Awful weather - typical Brits talk

goldfinches

@Farway - those dahlias are a mind blowing combination of colours and I definitely want one of those! Glad you had such a good visit and thanks for the lovely photos.
2p - watch out for your feet on those prickles.
@Davesnave - impressive yew arch that and the herb garden is looking lovely too.
@wort - sorry to hear you're ailing, take care of yourself and get well soon.
@phoebe1989seb - hope your stint as a navvy is coming to an end and that your aster survives its latest relocation.

I'll leave you with a photo I took on Saturday of one of my favourite plants, Dianella, and yes the berries really are that colour.

Farway

It's tipping down again, should soon have your stream flowing Dave

Those berries look lovely GF, adding yet another one to my wish list

Nothing planned for today except if the rain stops have mooch & check the garden just in case, although it looks fine from the house it's the hidden bits, and I want to get some small plant pots out if i can find them that is

The small pots are to pot on the Heleniums, the Shasta daises I potted on a week or so back seem to be growing away now so presumably have settled in and be fine to over winter

I hope my heleniums turn out as well as the ones I saw at Wisley, even half as nice would do

Davesnave

Farway said:

It's tipping down again, should soon have your stream flowing Dave

On and off here, a bit like me just now, but hopefully I'll get down there later and do some planting. I couldn't do any in the summer as the ground was too dry and competing grasses wouldn't have helped.

EDIT: The BBC's lying as usual and The Met Office says we're in for a deluge today, so it looks like you're right.

@goldfinches, I see Dianella seeds are available if anyone wants a go at those. Apparently quite easy once established.

Heleniums from seed will be interesting. Years ago, someone put me off from trying, so I've just got the usual Waldtraut, Sahlins and Herbstonne etc. I'd like to do a mass planting in the grass somewhere.

phoebe1989seb

Great pics from everyone...particularly love the hedgehog 😄 We see a few here - sometimes in the garden, but more often when walking the dogs up the lane, but they are usually too daft to spot them 😉

I'm nearly at the end of my labouring duties, thanks GF and most of the wall is now down... although there's always another job looming on the horizon for us, lol! Hopefully the aster will make it ok.

Glad you had a nice time at Wisley, Farway....all the years we lived in the south and frequently drove past the signs, enroute to somewhere else, we never managed to get there....guess we never will now...

Hope Dave and wort are feeling better soon! 

Definitely concur about the BBC being economical with the truth....although, being in Wales, torrential rain was always to be expected as far as DH and I were concerned. Nonetheless, the sheer volume still took me by surprise when it woke me in the night and today I don't think it's stopped so far 🙄

twopenny

Bucketing down last night and today it's hammering on the roof so gardening is out.

But we really need this and the garden will perk up considerably so some more flowers heading into autumn once it's over.

The ground may be soft enough to dig out some more and clean up. I'm saving my energy for that,

Phoebe you;ll be able to open your garden to the public soon with all those renovations. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Farway

It hammered down in the evening and last night, which means I have a week off from watering the volunteer large pots, sun's out now

This weather should bring the fungi up, camera is on standby now I have a better idea of what I'm looking for

On my garden mooch yesterday i picked more apples, Elstar & Champion. The Elstar only has about half a dozen on it, but nice looking ones, Champion has many more but the birds seem to love them as well

Funny but in previous years the birds have never really been a problem with my apples but this year they're devils, something must have changed but can't think what

Still plenty of apples for me though, I'll be stewing some later today for the freezer

Davesnave

phoebe1989seb said:

Definitely concur about the BBC being economical with the truth....although, being in Wales, torrential rain was always to be expected as far as DH and I were concerned.

Yes,their delightfully named Marrianna Spring is notoriously either good or bad at handling disinformation in a changing climate, depending on where one stands, but I rely on UK Column News to show me the weather in Plymouth at 13.00 on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, just in case.   I take the view that with the Met just down the road in Exeter, they must have some idea of what's going on around here, but right now their sunny start to the day is running late and a planned picture of a Greenfinch isn't happening! 

The stream is running well, as one might expect. If it's any consolation re your stone moving, DB has declared the path shown in the last photo to need it's surface raising50 mm before we put gravel down  and with hoggin at about £70 a dumpy I'm now tasked with creating my own from waste materials. That's 30m2 of surface to deal with.  Sadly, we have more than enough stuff lying about to do it and I'm no longer able to pull a sickie!

greenbee

I've just been clearing old logs out from the undergrowth - someone was supposed to split them all for me last year and didn't. A surprising number are OK after a week in the log store, but most are very soggy so are being loosely stacked to air for a bit. And some are huge bits of stump/root that are just too twisted for the lot splitter or the axe. Sadly I think they'll have to be burned on the firepit at some point. I'm not to be trusted with a chainsaw! 

I don't envy you crushing stones Dave. Isn't that what they make prisoners do when they're sentenced to hard labour? 

Davesnave

greenbee said:

I don't envy you crushing stones Dave. Isn't that what they make prisoners do when they're sentenced to hard labour? 

I won't be crushing, I'll be sieving, but it's still going to be a long job. There's a lot of hoggin in certain bits of the drive that we shall be turning into garden, so there's hope there though.

The nice day arrived, but no sign of photogenic birds now of course!

greenbee

I don't envy you that either... I did the same with rubble from my brother's garden to extract chalk and flint for the stream. But at least it was last summer when the weather was nice!

I have finished with the logs. And am aching. The log splitter is 50kg, so just moving that is hard work