The result of backsliding

The combined effect of last month's two weeks of holiday, hot weather during which I avoided spending too much time outdoors and having other (non-gardening) things to do has not been good for the garden.  It’s now looking even more dishevelled than it did on our return from abroad.  There’s another spell of hot (for us) weather starting; today we had 29C (85F) and temperatures in the low thirties are forecast for later in the week, but I really need to get out there and do something about the weeds and other long-overlooked jobs.

The soaking station

With only one day of rain recently – a couple of heavy downpours in the middle of last week – watering has been high on the list of must-dos.  Fortunately the village's water supply problem has been solved, but I’m trying to conserve as much water as I can; grey water from the kitchen is being stored for the plant pots.  A ‘soaking station’ has been set up in the relative shade of the house for those pots in need of emergency care; only small pots will fit in the old washing-up bowl, but it means that the watering can is reserved for the bigger pots, the bird baths and those plants in the ground that need it most (like the courgettes). 

Some areas of the garden are so overrun with grasses and other weeds that they have to be left for intensive attention, preferably when the weather is a little cooler and I can spend longer in the open!

Overrun with grasses!

Today I spent as much time in the shade as I could, venturing out into the sun from time to time to deal with specific jobs.  The dill is flowering beautifully – it’s a very ornamental herb – and I cut a good amount of the leaves to chop and freeze, which I hope will see me through the year.  There were small twigs on the patio to be swept up and disposed of, the remains of a nest that a pair of woodpigeons started to build in the wisteria; woodpigeons make a terrible mess of their surroundings, so I had pulled the nesting material out, repeatedly (and untidily), but that didn’t seem to deter them.  Even putting some holly twigs in their preferred space (I reckoned that the female wouldn’t want to sit too long on holly leaves) didn’t work.  In the end I put some chicken netting around the nest area, and they transferred their attention to the top of the hedge instead.  While I was sweeping the patio, I remembered that the lilies in the big pot in the corner needed staking, and that was another shady job that I could do.

One benefit of having a lot of plant material that needs removing is that some of it can be composted, and it’s a good time of year to be filling up the hotbin and the other bins.  The leaf beet is running to seed, and, although the seed heads are destined for the council’s green waste bin, the stems and leaves are good for composting; the same is true of the foxgloves, most of which are fading.  I was also going to do this with last year’s parsley stems, which I allow to flower partly because the flowerheads are decorative and partly to save seed for next year, but when I examined them I saw that they were covered with soldier beetles, harmless red insects which are part of the garden’s biodiversity, so I’ve left them for a little longer.

Soldier beetles on the parsley flowers

The garden’s biodiversity never fails to surprise me: yesterday a (harmless) grass snake was spotted slithering through the grass below the apple tree.  I hope he was able to find some water; they prefer dampness rather than dry gardens.