Summertime

Still warm and mostly sunny; occasionally cloudy and a shower from time to time, but overall not bad summer weather.  The greenhouse plants need daily watering, and the pots are starting to wilt after a couple of days without attention.

The late summer flowers are starting to come out: the buddleia, Lilium henryii and the Japanese anemones (the latter well hidden behind the rose 'Mme Hardy', which as usual is looking brown and horrible now its flowers are over).  The alchemilla flowers have been pulled up, and some of the dreaded pink geraniums; I'm hoping to reclaim some of the border fronts from them.  The annuals are still holding back a bit, although the cosmos is producing more flowers now; a bit of feeding may be in order.  In the greenhouse, the first freesias have flowered;  we've had the first few tomatoes, and there's an aubergine swelling impressively. Outside, the French beans are just reaching picking size, and we've had a few tiny courgettes and some much less tiny broad beans.  The gooseberries are now finished (ie frozen and jammed), the raspberries are producing occasional small punnets and the plums are beginning to mature, to the joy of the local blackbirds.

There are at least three independent baby blackbirds around, and I can hear another somewhere close by, still calling for food (maybe the one that had lost its mum the other week?).  There are young robins still about, but they're not showing themselves much here; one got into the summerhouse one day and couldn't find its way out for some time.  The butterfly boom is also starting; we've had peacocks and a red admiral, as well as a comma and meadow brown (and the whites of course).