Leaning Towers

It's official, apparently - it has been the wettest April-June period since records began.  We've been spared the really heavy rain that has caused floods elsewhere in the past few days, but the weather here continues very mixed at best, with blustery spells and only occasional sunshine.  The sun, when it does appear, is mostly quite warm, but apart from a couple of days early this week the temperatures are low for the time of year.

The wind has knocked the taller plants around.  The sweet rocket and verbascums are almost horizontal, as are the remaining aquilegias, and the foxgloves at the bottom of the garden are leaning at all sorts of angles.  (Interestingly, the wild foxgloves at the gate, which are actually more exposed, are ok - possibly because they're slightly smaller and have fewer flowers?)  The big foxgloves were grown from seed a couple of years ago, in the vegetable garden, and never got planted out; some of those remaining are originals, but I think a number of them are seedlings because there are a lot of ordinary purple ones instead of the white-pink-purple mix of the original batch.  They're a good garden variety - tall, and mostly flowering all round the spike instead of just at one side, so they have much more presence than the wild ones.  I still have some seed; must grow more of them.

Leaning towers

Some of them were moved to the new bed under the ash tree, where they're doing quite well (but too many purples - I need to put some whites there so that they show up better).  The verbascums are down there too, but it's not a good place for them; they have dark purple flowers which aren't visible enough, and they're not beefy enough to make a statement.  They look quite insignificant alongside the phlomis, for example.

The old roses are in full bloom, as are the English roses, with Gertrude Jekyll the star performer as usual.  The buddleia alternifolia is also out, making a good partnership with rose 'Mme Hardy'.  The lavender is about to flower, and in the pond, the first waterlily bloom is out too.


Gertrude Jekyll

It's also prime time for the weeds, so I've been ripping up the worst ones before they can seed.  I'm determined to get the willowherb out this year, and as much of the grass seedheads as I can.

On the edibles front, the first raspberries were ready today, and the gooseberries are also there or thereabouts.  Need to get at them before the birds do!

At least one of the blackbirds is still feeding young, and a couple of independent juveniles have been around.  One of them was sunbathing on the patio one day in the company of a juvenile dunnock - the two of them sitting there enjoying the sunshine together.  The wren family is still around; I disturbed a couple of them when weeding by the hedge, causing a bit of a panic.  A young robin has been down, and a harassed sparrow pursued by his three demanding fledgelings.  The starlings in the gable end are also feeding youngsters (and it was good to see a couple of dozen starlings on the wires at the end of the village, so they're breeding quite well this year).  A couple of male pheasants have been in, but not my old friend; I hope he comes back, even though he is a stroppy old thing.  The squirrel returns every so often to check that the peanuts are still out of bounds, but hasn't been hanging around.

We haven't seen the red kite again; a neighbour tells me that there's actually a pair of them.

Not quite red, white and blue

I'm afraid the garden wasn't really red, white and blue for the Diamond Jubilee.  It was more pink, purple and yellow.  There was some white, the cow parsley and white camassias, and some blue, from the last of the brunnera and forget-me-nots (and the perennial cornflower and first of the veronica flowers).  Red, however, was only represented by a single sodden and battered poppy flower, barely visible among the leaves; and, less desirably, by the first of the year's lily beetles on the lily nearby (they were duly squashed).  The poppies are now flowering (when the weather will let them), while the brunneras have been cut back to prevent self-seeding and the cow parsley and forget-me-nots pulled up.  I've lived with cow parsley in the past as it really is quite pretty, but now that we've cleared the view down into the field beyond the bottom of the garden (which is full of the stuff) I don't feel the need to host it in my own space in the same way.

The weather for the Jubilee weekend was miserable.  The Monday was dry (though chilly), which was good for the village celebrations, but the Tuesday was very wet and windy, and cold - we put the central heating back on (and it has been on all the way through to this week, when we finally had a couple of sunny and warmish days).  The sun has been pleasant when it has shone, but otherwise it has been rather unpleasant, with some high winds which produced a whole bagful of kindling brought down from the ash trees, and knocked some of the flower stems around.  At least I haven't needed to refill the pond with all the rain.

The aquilegias - the old-fashioned ones - are mostly past now, but my two posh ones (a purchase from the village plant sale a couple of years ago) are still going strong, though they've had to be propped up against the wind.  The foxgloves are doing well, as is the sweet rocket, and the old roses are just starting to come into flower.  More rain and wind is forecast, so they are all going to take a battering, sadly.

On the wildlife front, we have been trying to outwit the squirrel.  He hadn't been much in evidence, so I decided to risk removing the squirrel-guard from the peanut container.  Although most of the birds have worked out how to use it, they seemed to consider it too much trouble to get inside the guard, and were ignoring it.  All went well for a week or so, with the tits, finches and woodpeckers (adults and at least two youngsters) coming to feed, until our furry friend returned.  The guard went back on (and interestingly the birds continue to come to it, even the woodpeckers, who can get their heads inside).  The squirrel made several determined, but fruitless, attempts to get inside the guard; his lack of success obviously put him in a very bad mood, and he tried to chase any bird that came near (including an attempt to pounce on a pheasant that was passing underneath) before transferring his attention to the seed feeder.  After a few tries, we've hit on hanging the seeds from a wire which is too long for him to stretch down, and he has gone away again.

One thing we wish would go away is magpies.  We haven't had them for years, but now that the local farm is in new hands they don't seem to control them so effectively.  A pair have raided at least one nest - a thrush's, we think, as we saw a magpie with a brown fledgeling of thrush size, and certainly the thrushes haven't been around nearly so much.  The blackbirds are continuing to breed, however, with at least two youngsters around, and we've seen a baby robin and baby goldfinch as well as the usual young sparrows.  A pair of linnets have been in the garden, and a bullfinch (which is fine as long as he leaves the plums alone!).  There's also a family of wrens down at the bottom of the garden, which is lovely.

D's sightings while out running in the lanes include a record of 6 hares in one day, and a near-collision with a deer which was coming out of a field entrance.  Fortunately that's one animal we don't get in the garden!

Our Chelsea Lawn

Away for a week on holiday in the Lake District - and at last summer weather arrived, very warm and sunny.  Back home to a rather dry garden, and a very overgrown lawn full of daisies, buttercups and speedwell.  It looked very pretty, at least until we got the mower out ...

Apparently wild flowers have been to the fore in the show gardens at Chelsea this year, so our lawn was bang on trend for once!  A bit too wild to be practicable though (and the birds much prefer it cut).  As I was pulling up weeds ahead of the mower (the things I really didn't want to seed around in the grass pile), I suddenly realised that the one I'd just picked was not in fact the weed I thought it was.  Closer inspection (very close inspection - it was a very small flower spike) showed that the bottom flower had already opened.  It was tiny and plain green, but unmistakably an orchid flower.  I found a couple more, all of them in the shade of the plum tree - two roundish leaves, not unlike those of a plantain, and a small spike of tiny green flowers.  Both promptly had a domestic preservation order slapped on them and they were carefully mowed around!  Fortuntately - given that I had inadvertently picked one - it turns out that they're not rare.  My flower book suggests it's Common Twayblade (Twayblade because it has two leaves, Common because it is, apparently; I suppose it's so inconspicuous that it's easy to miss).  I wonder how long it has been in the lawn?


I've also found a plant of yellow rattle in a weedy spot in front of the house.  A useful plant to have around if we want to encourage wild flowers in the lawn! (It's a semi-parasite on grasses and reduces their vigour.)


The wisteria is in full scented bloom, in spite of my rather harsh treatment of it in the winter.  I hope it fills out a bit to cover up the gaps where I removed old branches (and to cover up the old tights I used to tie it to the wires - effective but not very sightly!).  The aquilegias are also in flower, as are the Welsh poppies, poached egg plant and cistus; the white camassias are coming out (why are they so much later than the blue ones?), with the allium cristophii (which has self-seeded very satisfactorily in various places) not far behind.  The cow parsley is also at its peak; although a lot of it has been removed there are still quite a few remaining.  Fortunately there's little left in the new border at the bottom of the garden, although I expect more seeds will germinate with the increase in light levels now that the undergrowth has been removed. That border is looking rather bare (I've left it lightly planted so that I can get remaining weeds out easily), but the purple verbascum is looking good and the foxgloves are starting to flower; the clumps of deschampsia are filling out as is the new phlomis I planted to accompany them.  Surprisingly the wallflowers also still have some flowers.  Elsewhere the roses are also coming into flower (Gertrude Jekyll and Old Blush China), and the reliable combo of "Mary Queen of Scots" and the choisia is going full speed ahead.

The blackbirds are feeding another brood, and the thrushes and robins are also busy.  Goldfinches are around too, and the two partridges continue to trundle about the place from time to time.  A baby wren has also been about, which is lovely; it's very small but quite independent. 


Sadly the warm weather has not lasted; the past week has been very mixed and this weekend, being a public holiday, is pretty miserable!  Yesterday was back to November, though the afternoon wasn't too bad.

A brief record of holiday sightings: a lovely view of a dipper feeding its fledgling near Rosthwaite; a pair of raptors (probably peregrines) on Haystacks, catching their lunch (we heard the squeal); a heron and some goosanders on Buttermere; a pair of ravens doing flying rolls over Catbells.  Lots of cuckoos (heard but not seen) and wheatears.  Their flowers were slightly ahead of ours, despite being further north (but lower level): aquilegias and Welsh poppies well out when we arrived, and lots of lovely rhodos and azeleas.  (I have just discovered the Digital Macro setting on my camera which should improve my flower close-ups a bit!)