rain

finally managed yesterday to get out in between the showers and cut the grass..................cut down the lovage and salad burnet which had gone all scraggy, and put in the new catmints..........cutting the clematis has left a big gap behind the roses where all the tangles of foliage used to be, so i've chucked some annual seeds in to fill it in the meantime.........my little gastropod friends have also been active in all this wet weather, have chewed the runner beans to perdition and eaten the pond lobelia down to stumps. other things have attractive holes in but aren't quite completely destroyed, i suppose there's only so much they can eat at one sitting.........maybe the sweet peas are for dessert. so much for the slug tape, organic slug granules etc.
.......the lavender bed is totally infested with weeds.....got big bunches of sappy weed growth out but i'll have to watch it or they'll all just grow in again. the pinks had rotted while i was away, i put in what's left but i doubt they'll do much. catalogue plants *definitely* a bad idea. the herbs are good tho, nice and healthy, although the cats jumped on the lemon catmint and broke it and i think it might have died.
.........courgette plants and tomatoes have survived my absence, the courgettes need to go out so i need to get another raised bed. maybe the comfrey could go in that too to stop it taking over the garden as there isn't really a space for it. the rockery bit still looks pretty sad........better for having the weeds removed, just need to throw in the aubretia and stuff and hope they grow.
.........lawn looking better, still some baldy bits but it does seem to have benefited from the attention. i don't think this garden is ever going to be all beautiful and tidy like next door's.......i can sometimes get downhearted when i look at it and think, why is it such a mess? but it's a rather pretty floriferous mess.............OK, so it doesn't do what i want it to but it grows all sorts of lovely surprises.......
..........it would be really House Beautiful to start drying some herbs and making some herb oils.......that lovely blue glass jar that Pat bought for me at the Meadows Fair could hold some rose oil maybe..........maybe i should get that herb book and find out how to make pot-pourri.........oh i'm just getting so domesticated in my old age..........

summer break

oh well, everything seems to have survived my being away...........it's still incredibly cold for the time of year, and it's obviously been wet here, my fears that everything would die of thirst were unfounded.........weeds growing madly, will need to do a clear-up and plant out the new herbs......the bank by the pond still looks a bit empty and sad so i need to get those seeds in........runner beans coming up and have been chewed already but they don't seem to have touched the swee'peas....white rose which i had completely forgotten about has a couple of lovely flowers, it's a bit swamped by the lilac but doesn't seem to mind.....
........front looking very good too, alpines all flowering....dont' know whether the oyster shells should go there or at the back by the pond, but they will forever be a reminder of the LGBT week at the Mac and all that went with it, and the lovely lunch with Ellen......

the organic rose 

the diascia 

the purple clematis 

herbs

the herbs and the last of the mail-order plants have arrived, at about the worst possible time, i.e. just before i go on holiday. i won't have time to plant them up before i go so just have to hope they'll be OK till i get back. the cats have already found the herb that's supposedly attractive to cats and have dragged it out of its pot and chewed it, so i don't know how long it's likely to survive........
.........the first of the field poppies is out, and also the biennial poppies are back this year..........
..........and the spotted begonia seems to be putting out a flower.........

clematis haircut

what a glorious day it was......really hot..........i love being able to put on my grubby old shorts and am quite chuffed that i can still fit into them........i had them when i was in Australia and used to wear them with a khaki sleeveless shirt and my Akubra hat, i was all tanned then of course and looked like a park ranger........
..........so, the clematis. it may be carrying metaphors too far, but it was while i was struggling with a particular relationship that it fell off the wall..........it had become top-heavy and tangled, and was beginning to strangle the roses, also the jasmine had completely disappeared into its depths and wasn't getting the chance to grow..........i had to cut away most of the vegetation to re-fix the netting, and it's actually a wonder it stayed up as long as it has given how weak the fixings were.........the basic stem is thick and strong, so cutting away all the foliage won't hurt it, i weeded and fed around the stem and it lets in a lot more light, and also lets more light and food to the jasmine.........it will be interesting to see what happens to the relationship. basically we care for each other a good deal more than either of us is prepared to admit i think, but it had got top-heavy with all sorts of tangled stuff which needed to be cut away.......i suppose we needed space, and more light and food, but the basic plant is healthy......

paeonies just about finished..........this was to show the Tasmanian mint bush flowering, but note sunbathing mini-lion under the chair... 

the purple clematis again....it's never flowered as prolifically as this before, nor has the rose, and the choisya looks so much happier these days although it hasn't ever flowered in this garden , it came from our old one..... 

i'm so impressed with that diascia, it isn't nearly as pink as it looks here, obviously likes the pondside...........yes that it a pond, maybe i should clear that waterweed but it is quite pretty.......water-lily beginning to put up leaves.... 

Oriental poppies in the sun, and the blue campanula again...... 

severe clematis haircut............and new fixings for the netting, overcame my fear of the hammer-drill and felt quite chuffed with myself..... 

the purple clematis................not nearly as blue as it appears in the photo....and the yellow rose not of Texas..... 

rose "Curiosity" 

the broken rose

nipped back home at lunchtime yesterday to get lunch, but mainly because i knew it was going to be a very long day and i needed a break............it was a beautiful day too, i'd have loved to just stay in the garden..........tried to haul the netting back up and fix it to the wall again, cut some more bits off the clematis.........the climbing rose "Curiosity" has had its main stem broken, so i cut the roses off it and in the process it stuck and exceedingly sharp thorn into my finger, it bled like fury.......so losing my temper and shearing some of its thorns off it wasn't very mature, but it hurt!......hopefully i'll have time this evening to get some proper fixings and tie it up properly. still not sure why it fell off, the clematis was heavy but i suspect some little cat may have tried to climb on it...........some little cat has also broken a bit off the weeping birch i see, the Bengal Beastie loves to climb and pretend she's a leopard lurking in a tree........
..........my tomato plants have loads of tiny green tomatoes on them so i'm very excited.......the morning glory is covered in pests and seems to be dying.........funny that because the MG was always associated with Claire and i abruptly terminated the contact with her a couple of months ago.........not to read too much into this, but the plants do seem to react the my relationship with the people..........the Passiflora on the other hand is absolutely flourishing, no doubt to do with being re-potted and watered a lot, but it is strange........the Stephanotis seems happy enough upstairs, but i had to cut a bit to get it down and that part has died so i need to disentangle it from the live bits..........

thought for the day:
do not complain because roses have thorns, but be grateful that thorns have roses.

support

the clematis and all the things tangled in it have fallen off the wall............today was extremely wet and maybe the weight of all the rain has pulled the netting from its moorings.........which were probably never very strong anyway. i cut some of the vegetation away but the whole thing is still too heavy to lift back so it will mean a bit of reorganising..........it won't do it any harm to be cut back a bit, i don't think i've ever pruned it so it could probably do with a haircut, and it will let more light into the other things..........the climbing rose may have suffered a bit but it's still alive......and the other clematis is now coming into flower, it's doing really well..........

shopping

the mail order stuff has not proved to be a good idea this year..........i guess it was worth a try but i don't think it's really any cheaper and the quality wasn't good. i've been waiting months for the stuff from the herb farm which still hasn't arrived. i should maybe just have got the book.........what do you do with lovage, exactly? i've got a huge clump of it, and a huge clump of salad burnet........make it into salad, i suppose.........a mysterious feathery thing also came up which turns out to be caraway.....the leaves don't seem to taste of anything but it looks pretty........the borage will flower very soon and i've just put in parsley and a marjoram that i found in the "search and rescue" bit at Hopetoun.........
..........Hopetoun. my favourite garden centre of all time, i love it. it's not quite as nice as when it was in the walled garden of Hopetoun House, but it's still pretty nice, i love their display gardens and they have the biggest stock of plants of anywhere i've ever seen. it's not the cheapest........when i want lots of cheap stuff i go to Dobbies or Klondyke, i hate "plant supermarkets" but like any kind of supermarket, they're cheap. i usually go to Hopetoun when there's something specific i want that i know only they will have. their alpines are fantastic........i seem to be developing a small obsession with alpines......having discovered that my cold and windy front garden will actually support alpines rather well..........in winter and spring it's the "bulb garden" as all the mini-bulbs come up under the tree, but once the tree was in leaf there used to be nothing under it, i couldn't get anything to grow in the beds because they were too dry and dark..........but actually it does get sun in the morning, and i've worked on it a bit......so the side bed contains lots of little low-growing alpiney things that seem to be doing rather well. i've also planted some into the gravel, most have taken and are spreading just like i wanted them to...........once the bulbs die down then the best thing i think is to wood-chip under the tree, cocoa-shell round the carpeters, and shift the focus to the alpine tubs and little rockeries.......
........one heather has survived for some reason, the others didn't make it........bits of catmint are coming up from where i took it out and moved it to the back......i've put in a couple of cyclamen and the anemone bulbs that came in the pack.......the wood anemones i bought in Kendal flowered nicely and have gone to sleep, hope they spread like they're meant to and appear next year......
.......making the weeds and bulb vegetation into liquid compost.......i.e. a big barrel full of water......it smells to high heaven so i guess that means it's working and the pansies seem to be liking it...........none of the things at the front have ever been fed, or even watered, but now that i've got the hose extension and figured out how to work it they can get both fed and watered which will no doubt help..........
....Phil the Delphus seems quite happy in his tub.......at the back he grew enormous (so much for "dwarf".....) and put out loads of leaves but no flowers............most of the stuff at the front got there by itself, the vinca and the winter jasmine and that yellow thing......no idea where that came from it just appeared.....the biennial poppies are back this year as well....the honeysuckle is growing away by the drainpipe, even the clematis is still alive though looking a bit hesitant..........the rose took as well, no flowers yet but it seems happy..........