Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

Likewise no real rain here despite many but false promises, we’re on anther promise for this evening but I think the Wimbledon prayers are turning our clouds away

I did pick my gooseberries at last, with the crumble in the oven right now. Nearly a kilo from my one “standard” berry. Someone on here grew one as standard / pillar and I copied, turned out to be a very good move especially so because since then my back & general bendiness has got worse

My double cream nasturtiums from T & M are yet again a mis label, they are now flowering and hey ho, bog standard yellow climbing / rambling sort, nice enough but the same as I have already. I’ll leave them for now and try to train them to fill in gaps once my lilies have finished. Bummer and a pox on you T & M

My Merton Thornless blackberries are starting to colour up, at the purple tinted phase now, very mixed this year because it still has opening blossoms. I think the rain will start once the berries are ripe & ready to rot in the rain

Woolsery

The rain came in bucket loads after dark. That's how I like it, but it's just thrown it down again and random sharp showers look like the order of the day. Mowing's out.   As I've the second deep bed to fill and lots of clearing up to do it probably doesn't matter.

It seems to be more almost virgin ground under the deep bed; I'm pulling out rocks that weigh up to a kilo. Once those are removed and a load of manure goes in it'll be OK. I'd rather have our sandy soil than my friend's clay.

We have baby grapes on the Lakemont grape I bought last year and our one Chester blackberry growing wild in the fringes of the woodland is flowering profusely, so that's hopeful. It also seems to be a reasonable year for apples.... if we've seen the end of the June drop.

My plant of the day is Golden Feverfew, always good to brighten up a dull corner. Normally about 30 - 40cm tall this one went bonkers in the herb garden! Trowel for size reference.

liberty_lily

Beautiful evening primroses, Woolsery and that golden Feverfew is huge 🙂 Evening Primrose is another plant we've never tried, but I'm very tempted by the apricot one!

Glad you got to harvest some strawberries at least, Farway 😋

Loads of rain here - yesterday I don't think it stopped from first thing till about 10pm - so it's *fortunate* there's plenty to get on with inside 🙄 plus I've been enjoying more tennis on TV. 

Today it's dry and sunny so I've been outside inspecting the carnage caused by the monsoon on the rose beds! So many fallen petals/dead-heading to do.

Hostas (this one, on the periphery of the not-quite-white bed, is in a large pot) are still managing to avoid getting munched...


And a couple of pics of the roses before the deluge hit them...

Ganga

Farway said:

sammyjammy said:

Farway said:

Out feeding & watering the pots in the back first thing, and anticipating picking some of my cherries which after a week of warmth should've been ripe. The &&&***$$$+++~~~ing squirells have got under the chicken mesh I added to stop the birds, and scoffed the lot, just tree full of pips, B######!!

Honestly why bother at times? I've had that tree since 2009 and reckon I've only had a handful of cherries off it in all those years depsitre it fruiting every year. Whne I'm reborn with a silver trowel in my mitt I will have a large poly tunnel with dwarfed espalier cherries inside it, maybe with peaches on the other side of the paving

Looking like yet another fruit tree I'll be growing just for blossom

Thats such a shame for you but what a wonderful blossom it will be.

I discover that not only had the slugs eaten my newly planted cosmos overnight but the replacement cucumber plants, I give up!

It can be so dis heartening can’t it? Last year I lost all my runner beans to snails but this year, touch wood, the few I planted this year are now climbing and I may even get a meal out of them

Dull with promise of rain later; hope so because if no rain I’m out watering the plants troughs again

Here’s my cherry pips, and the gooseberries, which I’m now a bit worried about because watching Gardeners’ World the other night Monty D said the birds stripped all his gooseberries last year. I may just toddle down & pick them because most are ripe enough to eat without sugar now

Gooseberries, still here

Like yourself we have fed the pigeons , magpies etc and told my wife that when we come back off holiday in July the two cherry trees are coming down /out ,a shame but they are too tall to net up and we do not want to look at a garden with nets strewn all over ,will plant flowers that at least give us something to look at as we never had a cherry pie anyway.
Your gooseberries look good ,mine is in a pot and i cut it back to the base last year as we were away on holiday again and missed the crop.Lets hope my tomatoes make it this year 

goldfinches

I spotted this (ahem) wild flower seed head today while I was out for my morning walk and managed to take one good properly focussed photo from several tries.



Beautiful, intricate structure I thought.

Woolsery

goldfinches said:

I spotted this (ahem) wild flower seed head today while I was out for my morning walk and managed to take one good properly focussed photo from several tries.



Beautiful, intricate structure I thought.

Ah, we've had that before, I think. It's a Trachypogon somethingorother!   Nice.

Farway

I have Lakemont envy now Woolsery; mine failed to flower this year, as has my Green Muscat grape. I suspect the Lakemont is in the wrong spot or the right spot but shaded now by apple trees, we’ll see, it’s growing through the young trees now so maybe next year once the wood has ripened. That’s another plant I’ve yet to eat the fruit of, snails had the young grapes last year.

My SIL’s Chester blackberry is bountiful so fingers crossed for you.

Rain here, but only showers really, not good old soaking weather, probably enough to trigger mould on my ripening blackberries

Every morning I check my lily buds, very close to opening now with colour change from dark green to creamy. Any day now

Nice pic of wild flower seed head GF, I have similar somewhere. I have yet to try a photo tip I saw where the head is placed on a cloudy sky background with one seed “flying away”. Phot taken from overhead and when seen as finished image you have a seed wafting in the breeze up into the sky

Here’s what happened to my gooseberries

liberty_lily

I love a crumble and that does look delicious....but can't stand the taste of gooseberries and DH isn't keen either 🙄 We once bought a house from an elderly lady who had grown tons of fruit bushes and trees over decades in the large garden at the property (including mature apricot and peach) which produced way more fruit than we needed. I used to take some to school to share with the other mums, but it was always my (now late) parents who had the gooseberries as my dad loved them. Sadly, the (also elderly) lady we sold to five years later ripped them all up - as well as the established herbaceous borders  - replacing it with low maintenance but admittedly pretty paving with intermingled planting....

Sunny today with showers and possible thunder expected later. The walled courtyard area of the garden is a little suntrap on days like these -

American Pillar rambling rose...from inside and out

twopenny

Fairly heavy rain here for a couple of days.

All it's really done is taken all the petals of the roses and rotted the ones that were crisped by the long dry spell.

But I'm glad to see it. Plants haven't recovered yet but hopefully they will. I'm not well enough to get out there and do more than a bit of dead heading and everything is dripping now.

The blackbirds are happy and back able to find worms for their 2nd brood now the ground is soft again.

Todays sighting was a field mouse. They seem to have found my covered trellis against the fence as a safe pathway and scuttle along. Hopefully that's all they'll do!

Oh and a hedgehog calling card. Glad to know it's still around even if it does knock my subtle lighting for six

Woolsery

I hope you're soon over the lurgy that's been dogging you lately twopenny.  

It's just the weather that's been dogging me, along with Dearly Beloved requiring my assistance on decorating at ground level. I spent the morning grovelling around on the floor in the conservatory because I still can.....and then in the afternoon this happened...

We were close to the centre of a thunderstorm and the rain/hail was so intense it set the stream flowing again.

Lovely rambler, Mimi....I'm definitely thinking about one.