Awful weather - typical Brits talk

liberty_lily

Well, according to my phone it's 33° here, although in the walled courtyard area of the garden it feels hotter ☀️

DH decided to take today off so he could get on with more of our own building work (he's putting up stud walls to create a useful lobby and much missed cloakroom). Luckily it's located in the coolest part of the old mill 😉

As he was here at 8am he did the watering out in the main and front gardens with me doing the raised beds and pots in the courtyard a bit later before the sun moved round.  Otherwise I'm staying in the kitchen today as that's the second coolest room 😎 

Here's the courtyard just now with sweetpeas, beans and herbs etc....

Farway

Lovely sweet pea LL, that courtyard looks tempting for a browse around

Today was early start up the volunteer spot to water the large pots using my hose, getting done before the real heat. It was scorching even at nine, back home now and nothing else planned, just too hot

Woolsery

Sadly, we'll be selling our almost-courtyard to the kids. It's the warmest spot here, but the ambience isn't in the same league as lily's!  My SiL will need all his architectural acumen to hide the huge modern barn next door, the shelter and radiated heat from which is probably the clue to the equable microclimate.

The two baking hot days were a non-event here. We hit 29.9c on Sunday at 16:00, so didn't quite make it to the 30s. Today was variable cloud with some rain and rumbles of thunder, but on both days I was able to carry on working with stops to top up with fluids. It was mainly culling and re-potting stuff, so not too strenuous. I did have a go with the mower in the stream garden tonight, but after being bitten x3 in as many minutes by horse flies, I retreated. No word on the digger.....

It's not only the plant photos that sometimes don't work out, a few plants have their off days too. This year Santolina 'Lemon Queen' looked extremely promising....and then...flumped!

Farway

Our hot days here were just that, melting hot, not days to be outside working or even walking about

I've hit problems now with gout in my hands, painful and means I can't carry a full watering can, or even the kettle. I can hold hose OK though

Which means I had to use half a can of water, and twice the time on the desperate plant pots at the front & ignore the others, hopefully my gout will retreat soon & back to normal service.

Very irritating, I've been gout free for about ten years but if it persists looks like visit to the doctors. Due to other meds, I can't take Ibuprofen or suchlike, so will need a prescription drug

Better news, my climbing beans are still looking good, loads of flowers and still no slugs or aphids, plus I can use the hose on them

Rain may be on the way once Woolsery has finished with it

liberty_lily

Thanks both 😊 It is a lovely space now (although my pics are strategically angled to not show the piles of *stuff* lurking about 🙄). Here's a couple showing what it looked like when we first bought the mill in February 2018 (apologies for the quality - I've had to photograph the desktop versions!)...

This one shows it as a work in progress during Spring 2018...

We encountered it partially decked as the first two pics above - not sure if they'd run out of money or taken to burning it. The property was a repossession and after the owner occupiers decamped back to London in 2011 it had been tenanted till being repossessed in late 2017, so there was no-one available to answer our questions 🙄

Meanwhile, after two scorchers it's back to normal here. Yesterday's thunder came to no more than a couple of short, sharp showers and the rain promised overnight was negligible. Its a chillyish 17° today 😯

Despite it being considerably cooler I've no plans to move my own - much smaller than Woolsery's at about 4 x 3m x 1m deep - pile of soil as I'll be digging by hand and don't have the enthusiasm today. Talking of hands, sorry about the gout, Farway 🙁

Woolsery

Farway said:

Rain may be on the way once Woolsery has finished with it

It was fine, drizzly stuff, evapoating almost before it touched the ground. I went out in shorts and a T shirt when it petered out, only to be frozen by 16c and a general feeling of  dampness.

Sorry about the gout. I seem to remember something about cherries with gout....? Anyway, surely a great reason to eat some!

Even though decked, the potential was there, lily.

I've just spotted a chink in the clouds and a skylark. Perhaps all is not lost today.

twopenny

Sorry to hear about the gout Farway. I've not heard of it in hands. Sounds horrendous. I wonder if the continued heat has agrivated it as it's not good for the circulation, dehydration etc etc.

Love the courtyards, both unique and different which makes gardening facinating. I was considering Forde Abbey because I love their garden and long to go alone without someone wittering in my ear, but late now, not sure what it would look like at the moment. I've missed all these things in the last few years.

It's finally cooled suddenly here with a drop of rain but the garden is looking like the apocalypse with even the hardy looking dire. I've had to cut off flowers en masse because they've turned brown or fried.

I know the back can go off the thremomater scale in normal sunny times so goodness knows what it has been.

Between the health issues and the heat I'm still exhausted so the garden I'm sure will come good once it has a drink - a bit like me

Just for the heck of it here's a photo or two of before and after, just to give me some positives. My new neighbour had replaced my fence and it blew down within a few weeks. It's more lush than the after now but photos still on the camera.

 

liberty_lily

That's very pretty, twopenny....I love the colour palette 😊

twopenny

Thank you..
The only eye to colour as little was available due to lockdowns, was to use pale leaves near the house and dark at the far fence to give an illusion of more depth in a tiny plot.
Wish it looked like that now instead of brown or sagging. Hopefully some of my winter planting will come good once we have rain.

Woolsery

It looks restful twopenny and I'm all for that. Others, like my friend on the coast, go for very bright, in-your-face planting, but it's tiring, especially in a smaller garden. Mind you, I'm hopeless at putting combinations of plants together, so I leave that to DB, but I can appreciate the result.

Looks like we are still in a relatively dry spell, With the hay gone, I had a bonfire yesterday while everything was still a little damp and disposed of the rotted  polytunnel woodwork. It's taking an age to remove all the battens because I'm preserving the main framework and hoping to recycle it elsewhere. Many people think polytunnels are all steel, but at least half of ours needs wood for the opening ventilation bits and securing the cover.

No plant photos till I can shoot a few more, but we've had some great sunsets in the past few weeks, so here's one I snapped about a week ago. Spent ages looking for a new angle on an old scene, but failed, and then turned around to see all I really needed was a bramble....