ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
There have been early signs of autumn for the last couple of weeks, easy enough to ignore for those so minded. That changed on Wednesday with the arrival of the remains of hurricane Erin, even though it never came very close to the UK. We've had rain, quite a bit, and I've been scurrying about…
There's no escaping the fact that midsummer is well behind us and the days are getting shorter. Our garden openings are behind us, or so we thought before we were asked if we would have a small group, just four, round on Monday. The forecast for the weekend is warm, sunny and windy, not the…
Our penultimate garden open was yesterday, the final one today. We had a fair turnout yesterday and would normally expect more on Saturday than Friday, so finishing on a high.In spite of many weeks without significant rainfall it is all holding up remarkably well, and there are plenty of flowers with accompanying bees and butterflies,…
August. I was talking with my neighbour on the allotment earlier about how much of the growing season was left and whether seeds I'd sown a month ago would yield a crop. A day earlier I was talking to the neighbour on the other side about autumn sowing annual flowers in cells under cover to…
The garden is beginning to look a little tired. It needs a really good downpour and none is in prospect. Then there's the problem with Agapanthus, gall midge, which seems to have infected every Agapanthus plant I have. This morning I went around searching for and snipping off all the shoots I could find that…
Wednesday was a day of almost constant drizzle which by Thursday morning was registering 7.5mm of rain in the rain gauge. Even so, such is the total area of roofs from which I collect rainwater that it added a lot to my storage. More rain is forecast for the weekend which should add a good…
Friday evening again, on a very warm day that it seems wrong to complain about, given how few of them we get, so I'll say nought more about it. We are having to do a lot of watering and are getting through our stored water quite quickly. So far there has been no mention of…
Summer trundles on, doing its summery thing. Back in the 1980's our garden was literally the corner of a meadow, though there is very little evidence left now. The farmer whose land it was is pretty elderly now and while he has been round our garden in the past has not done so recently. I…
Nearly the end of June, high summer. I'm more or less into a ticking over phase, everything is planted and growing, it just needs watering and tying and tweaking to give of its best. It looks like we're due a short lived burst of heat, peaking on Monday at about 26C. Six items of interest…
One more hot day and then it cools down. I'm not a heat lover, 21°C is about my ideal; today's 27°C was something of a slog. Gardening as an active pursuit goes on, we've three more openings, two days each time, the next on 3/4th July. Changes need to be made soon after an opening…
garden ruminations 