SUNSET STRIP

So 77 is here, click click. I can comb my bald patch. As it is my birthday it is an overcast day with rain.

Gardeners' World has said I should be thinning my carrots but as they have just germinated due to the drought and are about 1 cm high it is a bit early. The blackbirds are eating all the red and black currants and something has chewed its way into the squirrel proof seed feeder. 

We have been given a wisteria so better luck this time. We will try to grow it along the front of the house.

R is feeling a bit faint as I have tidied my room, well, do not open drawers and cupboards. Anyone want a didgeridoo or a rainstick?

I put the trail camera on the pond and got 300 damselfly images and one heron. Well the plastic heron now so white it looks like an egret and then a mallard too.

In the garden light is so important casting shadows, illuminating plants and adding an extra dimension. Here the white rosebay competes with the afternoon sun.

The sun on the grass in the very top area accentuates the sense of sanctuary.

And backlights the white birches.

One thing I note is texture especially in bark - the peeling on the birches and here I have found the big eucalyptus has developed cracks, perhaps after the drought? They seem quite deep and apparently when rains resumes the tree grows rapidly, splitting the bark. The tree should now produce resin to seal the wounds.

We have red colour, valerian self seeding on the way in and by the path Rosa mundi. The latter was several cuttings from one plant, a favourite of R and I propose to take more later in the year.

And yellows - loosestrife between the pond and the hedge, several senecios - whoops now called brachyglottis I think - below the house with the contrasting grey foliage.

So as the wheels of time grind on and our garden, once bare, now seems to becoming a small wood, I shall go a chase the blackbirds from the berries (not that it does much good), watch the pheasant with the limp and swear at the grey squirrels as they climb our cherry and not only eat the birdseed but the feeders as well.

Time for a cuppa and a chunk of lemon sponge cake for my birthday.

IT RAINED

 For a few minutes and then the sun came out. No measurable rain for a month and plants are dying, leaves are shrivelled and falling off some shrubs. At last it is a bit cooler. 

I have not lit the bonfire for fear of setting the whole place alight. The pond is low but we do have our borehole for watering. 

The mower will come back on Monday I hope. Seeds are not germinating and one of the cock pheasants has a bad limp.

Yet the Rambling Rector roses and the peonies are magnificent.

The fox has been through the lower garden but the rabbits from the field next door are thriving.

I think the Guelder rose tree will have to be severely pruned as it is growing so fast it is suffocating nearby shrubs like the Ginko. One for the gardener?

Thunder forecast for tonight - so will probably flatten everything. The goosegrass is so rampant I have just pulled it from the lower branches of the big damson tree.

The wild meadow, Mmm, is moving on with the ragged robin going

Mainly buttercups, yellow rattle and sorrel as well a the odd ox-eye daisy and limulus up from the pond area. There are a lot of yellow flag iris in the lower garden too.

The sycamore is covered in green and white fly and the leaves are shiny with their excretions. I walk underneath and am assailed by the tiny insects.

Apart from the white climbing roses we have a pink one behind the shed but it seems to like showing most of its flowers to next door.

And the old rose I was given by my aunt from the garden at Wormleighton Manor is thriving nearer the house.

At the back of the house the golden showers rose I got as a freebie with an order from David Austin loves its place against the wall.

More pics, lambs' lugs, the daisy bush by the cattle grid, golden sedge by the pond, the Beauty bush and friends by the lawn, a red rose, an oriental poppy, 

And finally the banking of wonderful white rosebay doing its thing.

PHEW!

 We are sitting outside the kitchen in the shade and its is 28C. We are in need of rain and fortunately have a borehole so I can water the garden a bit.

The mower (the little one) has decided to stop and is going in to be seen to.

The May blossom is over as is the hedge parsley - suddenly everywhere, then over. Here are a few images of it at its best -

There is still a little hedge parsley in the garden - I let it sow itself (up to a certain point).

The aquilegias are going to seed and will need cutting back but I will leave them till they have scattered some of their seed. R likes the pale pink ones best.

The wilder areas are doing well, campion in the wood and ragged robin in the grassy bottom garden.

The rhubarb has collapsed in the heat and despite watering will need to be pulled for a new crop.

Elsewhere we have poppies, alliums and camassias on the way to the wood and the elder, unpruned this year has GROWN and is covered in flower. (? fritters)

This is one of the stalwarts of the perennial garden, geranium x magnificum, on the dry banking below the house and elsewhere.

Geraniums are always a good bet to do well.

So Boris is gone (for now)(wait for the memoirs)(though what he will remember might not be what everyone else remembers), and Donald is swinging his clubs at anything and everything - why these two are unable to the a good look at themselves is beyond me.

Time for a bit of 'do unto others' in the world.

Think it is lunch time so off to the kitchen for a sandwich and a cuppa.

And another stag night.

WINTER TOLL

 

We have lost so much this winter. One of our two cut leaved thornless hawthorns dead, one of our two native fuchsias dead, where is the big euphorbia wulfenii, the dahlias, the gunnera? We had mostly a mild winter but each time I go in the garden I ask myself where this or that plant has gone.

I wish I could say the same for the goose grass, creeping buttercup and ever spreading wood avens. But then I have a wonderful gardener who weeds so well when she is not doing the ironing. 😍

Suddenly we seem to be living in a small wood, leaves everywhere, snow on the hawthorn and in the roadsides with the hedge parsley.

Have just put in some sweet peas - no not grown by myself, bought from the greengrocer. Worked last year.

It is warm, not hot, and the forecast is for the dry weather to carry on for another two weeks - time for the hosepipe? Yes and a top up for the pond.

The tulips have died back and those in pots have been cleaned up and put in the shed - somewhere dry. 

We disagree over the pond as I think just the algal bloom should be removed - R everything almost. One good surprise is that the rodgersia I put in last year has come up - forgot about it.

This is bogbean on the left and being a wild plant likes to take over. On the right is the only candelabra primula this year  where have they all gone?

Then there is watercress growing in the lawn so it might be damp there still.

Mowing and the mower is playing up misfiring. Might have to take it to the mower men!

Have raised the canopy on the hanky tree (Davidia) so I do not catch my head on the branches when cutting the grass. More than sixteen years old and the tree is yet to have hankies.

Shrubs thrive, elder and here rosemary and lilac.

The guelder rose and Viburnum mariesii and suffocating the tree peony on the lower banking - will need some thought.

Yellow azaleas flourish and the red rhododendron is stunning. The big rhododendrons from Stonefield Castle in Argyll - lots of leaf but no flowers yet.

Of all the spring blossom the one I like the best is the Bramley Apple.

Elsewhere the fiery euphorbia by the shed, the ornamental strawberry Sylvia gave us and the oriental poppies are doing well.

One plant I have become very fond of is the camassia, white on the right grown in the flower beds and blue on the left on the upper banking. Each year I gather the seed and scatter it though I am unconvinced that, except for the white in the flower bed, it is successfully spreading.

Sometimes all does not go to plan - last year I dug out the Sweet Cicely and it was a thug to remove - so - this year it has come up with a vengeance.

The meadowy bits are doing ok with red campion, yellow rattle etc and the cuckoo flower or lady's smock. My daughter has requested some wild garlic so I must warn her how it can become a weed popping up all over the place.

And finally this is the time of Columbine - the aquilegias that self sow every year and flourish -

And finally finally the roe deer has been back -