Going to seed

The July flop is happening and the earlier flowers are going to seed.  Where the slow starting annuals have got going, they are bursting buds and showing some welcome colour.  I have fallen back in love with Nigella (the love-in-a-mist variety, not the TV chef), having grown it from fresh seed this year and getting the gorgeous pastel blue shade back.  My self-perpetuating, self-seeded stuff always seems to come up faded grey/white, so its nice to see the blue ones again.

Their delicate sculptural seedheads are just as pretty as the flower itself and they are fabulous for cutting for bunches.  Want MORE. Greedy.

Elsewhere, seedheads are featuring largely in the borders and on the worktop. The fat black cerinthe seeds are still being gathered in quantity and the fine umbellifers of ammi are still proving useful for cutting - shape, but no pollen now!  My main border has still got plenty of height, but not enough colour.  The knautia is doing its annual seed-chucking exercise in a bid for complete domination next year but it is going to get a thinning, so doubtless friends will be glad to receive its potted up offspring into their gardens.

                           

                   

I've got lots of shape, but not enough colour and am desperate for my cosmos 'purity' to get going to add a bit of flowery interest.

In the righthand border where I hoiked out the rambling rose, the dahlias are doing their stuff and are producing lots of flowers at the moment, loving these alternately hot and wet conditions.  Yesterday my  in-car thermometer read 34.5 degrees, but today is warm, cloudy and damp. Good growing weather - time to start taking cuttings of my herbs and lavender methinks and make the most of this propagating climate.