Late summer colour

I took a walk round the garden this morning before the rain set in. Small birds were everywhere, wrens and tits darting amongst the foliage, busy foraging the seed heads. Wild bees were just as busy.

A good job that we were all up early because it's tipping down with rain now!

Marigolds edge the vegetable beds

but at this time of year my flower borders seem to be predominately pink.  I'm always on the look-out to add my favourite colour blue but never seem to get the mass of rich blue that I would like. 

There's no problem growing purples but right now I'm on a search for a really BLUE aster. I've tried  before and the results were poor, not at all what was promised on the label!

So for now the colour pink is winning and the stars of the late summer show are phlox, Japanese anemones and hydrangeas.

(Although my white anemone, 'Honorine Jobert', is a sickly little soul.)

Will  'Gertrude Jekyll'  be my last rose of summer?

Skywatch Friday

Where has summer gone? When I walk round the garden first thing in the morning it's cool and damp, with that slightly melancholic feeling that I associate with autumn. 

And the garden looks tired and rather messy.

There are plenty of leaves on the squash plants but I doubt that beneath them there is much of a crop, they are really in need of at least another month of good weather if anything is going to mature.

This week, on a cold, dull day, a balloon came low over the garden. Polar bears - surely not as cold as all that! 

Just the thing to post for Skywatch Friday.

I've moved the pots of lilies undercover, the rain was washing the pollen and staining the petals. I've snipped the pollen off before it can do any damage to our clothes!

The 'Meyer' lemon is cropping well and I'm going to make some batches of lemon curd - a nice task for a rainy day like today.

The fruit on my other citrus trees has yet to ripen

but there are figs on the small cutting that I took last year. Hope they don't fall off!

Some of the garden flowers are relishing the wet

or at least putting up with it with a good grace.

I hope that summer is working out well for you.

Blue skies shining on me,

nothing but blue skies do I see. And it's such a lovely day for Skywatch Friday that even the moon is hanging around to enjoy it.

It's perfect weather for the school holidays, the time when, as children, we were always taken to the seaside. I found this old cardboard wallet this week with family photos from the late 40's and early 50's.

 'Jolly Days' indeed. Here I am in a natty white culotte playsuit on holiday in France with my cool- dude big brother in shades. Mother is sprawled out on the pebbles in the foreground. Pebbles? Uncomfortable pebbles? Who cares! The war was over and we were free to hoist our car onto the cross-channel ferry and travel wherever we wanted to go.

 But right now quite the best place to be is at home in the garden.

The wasps think so too, they are everywhere, eating into the gooseberries and other soft fruit and coming in through the automatic roof vents in the greenhouse causing us to abandon the space. They are attracted by the nectar that drips from my hoya plant. If we could locate the wasp nests we would mount a very mean counter attack!

But for the moment the wasps are winning and we are outside looking in.

Wishing all you skywatchers 'jolly days'.

Postscript. Wasps discovered in the roof, the ladder is in place, we are fighting back!

Out to lunch

Today didn't look too promising at first, rather chilly for August. I fancied a traditional Sunday roast, but not cooked by me. A phone call to the Talbot in Mells secured us a table. It's a lovely village, I've blogged it on several occasions. By the time we arrived it had turned into a warm, sunny summer's day.
First we went to the churchyard and put a few flowers on Siegfried Sassoon's grave

and then we walked down the street

to see what was on offer.

Lunch was good, the Talbot is a favourite place. Afterwards we  crossed the road and went into the Walled Garden

where the high stone walls were capturing the heat and making it feel positively Mediterranean!

The textures in the dappled shade were beautiful.

But the terrace beyond the walls looked the best place of all 

for whiling away a sunny Sunday afternoon!

Things were much busier around the pizza oven in the main part of the garden.

Next time we come I shall have to try one!

A day to sing about

but nobody will get a tune out of this piano!