Summer 2013

dusty

Rhododendrons and roses
Cygnets and sunshine
Sweaters and socks
Green on green and leafy glades

Blue sky and dusty grasses
Seashells and sand
Warm walls and lizards
Moonlight and moths.

Me too, Elegran. My trees - 3 rowans and 2 ornamental malus - are getting bigger than I ever expected though they look lovely when they're in bloom.

Anno That sounds like my garden. Eight years ago I had some surgery and neglected the garden for 3 or four years. then just as I was starting to feel like tackilng it, DH took ill. For the last year I have largely ignored it but now I am being generous with the Glyphosate. Everything takes so long to get clear enough to replant, and then the season is too far on for most things to go in, and the first places cleared are starting to sprout weeds again.

I am getting too old for this.

As I haven't been up to much for a couple of years, my garden is now a jungle, although at present, quite a pretty one. My biggest bugbear is wood avens - the wild geum with a tiny yellow flower - they have just spread everywhere. Other than that, the ubiquitous equisetum (horse tail) which is so difficult to kill off. Oh and Spanish bluebells which look attractive but again are hard to kill and we don't want them to spread, do we? There's also a lot of sticky weed, goose grass or whatever you call it. I think the birds bring in the burrs or perhaps they come via my neighbour's dogs' coats. Have I adequately conveyed the extent of my problems?

Air giving currents of warmth and moisture
Clouds which develop and change
With thoughts of 'what do you see'.

Ephemeral movements of loss and rebirth
Always different,
No trust in their design
Yet a knowing of their assured presence.

nellie it is clearly a haven for wildlife.

Gardening is work as well as a an art (like it, aanchal) and a hobby. Good work

It's also a delight. Baby song thrushes being fed outside my kitchen window this morning.

And after I took the bin down the hill to The Road, I pulled twenty sycamore seedlings out of an eighteen metre stretch of verge outside our wall on the lane. There are usually a few hundred in the garden too but they can mostly be mowed down.

Your garden is clearly alive and well !

Just lowering the tone a bit.
My Garden

The days are getting longer now
The snow has gone away
My garden now is full of weeds
And dandelions the only seeds,
That dare to grow above the earth.

The soil in my plant pot stirs.
Vine weevil grubs upon the move
In plant pots near and far.
The Bloody things have eaten through
The plants that once were there!

The lillies grow, but what is this?
A Lilly beetle. T’is no less,
Alas! I see a sticky mess
The grubs against the stem I view
Stuck fast with their disgusting poo!

My garden is looking lovely at the moment despite the weather we've had. It's finding the time to just sit quietly and enjoy it that's the problem.

Gardening is an art as well as hobby...And it is really an interesting one!

Seems like my part of France has missed Summer completely, B. Autumn has already arrived.

Warmest night so far this year – minimum temperature 12.6°. At the beginning of the month it wasn'teven getting that warm during the day! Summer is here. Roll on autumn

My mother-in-law used to say a similar thing when a meal was over: That's lunch over; roll on tea-time, and so on. One of the nicest women I've ever known . So I use the expression in her honour.

Drove home from my brother's gorgeous garden in East Sussex yesterday with a bootload of brassica plants so I've spent the morning planting out cavolo nero, cabbage and broccoli. I'll have to spend the afternoon netting them because I lost some early plants to pigeons

Greenfly and even flies would be more than welcome. I hate them of course- but we have to think of the birds - starving through lack of kritters to eat. Swallows and house martins are totally desperate, and so are bats.

We just can't have one without t'other I'm afraid. Same for nettles - I always leave a good patch for butterflies.

Apple blossom practically over here. Loads of wild garlic, bluebells and cow parsley. My rowan, that I planted last year is in full bloom. I (well Gary actually) have planted a traditional english hedge with beech, hawthorn,hazel in it to replace a leylandi. It's really doing very well.

Spring was this morning apparenty - and then we will jump straight into Summer (hopefully) worst Spring since 1983 apparently. At least no hose ban, hey!

Been working hard in the garden all morning, planting, weeding, transplanting, etc. Started to cloud up again now! Struuuuuf.

Rowan blossom open at sea level but still thinking about it up our hill. The verges here are glorious with bluebells and wild garlic now that the Lady's Smock is passing its best. Yellow Welsh poppies growing out of old stone walls, and the oak trees looking burnished with their new, not quite fully open leaves. Saw my first apple blossom today too.

Meanwhile it's pouring with rain, making the grass look even greener. We keep thinking it can't look any greener and then it does

JessM I've just noticed greenfly on the rose that climbs up to the steps on my conservatory balcony.
You've wished them on me!

Jess I've just returned from being out and about, and all the beautiful cow parsley and various grasses that were looking so lush and frothy along the banks have all been mowed (mown?) down by the commune. The lanes here are so tiny, it's a safety precaution, particularly needed on corners - but it is always sad to see them go. Soon the poppies and wild daisies will pop through again, and the grasses will grow back.

I have been noticing the beauty of cow parsley over the last two weeks. Maybe more noticeable because the hawthorn is so late - usually gets upstaged. Great frothy drifts everywhere. Noticed it smells strongly too - all the white multi-flowered blossoms produce a similar scent at this time of year - competing for the attention of the same set of insects. The cow parsley also reminds me of the fantastic flowers in the Olympic village - great drifts of long stemmed wildflowers.
Insect life is suffering though - there are not even any aphids on the rose shoots and few pollinators.

A goldfinch built her nest in a climbing rose that I have to pass every time I go into the garden, when she then flies off. Sadly, I think she has deserted her nest. No action for the past two days.

Judging by the way the adults are flying in and out of the apple tree, I think the young great tits must hae emerged out of the nesting box!

While getting dressed this morning, I saw a neighbours cat spring into my apple tree and start sniffing round the nesting box.
I have just spent several minutes waiting with bated breath until I saw the adult great tit return to the nest!