Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

twopenny said:

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.

I had to laugh at this 2P even though it’s a disaster but it’s the downs that make the highs even more appreciated

Lovely rose Liberty L, no room here for one or I’d be tempted

Rain overnight, maybe your empties Woolsery? It seems to have given a nice watering, never the less I fed & watered to pots out the front first thing, so much top foliage a lot of rain doesn’t’ penetrate to the pots. Bit too damp to wander down and check the back garden just yet, but I expect the Deep Secret rose flowers have turned to mush with the rain, skipping the crisping up stage 2P

While at the front I noticed just how well my outdoor fuchsia bush is doing this year, it has been a sorry excuse in some previous years and nearly got binned, it’s in poor soil & narrow border, and watered by passing dogs in other years. This year sprinkled left over blood, fish & bone around the area and that, coupled with the fertiliser run off from my large flower pots seems to have given it a darn good boost, quite pleased with it now, may even take some cuttings to plonk in the volunteer border

Here it is

liberty_lily

Pretty fuchsia, Farway 😊

Well, we escaped the worst of the rain and unlike yourself, Woolsery, had none of the promised thunder.....

Today is warm, sunny and a bit blustery - so not risking putting up our new parasol for shelter 🙄

Things are all looking lush and green (and we've not needed to water all week,  which is always a bonus), it's just a shame about the roses. However, it happens every year so I should be used to it by now, lol!

An apricot pic from me today...

Woolsery

Nice apricots there, lily. I think we're rather elevated and blustery in our location compared with yours and there isn't really a suitable wall for one of those....or rather there is, but we're selling it!

Anyway, the digger man cometh for Phase 1 of the great polytunnel relocation, hopefully early next week. We still haven't had his bill for the roof repair after storm Eunice, but that's how things are here. He has a wealthy client who keeps him fully occupied in the sunnier months. We'll be fitted-in.  So, two days to clear out the area being cleared and levelled....and it's raining! I will definitely dig up all the Jerusdalem artichokes before he starts or those will be everywhere, probably for years! I don't know why we grow them; we certainly can't eat them without contributing painfully to dangerous emissions. 

Today's plant seeds itself around like Miss Wilmott's original. Self seeding can be useful, but I'm reminded of a friend who, just before vacating her property, left a gift for a neighbour in the form of green manure seeds, kindly distributing them freely in the well-tended front garden!  Miss Willmot, the first guerilla gardener, didn't didn't know what she started!

Farway

Green with envy now, two pics of things I can’t grow despite trying forever. Apricots and Mrs Wilmot & her breed. I’ll have to stick to teasels are look a likes, they are prickly at least

Up early so went up to the volunteer patch to give a good hose soaking to the large pots, good job I did because despite the rain the Cosmos were drooping.  All done, plus some dead heading, took photos for on here and that was when my “fun” started, unlike my car, all symptoms of flat battery but it’s not, maybe starter motor? RAC finished up towing it to local garage where it sits now, with my camera and the pics still inside it. Luckily I used my phone for a few pics, see below

The buddleias up the volunteer patch are a picture [sounding like a Fisherman’s Tale now], only a Lidl one but scented pale double mauve, makes nice back drop & blots out the hideous surgery next door

Any way here’s a wide view of the car park border, plenty in there & the Shasta daisies were seed raised and now looking and growing as I hoped they would, in poor, dry & generally abused by drivers area, with luck should keep going for a bit

Farway

In for a week of warm sunshine ahead it seems, so more watering ahead, today i'll attend to the pots in the back garden and prune off the blobbed / rotted together with the rain roses

Took some fuschia cuttings yesterday and trying to root in water 'cos it's easy & simple to do

My climbing beans have reached the top of the canes and I sent one snail that had managed the slither up there on a flying lesson. Tops nipped out of beans, amybe a crop this year?

Todays pic is a self seeded borage that popped up in one of the pots at the front, another one of thsoe plants that sow once and you have forever. Which reminds me, my foxgloves have ripened pods so collection /sprinkle time later

Woolsery

Believe it or not, envy for the Shasta Daisies in the car park plot, Farway. None of those I put down in the sunny area above the stream survived the attentions of slugs.   I shall give the little horrors some Salvia forskaohlei to chew on next. It's virtually indestructible!

Your Borage is also nicer than our white one, which got tall and bulky before collapsing in a heap during last week's wind.

Well, our digger man was a no-show, but he may redeem himself later today or tomorrow. I'm just about ready for him now and I'll let him off if he exhumes two oak trees I want to save, if possible.

The warm, dry week ahead looks like the one we need for hay making. With that out of the way I can start to get in next winter's logs. It would be just my luck to get a delivery of those just when the baler needs access, so I've held off ordering them.

twopenny

Thank you for the kind comment Woolsery. Unfortunately hardly time to recover from the anti biotics and another procedure next week.
It is making me potter instead of trying to make a pot pond and a gate etc etc.and I'm enjoying that.
All those plants waiting to go in, watering, feeding and such has become a pleasure rather than a rush round. Tending rather than a challenge.
Farway yes, the raspberries-grey caterpillars, then green ones then birds and a failure through drought. I must improve their soil. In my new slow way I'll paint spot the new canes and next years keepers so I can thin them out.
On the plus side I have the first truss of tomatoes appeared. I buy a plant early in advance of my seed grown. Not sure but I think it's a yellow cherry one. I'm a bit casual about label s though each year I try. More of an adventure this way.
Oh and some are from an acquaintance who took cuttings from his. I think he buys/grows one and does this. I must ask for details as it's a good moneysaving tip. They tend to be more advanced than seed.
That borage reminds me, good effect from the leaves the youngsters seem to think. I must investigate the market this Friday 

Farway

‘Morning all, can tell even at this hour today is going to be a scorcher unless it clouds over

Funny you mentioned first tom truss 2P, I really noticed mine this morning when I was opening the conservatory window, last week it was just one tom, now they have trusses, quite exciting, especially because last year so was so rank

Woolsery, the car park border with daisies is so dry & unfriendly that I think slugs shrivel up & die, or fall down the cracks in the clay soil. Aphids like them though but I’m a squidger whenever I see them about, squidged some woolly ones on one of my apples the other day

I’ve grown toms from cuttings but I used the side shoot removals so they never really had much of a growing season and never came too much. I guess an early start would be better but space & heating etc. then gets awkward, could be worthwhile if some super-duper variety I suppose

I’m waiting for my first lily to open; it’s Regale and just unfurling this morning with camera is on standby

Farway

Nice sunny day to start but clouded over now.

I had to water yesterday, some potted plants were wilting even though only soaked at the weekend, and with next week’s forecast of super scorchio I may be doing it twice a week for a bit

If it keeps fine today is collect foxglove seeds, and maybe tie in some of the Merton Thornless new canes before they get too brittle

My regale lily opened up yesterday, pic below plus a friendly hover fly visitor

Woolsery

Just a quick update on what's supposed to be another cloudy day, which I don't mind for shifting soil and mowing.

The digger guy saw us on Monday and apologised. His Dad got Covid and couldn't deliver it to us, so if he's well again it will arrive on Friday ready for action Monday evening. We're being fitted-in because our carpenter/builder/digger chap has permanent work at two locations for the summer, building lakes, roads and massive tree houses etc. He just slums it here!

The hay has been cut and my tomatoes have made it into the deep bed, but all the photos are still in the camera.

A nice lily Farway. I do hanker after them, but with cats we just stick to the Hemerocalis.