AFTER THE SUN, RAIN AND JAM

 Comes rain, but first we did get a little solar comfort.

Now it is Friday and raining. The Hydrangea Annabelle will be prostrated on the ground and it had been doing well. It never quite recovers as the flowerheads are so large and, when wet, heavy.

Our red climbing roses, one came from P one from A and P are in fine fettle on the shed and up the holly tree in the bottom hedge. One of our golden showers yellow roses died but I had forgotten that I had such a cutting in  a veg bed and it is flowering. Now I have to decide where to plant it.

Saturday and still raining a lot.

So what to do? Hooray for freezers where lurketh raspberries. And Hooray for Mrs Beeton's great jam recipe - 2 1/2 lb raspberries, 3 lb sugar. Bring fruit gently to the boil then boil hard for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in sugar (warmed in oven) till dissolved. Bring to boil and boil hard 1 minute. skim and put in jars. Note - these are 12oz jars so just over 5 lbs jam. Tighten lids and label. Enjoy hearing lids pop as vacuum seal occurs with cooling.

The hen pheasant has abandoned her nest on the lower banking and the eggs are cold. With magpies and stoats about I am surprised they have not been eaten. I assume she will try again, hopefully somewhere less vulnerable - but will not bet on it.

We have bright colours still though we are entering the August hiatus.

The pond looks much better now a lot of vegetation has been cleared although moving the stuff the gardener dug out was strenuous for an old bloke. You can see the uncut tuft on the banking where the nest is.

Message for Paul - we have one big gunnera leaf so the plant has taken.

I have just noticed that the grey poplar has shot up and is now as tall as its neighbour, the eucalyptus. Both look good, grey against a blue sky. (The blue sky was yesterday)

The veg beds are ok but nothing to shout about - here front to back, carrots, marrow and broccoli. We have courgettes and some weedy parsnips, a small patch of parsley, chives by the handful but I am not a great veg man - too much like hard work. I like to shove things in and feed and water them - if the do well ok, if not - c'est la vie (or in the case of my veg mort.)

Still some sweet peas amazingly. Not stupendous but enough for a vase or two in the house.

AUGUST UPDATE

There is (or is it are?)(or are it is?) all sorts of wildlife in the garden including mating snails. However the recent visits by the roe hart have been special caught on the trail camera shown above right.

So I mowed lawns and did a bit of weeding then decided to light the bonfire with the papers I had discarded after doing the accounts and they burned beautifully.

We have fruit on the way, not so much as last year due to tree pruning but nevertheless -

Sam the gardener came and took a load of stuff out of the pond at R's request so she could actually see the surface of the water. The stuff removed has been left on the side so any wildlife can creep back to the water.

I have raised the canopy on the magnolia stellata. 

We will soon have to return the area where the old compost heaps were to grass (or something)(mind at work). 

We have butterflies, admittedly mainly small whites but also some peacocks, tortoiseshells and red admirals like here.

We have been eating our first potatoes and broccoli and I have been collecting seed - fennel, poppies, aquilegia and foxglove.

The lilium regale came and are now gone whilst we were away sunning it on Pembrokeshire.

There is a satisfaction in looking at lawns when they are mown (an escape from the Olympic Games) back to mowing - even if they are mostly clover and plantain. You cannot see it here anyway.

Time for a morning coffee up the garden.

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 !!!!

GARDENING ON

No, I did not watch all the football, too stressful. They did OK but the best team on the night won (Italy). Now tennis is over and it will be golf. 

We have had rain - so the grass has grown, so the weeds have grown. 

It also means that the bonfire is not lit  - as wet, and the stack of paper from sorting out the year's accounts has not been burned.

Sitting with a friend S by the garden doors we saw a stoat and then a nuthatch on the feeder. 

The canna lily has flowered again and we are eating broccoli and broad beans from the veg beds. 

The black and red currants and the raspberries are  poor, when I can get to them first, before the blackbirds and thrushes.

I woke this morning, window open, to the scent of the philadelphus Belle Etoile which wafts through the house in competition with vases of roses.

Just been in shed and found sack of old potatoes well sprouted so now on compost heap. (The potatoes I mean).

We have been given a pink phormium and I have planted it near the osier.

And the roses bloom on -

I thought I had dug all the alstroemeria from the cutting bed - wrong!

And by the gate the two fuchsia planted to remind us of holidays in Donegal are thriving.

Just picked more raspberries and now have 2 1/2 pounds which is ideal for Mrs Beeton's wonderful jam recipe.

The petunias flower and flower though I am not sure how much I like the colour. I have put some tagetes in one of the flower beds and R definitely dislikes them and their colour so I will have to move them, somewhere, but where - time for a think.

The lilium regale have survived the beetle attack and are looking splendid, flowers out, scent out and many more buds to come. They have been in the same big pots for five or six years

The cosmos Purity and astrantia (masterwort) are a delight both lighting up dark corners in different ways, the astrantia delicate, the cosmos brash.