Bloody badgers ate my sweetcorn

A scene of devastation in the sweetcorn patch today.  All laid low, chewed and strewn all over the place - not that there was, as yet, a great deal to them as the cobs were only just starting to fill out.  My dreams of home grown corn will now have to wait until 2013.

Looks like my main crop this year will be... parsnips.  Still doing well - at least something is.

The autumn raspberries are having a final hurrah so I managed to pick enough to make a couple of jars of jam - better than the poke in the eye with a sharp stalk I collected yesterday whilst tending the border - no harm done, luckily.

Fresh starts and sort outs

This September sunshine has had me out laying waste to ground elder so that I can get some annual seeds planted today.  I fancy the notion of hollyhocks towering over the boundary so have finally cleared out the strip next to the drive - the ground elder there has been mocking me for the past two years and I've always had better things to do than invest time in revenging myself upon it. Today was that day and now the evil white roots are stacked in bags and buckets, waiting to go to the recycling centre (one reason I never use council waste compost!!).

Also sowed scabious, sweet williams and ragged robin in the greenhouse - am also going to try to get my hands on some larkspur to fling around the place.

Laid waste to the cherry laurel hedge down the left side - chopping the top two feet off has really let some more light in.  Just have to finish the patio end of the hedge now and the bit right down at the bottom. Grrr - there's just so much of the damn stuff to bag up afterwards.  Still - I feel like I've really achieved something today so can enjoy my well earned beer.

Still picking sweet peas!

Damson season

After weeks of being bashed on the head by drooping branches when putting stuff in the compost bin, the damsons are finally ready to harvest.  (Having first cut back the vicious stems of rambling rose which have made their way into the tree...).

Damsons are such picturesque fruits - that bloom their skins get as they ripen is just like nothing else. I only wish I could get a jumper in that colour!

Have made a batch of damson gin with my first pickings, following Sarah Raven's recipe, and it is looking good already.  Tomorrow I'm going to turn a batch into damson jelly as my children seem to devour jam at top speed (a vote of confidence I suppose).

Any other ideas for this marvellous fruit?

You know they're growing up when.....

It's not just the secondary school uniform and the size 8 feet, it's the fact that the gloop mine down the bottom of the garden is now truly overgrown with weeds from lack of regular disturbance.

Once a hive of activity with spades, diggers and contraptions to serve as water delivery systems, the abandoned workings are now home to ground elder, brambles and the odd nettle patch.

But we're having a barbeque this sunny weekend to reunite the rest of the mining crew, also newly dispatched to secondary education establishments across a wide area of Birmingham.  As digging and tunnelling have been inextricably linked with visits to our house, I have today done a preliminary clearing of stingy and scratchy plants,  hoping that fits of fond reminiscence will mean that the remaining ground elder will be laid low by a horde of spade-wielding juveniles.  Here's hoping.

School term starts and my new gardening  regime begins....

The plan -

• Finish off hard landscaping.
• Pick up cheap annual seeds from garden centre to start September sowing
• Cut back lavender to old wood and save dried flower heads
• Take cuttings of new penstemons to have some more for next year
• Clear out the green house
• Wage war on ground elder
• Have a general tidy up around the garden - get rid of all the stagnant buckets of rain-stewed weeds which have been sitting around for ages....
• Take all the remaining patio rubble to the recycling centre
• Do my first fencing project - replace the section of front fence between us and the neighbours.
• Meet with school to discuss their gardens and a work schedule...  (Yippeee - I've got the infant school garden back!)
• Make regular weekly visits to the allotment.

That should be enough for starters.... (that's without all the house painting jobs which are also on the list).

Summer seems to have arrived in September this year, with a whole week of sunny weather forecast for the Midlands at last.  It's come a bit late for my garden, but at least the roses in the main flower bed are putting on a good second flush of flowers.  The yellow rose, 'Absolutely Fabulous' is living up to its name as has been covered in new blooms and they just seem to keep going and going.  My beloved dark red/purple 'Falstaff' has also been having its best year yet, but it's always a race to get its blooms to open fully before the rain clobbers them and turns them into brown dough balls.  The current flower heads seem to be winning the race so am hoping to have a splendiferous show by the weekend.

I'm also delighted to see the herbaceous clematis (c. heracleifolia 'Wyevale') doing so well - it seems to be sprouting new bits every year and as it is the nearest scent to that of Indonesian frangipani blossom (my all time favourite flower smell), I am always happy to see it spread a bit further.  Combines well with the yellow rose (below) at this time of year, don't you think?

Hacked at the hawthorn hedge which is trying to turn into a collection of 20ft hawthorn trees earlier this week - layered a few bits by lacerating my arms and bending springy branches down and threading them into the framework of the hedge, but the really tall escapees just had to be cut down.  Now comes the fun bit of disposing of the malevolent prunings.

Right - back to work IN THE SUNSHINE!

Today's weather will be.....

Wild food...

Read last year that you can eat amelanchier berries, so thought I would try some before the birds ate them all.  Can report that they are quite tasty, if a little pippy.  Nice to find something else I can scavenge in my garden and it makes my little tree/shrub even more garden worthy.  Not only does it have lovely bronze foliage and white blossom in very early spring when the garden is just starting to wake up, it now provides snacks too!  I had noticed in previous years that the birds love the fruits - well now they have competition...  Might try some in jam along with other berries.


The garden is still looking OK - shame a lot of the annuals have succumbed to slug munching as it isn't quite as floriferous is the main border as I'd like.  Ah well - an excuse to buy more plants!

Hydrangeas: NOT just for grannies!

Say hydrangea and most people envisage scraggy bushes in unloved suburban front gardens.  There are plenty of them around and I always used to dismiss them as granniated flowers.  But that was before I discovered them as cut flowers.  Fantastic from summer to winter, they keep on producing dense heads which change colour throughout the season.  Just look at the ones below - from the same bush, but the paler one, growing in the shady centre and the pinker one growing in a more exposed part.

 They also make an excellent structural framework for short arrangements like this one (in a jam jar) and hold other, less sturdy flowers in position.  I'm converted.

When the weather gets colder, the flowers will darken to a deep red outer ring, with a greenish centre and look stunning in autumn arrangements.


Even the crispy heads look good in their own right when they give up the ghost after the frosts arrive.  These beauties will hold (but eventually lose their pinkish colour) all through the winter 'til you chop them off to welcome the new buds in the following spring.

Have I managed to convince you yet????

Faffing with currants

Picked all the blackcurrants and goosegogs today - what a palaver to harvest these tiny globs of juice!  Doesn't help that the whole currant patch is being invaded by scratchy cleavers and the outriders for imminent invasion of blackberries as well.  My arms are a mass of scratches and cuts but at least I have some jam to show for my troubles.  Tastes rich and delicious - dark purple rhubarb and blackcurrant, and ruby red raspberry. Yum yum yum.  The children have scoured out the jam pans with slices of bread, so I'll take that as a vote of confidence in my preserves.

I had intended to go down to the allotment on a weeding mission, as this is the only fine day forecast in a while, but instead ended up picking and harvesting.  Time consuming objects all these soft fruits.  Didn't get much done in the way of tidying, so the plot still looks like a gardening disgrace.  Must try to get down there of an evening over the coming week whenever the rain holds off (which will probably put paid to ANY evening weeding looking at the weather forecast).

One day I will get it all under control - but it seems a way off as yet.

Parsnips are starting to look promising but not much else in evidence.

Picture perfect roses

Rosa 'New Dawn' - soft shell pink, blowsy and so.. well.. rosy...

Mixed bunches - includes Rose de Rescht (dark pink, front small bunch), Ferdinand Pichard (stripy), Zepherine Drouhin (dark pink in taller bunch).  The perfect tiny shell pink one in the small bunches is Felicite Parmentier - has loads and loads of flowers on it at the moment.  They all smell gorgeous too.  How can anyone resist?

Where is the summer?

June monsoons and now July pours down.  When will the sun ever come out for more than a couple of hours?

I may not have to worry about drought and a lack of water for plants while I am away from the garden, but I am plagued with slugs and snails who are delighting in the warm, swampy conditions.

Was hoping to use my day off today to go to the allotment and hack at the weeds but it is far too wet to go near the soil.  Am hoping that Sunday will give me chance to wage war on the encroaching forest of creeping buttercup and sprawling grass....

At least things are still flowering and water butts are full but redundant.

Alec's Red - smells like Turkish delight and has converted me to hybrid tea roses (well some of them anyway)

The first ever delphinium in my gardening career to survive slug onslaughts

Rosa 'Pleine de Grace' - hideously spiky and savage, but then it does this and all is forgiven for a short while.