Lately

The weather has been so dreamy and warm lately that I've not done much other than potter around the garden. The blueberries and strawberries (I have both the normal sized variety and the delicious smaller wild variety) are both beginning to ripen so I've been kept busy picking these. Although I think I should plant more blueberry bushes and propagate strawberry plants this year so that I get a bigger harvest. Just now, I'm lucky if most of my pickings survive the short journey from the garden to the kitchen without being eaten!

Everything else is growing like the clappers. The tomato plant has quite a few flowers on it and I'm eagerly awaiting the first pickings. I was quite late sowing my cucumber seeds this year so I'm not sure if I will get a harvest, but it is exciting to see them growing. I'm hoping that at the very least I might get some tiny cucumbers that I could pickle! Half of my corn seedlings have unfortunately been dug up by Holly and Ivy but I did foresee this happening and have another batch coming along nicely in the cold frame. I'm already imagining golden September evenings with an alfresco dinner served alongside my homegrown corn on the cob dipping with butter!

Madame Alfred Carrière is blooming away nicely and starting to climb up the fence well. The flowers are a lovely creamy white with just a touch of peachy pink and have a deliciously fresh fragrance. I'm also really pleased with my Penstemon "Alice Hindley" which is forming a sizable busy already and is covered with beautiful lilac-blue flowers with touches of white.

I always find it difficult to just sit down in the garden, as my eyes immediately travel up and down the borders and I start making mental notes of what needs to be done and what I should do for next year. Although it's makes it alot easier to relax when I'm lounging in my deckchair, which I position so that I can look up into the leaves of the tree at the end of our garden and watch them flutter and sway against the blue sky. It's only then that I think to myself, the other jobs can wait I should enjoy this while I can!