We finally had a nice summery week, warm and sunny, before things went downhill again with heavy showers and cooler temperatures. This evening is chilly, misty and wet, though we're told that it will get warmer for a few days (and then what?). Everyone is saying that they don't have anything to enter in the village flower show this year - bad news.
The sun seemed to perk up the roses, which got second wind and kept flowering just when I thought they were going over. Most of them really are finished now. The crocosmia 'Lucifer' has been out for a week or two now, making a good display down the bottom of the garden; still waiting for Lilium henryi, and the purple rudbeckia (new last year) is showing buds. The francoa is in flower, and the plant with the white conical flower spikes, whose name I can never remember, is coming out. The rest of the garden colour is a bit random: a lot of linaria, which I must pull up before it self-seeds, the last of the first flush of poppies, and the pink geranium which is trying to take over the whole place. And of course the Big Yellow Thing, which is hard to ignore. The lavender is mostly past it, and the wild blue geraniums, foxgloves and ladies mantle are being pulled up before they can seed.
In the pots, I have two Lilium regale flowers. Of the three bulbs I planted, one hasn't appeared at all and one has produced a strangely damaged stem with no flowers. I found two fat lily beetles on there, which may be the problem. The two dahlias, in the next-door pot, are defoliated (by the beetles?), as is the iberis sempervivum, though the penstemon (which has finished flowering) and rosemary in the same pot are fine.
Not a good year for edibles. The raspberries are a bit mouldy, and the plants have collapsed on top of each other which hasn't done much for the fruit; there are still a few gooseberries, though the birds have got to them before I could. Apples and plums are small, and in the case of the plums, few. Some of the broad beans have fruited, and the potatoes seem to be doing well, but the peas have done nothing at all. I have some brassica seedlings ready to plant out - just need to clear some ground for them.
The buddleia is showing the first flowers, but butterflies remain elusive. There were a couple of orange-tips around at the weekend, and a meadow brown, but that's all. Usually we get a lot of meadow browns on the lavender, but none showed this year. The birds are also starting to go quiet, although there are plenty of sparrows still around, including youngsters still being fed, and a couple of young blackbirds. The adult male blackbirds are getting shy, probably because they're very much in need of a good moult. A robin has appeared from time to time, and dunnocks; the linnets have been around too. One day I accidentally disturbed a couple of baby linnets in the undergrowth; in their panic one of them briefly landed on my arm before flopping into the plants below (I left them to sort themselves out). A pair of nuthatches have also been around in the ash tree; now I know the sound they make when tapping the bark for food, and have heard them a few times since.
The warm weather prompted the farmers to make hay literally while the sun shone, including in the big field behind us. That attracted a number of seagulls, a big buzzard and a female kestrel with her youngster, the latter two using the electricity pole in the field as a perch. They obviously missed one of the displaced rodents; we've had a fieldmouse in the garden a couple of times, coming to the patio for an evening drink when the weather was dry. Some more dry weather would be nice ....
