Awful weather - typical Brits talk

twopenny

Farway I've been trying to look up our rainfall. I remember one day in the last 2 months. The ground is solid.
I've been trying to soak pots but some will not take up the water and it just runs through. Some have just dropped all their leaves. I may try and repot with new compost eben though it's the wrong time of year.
The lawns and fields are crispy brown. The poor baby bunnies and wild ponies have little food and nothing to drink. Those on the main moor are hanging around the dwindling streams.
The sea has been a brown thick mass of clay and sand near the beach and I'm no longer swimming.
The last time it was this bad was 1970
I've watered as best I can this evening in the hope that when it rains it has a head start.
Re your gout. When possible can you put the plant food in something easier? A plastic food container which can be opened with knife or teeth? There must be something more user friendly. I once used an old hosepipe which I made holes in with a bradle. The holes blocked with soil but that was because I didn't clean them in winter.

liberty_lily

The rain has finally arrived here 🙂

Yesterday started dull and by lunchtime the drizzle hit. This progressively increased till by evening the rain was heavy. The wind picked up too. I think it rained most of the night (no double glazing in our bedroom windows so can hear it fairly well 😉) and it's been pretty incessant this morning. The temp is 18° but with the wind it feels chillier and more like October!

However, I'm so glad not to have to get out there with hose and watering cans - although if it continues I'm sure I'll be moaning in a day or two when I'm unable to get on with that digging 🙄

Today's pic - photographed Friday- is another plant which is having a second flowering (Bergenia Jelle)...

Farway

Still warm but a tad cooler, no more rain, although I did spot a puddle, so maybe it did but most evaporated?

2P thanks for suggestions but with my gout I can't even unscrew bottle or jar tops, both are two-handed operations one to hold jar and one to turn top or remove lid, and I'm struggling even holding a knife where every bit of pressure hurts, including minor stuff like picking up TV remote.

But the good news is the meds my Dr prescribed seem to be working, they are based on Autumn Crocus so that will have to count towards my gardening for now

Another lovely pic there LL, and lucky with the rain as well

I have a tomato ripening, Yellow Balcony, photo once it's really ready, and some others are no longer in dark green stage

I managed to get up to the volunteer garden this morning, at least I can fumble a hose around to water the pots, this teasel is up there, deliberately to encourage bees and unusual spiked plant

Woolsery

Not enough rain to call rain here, but enough to send me scurrying indoors with the tools a few times yesterday. I'm dismantling the polytunnel wooden bits now with a view to re-using some of them and all of the fitments, which are fine. It's slow work, but a chain saw jamboree would be wasteful.

The lack of rain sounds quite serious up your way twopenny. I'd say we're OK here for now , but a prolonged drought would affect the maize which is just getting going.

When the digger was here we attempted to bore holes for the polytunnel base plates that are 0.4m square and ought to be 0.8m below the surface, but we only achieved that sort of depth twice. Re-thinking it, we'll have to fill the holes with concrete and bolt the frame to that. More time consuming and expensive....

twopenny

A drop of rain and the birds got excited but it hasn't wet the ground.
Cooler which may help a bit but the tomatoes are dropping off probably the plants way to save energy.

Lilly, I now have double glazing but like to have the window open to hear the wind and rain otherwise it's like living in a silent bubble and no variation. Bergenia is another underestimated plant. Love that flower. Does it thrive like the original?

Farway I meant this sort of thing where you just use your elbow - or nose :-)
https://www.reviewed.com/accessibility/content/oxo-pop-containers-review-easy-open-storage-set-hand-arthritis
And there is a thimble thing with a cutter to open packets etc.
I'll shut up about it now. People keep stating the obvious to me about my aches and pains and its annoying 

Farway

Thanks for the suggestions 2P, it's appreciated, luckily the tablets seem to be working, not as fast as I'd wish but working nonetheless

Out to GC this morning, just browsing & in the café, main reason was to look at the border they have at adjacent very minor stately home, free to mooch about in parts as somehow local authority involved with volunteers doing most of work

I was impressed by the cannas, and now I need some for next year with plenty of time to look around

First is part of the border, then a striking canna which is not the bash in your eyes red, then the obligatory close up of a bee on a cone flower

Woolsery

Glad the pills are working for you, Farway; being held up by a localised physical ailment is so frustrating when the rest of one's body is fine.

What a great display of red cannas that is in the photo! Not sure about the yellow spotty one; I'd have to grow it and see if it endeared itself to me. We're always rather late with cannas, but they get there eventually.

Had to get out the hedge trimmer yesterday to tackle the hornbeam bordering the woodland as it was beginning to block the path. I cut it back last autumn and it's already shooting away again.

Apart from that it was deepening the holes for the polytunnel foundations by hand where the digger had failed. Horrible and slow, but my pointed metal fencing rod gets into the bedding planes if I whack it with a club hammer and then the rocks will lever out.

As we're into bed rock in some parts, less depth will probably be OK, especially as both end holes are deep enough. Having done some basic surveying, I found the supposedly prepped site is way out of level and that set me thinking.....A quick check with the manufacturer and it's possible to add 20 cm to the existing foundation tubes, so we can come up that much and then level with the huge extra pile of soil I didn't know what to do with! Hurrah!   

Farway

Weather may be on the change, cooler today with cloud, could be a wet weekend they say, I can promise now it will be because I've an invitation to my daughter's beach hut this Saturday, It'll be the first time I've seen it, although they bought it last year covid & lockdowns intervened so never an opportunity

Today I hope to pick some of my blackberries, the Merton Thornless, I may have mentioned they are not as plump this year due to the dry weather, but I reckon they'll do. What I tend to do is freeze them and wait for my apples to ripen before merging into crumbles etc

Spotted some of my purple podded climbing beans today, now I just need my fingers to work properly  I can add them to a meal in a few days

My neighbour is moving, so I have to take rose cuttings ASAP before she goes, lovely rose variety unknown but if I leave it I expect new neighbours will clear it out. I'll try rooting in water, not done it with a rose, but seems successful from what I've read. Plus I have to try same with her white lilac

My fig has new ones appearing, I'll believe in global warming if they ripen

The red canna were striking Woolsery, so much so I went online looking with a view to getting canna next year, word of warning, putting canna into a search engine soon takes you into a murky exotic smokes world

liberty_lily

Fabulous cannas 😊

We tried them here (probably a stupid idea!), having purchased them from a plant sale at the Welsh national botanical gardens which are just up the road. They were in pots and did well the first year then - after a winter in our unheated polytunnel - never really recovered and didn't flower again. I'd forgotten about them actually, but think they must have died.

We had a murky, wet weekend - Saturday we awoke to leaden skies which turned into drizzle around lunchtime then became steadily heavier throughout the afternoon and night. Heavy rain all day Sunday (fortunately we've still loads of building work to get on with inside, so the new cloakroom was framed out/plasterboarded) which was great for the garden, although of course there were a few things I'd omitted to stake and as it was also blustery, these went over.

Yesterday was wet am, dry/sunnyish pm but not particularly warm. It's supposedly 19° today but feels chilly/autumnal...think summer's over here 🙄 Hopefully September will be dry as we've foundations to dig (by hand 😉) and DH is taking two weeks off to do it.

Because of the weather I've not had much opportunity to take pics, but here's one from last week. I'd just chopped this buddleia down as it's in the way of the espaliered fruit trees that are going in around the mini orchard perimeter. I put some stems in a vase for one of the outdoor tables and this little chap soon appeared...

Farway

Cooler but sunny today

Only thing to report is I have picked some Merton Thornless blackberries, very poor crop this year, tasty enough but lack of juice due to drought is noticeable, had enough to pop on my muesli this morning, and loads to ripen yet so if it rains they may swell up

All the Cape Primrose leaf cuttings I took back in May have germinated, loads of them, tomorrow will be two months since I took the cuttings, so I'll take the birthday picture then

Job for today is feed & water the pots in the back garden, fruit trees mainly and only a few. My gout has eased, so hoping I can get the top off the Tomorite now, I'll try & find a bottle to decant it into should I succeed