It is a long time since I wrote a post, I hadn’t realised how the time has flown by. I am still at home a lot, just going out a couple of times a week and keeping away from all the people having a staycation here in Devon. It has been announced on our local news that Devon and Cornwall are “Full”, we can’t cope with anyone else coming here for a holiday if we are to obey social distancing rules!
Begonias by the front door.
It has been a strange sort of month weatherwise, a bit of everything really but not much rain which we really need. In spite of this, plants are carrying on doing what plants are supposed to do and making the garden nice and colourful while they are at it.
I’ll start by my front door which is north facing and doesn’t receive any sunshine. Heucheras, hellebore and begonia are happy here though.
July should be hot, but not here, certainly not a flaming July so far! We have had mixed weather this month, a lot of cloud, some days warm, others a bit chilly, a little rain but not as much as I or my plants would like and a little bit of sunshine. The plants have carried on as normal and flowered away as usual, so let me show what I have flowering in my garden at the moment.
The hydrangea under my kitchen window.
Looking round the garden at the moment, it is very colourful in most of my borders. Thinking about it, most of the colour is coming from bulbs, tubers, corms etc as well as perennials. I’m thinking Iris, hemercallis, crocosmia etc. I’ll start with hemerocallis as they are providing most of the different colours at the moment.
While wandering round the garden recently photographing all the flowers for various posts, I couldn’t help but notice all the hostas that were doing so well and I thought it such a shame that I was the only person to appreciate them. I have so much shade in the garden so when planting up each shady bed I have automatically reached for hostas, ferns, astilbes and heucheras as the low level planting.
Hosta Great Expectations with a yellow heuchera which picks up the yellow in the hosta. Campanula has seeded itself there and is joining in. This area is a mass of snowdrops in February.
Where has June gone to, it is rushing by faster than ever before, I just can’t keep up with everything! There is so much flowering at the moment, it is difficult to choose what to show you, roses have already had a post all to themselves and I am trying to avoid any blooms that were shown in my last post on the 15th, so here is my offering for June 23rd hosted by Chloris.
I have poppies sprouting everywhere on the rockery where shrubs have been cleared away, dug over and compost added. Just ordinary purple ones, but never mind, they look lovely and I am really enjoying them.
Wandering round my garden yesterday showed that lots of plants have appreciated all the rain that we have been having recently and so have all the weeds, they are sprouting everywhere! Thank goodness my water butts are full again, I was getting a bit worried when we had non stop hot sunshine and a lot of recently purchased plants needed watering. One in particular that needed watering was a white peony.
Paeony Duchesse de Nemours, lovely flower and a delicious perfume.
I have quite a few photos that don’t fit into my usual headings, so they have made up a mixed bag for me.
How could I forget Mdme Alfred Carrierre when doing my post about roses, she was the first one in flower, brfore all the others!
One minute I’m surrounded by rhododendrons and azaleas, enjoying the perfume of the azaleas, the next I’m drowning in the scent of all my roses! I’ve never known the roses to be so early, one or two maybe, but they all seemed to be flowering before the end of May this year. So much colour all at once is quite amazing, I have the rhododendrons brightening up the shady side of the garden and the roses on the sunny side, going into overdrive.
Most of my roses are from David Austin and have been chosen for their perfume. This is Gertrude Gekyll.
One man came to mow……..came to mow my lawn. When he got here I told him that he only had half of it to cut this time. Wind back to last week, when Derek, my new gardener, phoned to say that he couldn’t come as he had hurt his foot by accidentally stepping in a rabbit hole while he was out doing his hours exercising.
