a lot from the smaller shed - an big old rug, part chewed by mice, and a rusty set of golf clubs - went to the tip where the men said they could not help me hoist the heavy rug up into the skip because of me possibly contaminating them with the virus! 
So I left it at the bottom and either they will have to lift it up or - well, I have no idea. Their problem now.
We await a heatwave though this far north a two day one! 33C expected in London, perhaps 26C here.

So on with the dead heading and weeding.

In the garden there are one or two plants I find special but probably not for any special reason - like the variegated horse radish.
Another is the wild red campion at the woodland fringes. En masse it is a spectacular plant and flowers and flowers before setting seed for next year.

 R bought an evening primrose last year but not a yellow one - a soft pink - and we thought we had lost it. But, no, it is beginning to flower, fighting its way through the overplanting in the bed by the paving. 

Things grow so fast, Doc is almost submerged by the deutzia and a mound of thyme, a little trimming needed there. 

This Doc (well ex doc) also needs a little trimming, if the barbers ever open again. I have threatened to grow a mullet or at least have a ponytail!

That would scare the blackbirds off the currants!


Thursday, 8 am and 20C, going to be a hot day. It looks like the grey squirrels have predated the house martin nests but they are not giving up and building a new one.

We have had the new brolly up at last.

BLISS IS A GARDEN LIKE THIS

It is the weekend and we are in the kitchen drinking coffee. Outside the air is full of liquid sound - an indefatigable blackbird sings.
Yesterday, mowing the lawns at the far end of the garden, a tawny owl glided out of the sallow tree in the hedge, this morning there were hungry rook fledglings being fed in the back field, two birds fluttering their wings, on the outside table the same but this time magpies.

 A buzzard circles over the trees. A pheasant croak cracks the bliss. A small bird, perhaps a young sparrow, flies in through the open garden doors and leaves a message on the coffee table.

I have been down the garden trimming back the osier around the compost heaps - not surprising that the grow so well, probably take all the goodness from the compost.
The white rosebay is in full flood as is the Rambling Rector rose. The peonies are finally out.

Sitting in our extension after having weeded the asparagus bed and saying goodbye to the** gardener who has found two more springs next to the one he has drained is bliss. The flowers are magical but the birds are singing less and getting on with raising their young.

At the point above - ** despite saving in large font the New Blogger is determined to have the type in normal size 😠. See later . . .

The white rosebay is now well out (have to watch it as it is as invasive as the wild pink form) - if it is good enough for Sissinghurst's white garden it will do for us -  and the peonies are just enormous (Sarah Bernhardt)

Colour is everywhere -

the yellow of the first senecio bush (except they call it Brachyglottis greyi now.) The geraniums growing semi wild on the banking are a sea of blue flowers and the red of the oriental poppies go so well with green, any green.

AND TO DRIVE ME MADDDDDD Blogger have changed the way I can write my blog and insert photos and it is taking ages and I want to wring the neck of the idiot who devised this way of doing things - AAAAAAGH!

To move on to some other white stuff -

Rose Rambling Rector to the left - one of two, the other goes 12 metres up the old ash - and the first Ammi major on the right.

Cut-leaved elder is heavy with flower heads which is surprising as it got flattened earlier in the year.

 Outside the kitchen the Philadelphus belle etoile is getting going and pushing out its scent. The Mock Orange I love the best.

One surprise is that the strange foxglove below the kitchen has turned out to be a mullein (verbascum). We did have such a plant there a year or two back but it has obviously self seeded.

The fruit trees and bushes are doing well, too well - the Victoria plum is going to break its branches with the weight of fruit - thinning and propping needed, the black and red currants are colouring up already! Far too early, Can I beat the blackbirds to the fruit?

We will have a good crop of pears and apples but are still a bit far north for the greengages.

Just found I can still use the old Blogger - hooray! And when I look at it the font is the same throughout! And if I then change to the new Blogger the font is the same size so all I have to do is continually switch between the two formats. 😬

Out to the veg beds - hoe and sow more broad beans and broccoli.

I keep waiting for the downpours but all we get are a few drops of rain. However, the other night we had a visitor - 

No wonder we have no hedgehogs, the badgers roll them over and uncurl them.

I am going to ramble on about the Rambling Rector roses again, they are fantastic, the small one to the left, the other up the ash tree right.

 And then there are the wild roses - the pink dog rose or this, the white field rose. They can be vigorous and need controlling yet their simplicity is beautiful.

 Last year I sowed a new bed with poppies and they did not do much. Now the opium poppies, left, and the Californian poppies, right, having survived a mild winter are flowering abundantly. Perhaps not quite on the scale of the Himalayan uplands nor the Californian desert but this is England so cannot complain. 



Finally, when we sit out, we can hear this faint scraping noise all the time. It is wasps gathering wood for their nest from the benches and table (and sheds) leaving behind horizontal marks where they have chewed off some of the surface.
In a few thousand years there will be no benches left.

The weather this year has been so good I do hope that we have not had our summer - it has happened before.

Spoke too soon, Walk around garden, got drink and crisps to enjoy sunshine and - we are awash with torrential downpour, gutters overflowing, plants beaten into submission, only good thing is I will not have to water the garden!