It seems quite a while since I last sat down with an hour or so to spare…but here I am at last. It is ferociously hot. The laptop fan is is humming away, staving off meltdown, and in similar vein I am tooled up with a pint glass of ice and a mint ice cream to protect my own processors. With the great Open Garden day increasingly imminent (Sunday 25th) we have all been taking advantage of the fine weather to try and knock the rough edges off the garden. Initially the fine weather was rather a boon, but as the heat ratcheted up and rain dwindled to a distant memory, the joys of barrowing compost waned somewhat. For the last few days I have had to put the sprinkler on to soften up the ground enough to get a spade or weeding fork in. I have therefore, declared a moratorium on heavy stuff and am now flitting about deadheading, pulling the odd weed and shoving in annuals wherever a nice space can be found.
Our wisteria is still blooming, though under the pergola the ground is mauve with fallen blossom and soon the rambling rector will take over. It has been a great display this year. It has also been a fantastic year for allium, lupins and irises and , for once, still (just) damp enough for the white camassia. We’ve had spectacular displays for weeks. These will likely all have gone over before the summer visitors appear but I have high hopes for an early show from some of the hemerocallis which are budding already and I don’t think we will have to wait long for the alstroemerias either. The helianthemum have been flowering valiantly all month, and there are still a few flowers, so I waver daily over whether to give them a trim to see if I can eke out a second show. I may resort to giving them a half mullet to see how the shorn sides do before fully committing to a No.2.
The weather hasn’t suited everything, though. The long dry stretch has been tough on my peonies. If, as seems increasingly likely, this is the new normal I’m going to have to rethink where some are planted. The garden increasingly resembles an overstuffed pudding and moving anything is a major undertaking. The task is like one of those little picture square puzzles where you have to move every square thrice just to get one shifted into place. I wander the paths looking speculatively at candidates for relegation to the back track (very much the Chiltern Hundreds) and find myself thinking that, well, perhaps the penstemon lost to the December frosts and the more recent tragic victims of path spraying have not died in vain.
The new shade garden is shaping up well. It’s had more than its fair share of attention really, but under the trees has been the coolest place to work in the middle of the day. Raymond’s hosta have settled into their new home nicely and I’ve found no shortage of refugees from the sunny borders, coveting some shelter from the sun. This year’s “feature annuals” (i.e. the ones I grew far too many of on account of ridiculous numbers of seeds in the packets) are nicotiana, which do well in shade, so I have been using them to fill the gaps. I did also have an excellent haul of cosmos for sunnier spots but the cold frame snails have feasted on those rather enthusiastically and the survivors are a bedraggled, and often headless, crew. I am planting them anyway – hope springs eternal.
Mum and I took a day off last week and visited Monteviot. Lovely views and some interesting planting (very nice collection of flowering Cornus and some lovely blue iris) but clearly suffering the heat a little too. I left feeling quite pleased with our own plot but with a bad case of urn-envy – a trip to the architectural salvage yard may be in order….
In other news, Catriona, Wendy and Snouty have a summer without their bossy big sister to look forward to. (Catriona very enthusiastic). Shuna went off today one an extended Club 18-30 holiday at the Hirsel to visit Ivor the new bull. It took 4 men and a dog to get her into the trailer. Hopefully one of them explained about the birds and bees……
With a degree of dread, I must now end. The main reason I have been such a poor correspondent this month (and the prime reason for the reference to madness in the title) is that faced with shoehorning myself into an evening dress at the end of the month I took up exercise. I have been powering through a 5K run or 15K bike ride on the sports programme (I.e. with added hills) every day. It is absolute torture in the gym in this heat. and today, my time is up and I have run clean out of excuses. Here I go…….
