IS THAT IT?

 

We have had three days of warm sunshine but is that it? Now cloudy mizzly and temperatures only in the mid teens.

Plums, damsons and greengages seem scarce but I have been picking blackcurrants and apples look promising.

We have growth from our new asparagus and the wisteria that was moribund has suddenly started sprouting! It may be that our big geranium has also returned from the dead. We watch with interest.

Our ruby wedding tree is half dead and has been severely pruned and the Netto (or was it Lidl) cherry has been cut to the ground - always was a sickly tree.

Some things are just wonderful and the Philadelphus Belle Etoile is covered in flowers and pushing out scent as are the small bed of pinks. Have cut some and they fill the downstairs with from though still prefer the clove smell of Mrs Sinkins.

We have roses and tucked away under a buddleia there is a large allium. I don't remember putting it there but that is nothing new.

All in all everything seems completely out of control and flooding the garden with vegetation.

Apart from that more whites - geranium and risibly thriving.

Than there are the little gems like here the astrantia and geranium Ann Folkard.

I will HAVE to get a fruit cage. when picking the back currants I had to chase away blackbirds from the other currants and the raspberries as they complain I am stealing THEIR food.

So I drink my ginger and turmeric which presumably turns my insides orange, dream of having only a window box and make R another cup of tea as she is out tearing up creeping buttercup, bindweed and goosegrass.

WHITE IS RIGHT?

 For all the colours in the garden, and I include green, white is so important. And the biggest white we have are our Rambling Rector roses, one a mass by the old well and the other to the top of the old ash.

There are more whites - 

Deutzia,

Elder,

Daisy bush,

Philadelphus Belle Etoile,

White rosebay,

And the grey thornless hawthorn we saw first Holker Hall, Ox-eye daisies sown on the upper banking.

So having mentioned whites I suppose we should say a bit about light greys like the cardoon,

the chewed up mullein - taken a handful of moth caterpillars of the leaves, and one of my favourites the variegated horseradish.

Elsewhere we have three grey foliaged tree in the bottom garden - there weeping pear, the poplar and the eucalyptus. In fact despite being blown over in a storm the poplar is now tallest.

So after that what have we been up to? The newish bed with roses is a carpet of creeping buttercup and we have been filling wheelbarrows with it.

The lower banking has been strimmed and I have cut back the vegetation around the pond. Yesterday we had a visitor -

No wonder we have no frogs, toads and newts at the moment - or none I have seen. They might be hiding.

It is so good to have a little warmth and sunlight filtering through the trees.

So, having rabbited on about white and grey here is one of our glorious peonies.

IT'S COLD UP NORTH

And the Rambling Rector rose is forty feet up the big ash and flowering.

No trail camera videos today - my son has borrowed it to catch which of the neighbours animals is using his lawn as a lavatory - and we have the results - it is his cat!

Bit of a gap since last blog - have been in Scotland to try and escape the cold wet weather - and succeeded as it was not bad up there.

We went to Corsock House Gardens again during the Spring Fling (look it up).

We have been before and love it.

But to get back to Rosside jungle.

The oriental poppies are out and the mixture of colour on the banking with aquilegias (now going over), catmint and calendulas I like.

Elsewhere everything is out of control, even the white hebe is flowering better than ever.

Have popped a few things in the veg beds and put some new asparagus in their bed. Poor show this year but I remember the wild asparagus growing on the dunes at Ainsdale and think our soil might be too heavy?

Saying that, the bottom garden is still a bog - marsh thistles, ragged robin, docks and flags -

And the really good news is the gunnera has survived the winter by the hedge stream.

This is a plant I first met in Logan Gardens as a lad and not long ago we went back. There is controversy over the plant as ?an invasive species but it certainly lends drama to a damp corner. And I would rather have it than Giant Hogweed, Japanese knotweed, skunk cabbage or Himalayan Balsalm.

So it is June and feels like early March - Global Chilling?

So I am in front of my ageing computer listening to Peter, Paul and Mary and Ray Charles. Perhaps I need Martha and the Vandellas - Heatwave?

OVERGROWTH

 Where does it all come from? We go away for a week to Scotland and when we come back it looks like the garden has exploded.

Camassias out, apple blossom, forget-me-nots going over, calendulas coming on . . . .

The aquilegias are everywhere despite thinning last year and the broccoli has gone to flower. Rather attractive though, perhaps we should grow it as a flowering plant?

Up in the wood the bluebells are done and the red campion and pignut are taking over. And we do have rhododendron ponticum from a previous owner but not on the scale of the hills on the way down to Lochbuie on Mull. Should they be removed?

We even have white campion as a wild variation. And we have rain and the lawn is too soggy to cut, now getting rather long. The asparagus has grown four feet tall in one week so cute it back and hope for a bit of a crop. ~I have just got some new crowns and these will need to go in with the hollyhocks I potted up. All in all we are rapidly becoming a woodland garden. No doubt R will soon be calling in the Tree surgeons to open things up.

Abundance is the word.

The glorious beauty bush, kolkowitzia, is flowering as is the elder.

And as I walk around the garden I see water lilies in flower, big orange oriental poppies and the blue comfrey.

One plant that loves the rain is the rhubarb and it is flourishing again.

There are one or two ash trees with dieback around but not our grand old tree. (Not yet).

So now after a holiday it is time for weeeeeeeeeeding.