Magazine style - all inclusive

[Perki]

Misty / foggy morning but soon brightened up for a nice warm sunny day , I think that will be about it for warm sunny days this year.

I wouldn't be without the lawn as you say they set off the rest of the garden but I may dig up the front lawn.
Thought you had one greenhouse what are you doing putting them back to back.

The lilac colour plant is a phlox called franz schubert I remember buying these a good few years ago , I want on the bus to the GC especially to get them, to my dismay they had vanished until I found them in the sale section for a quid each . The white flowering plants also a phlox white admiral . I do have H. annabelle but I pruned a bit late which has impacted the flowering .
The eupatorium are doing well , next door kids have been breaking the flower stems off though trying to catch the butterfly's I presume , I am not to fussed they is plenty of flowers on it but Ideally not what you want , I'll not say out can't be doing with falling out with neighbours, you see your neighbours more than most of your family in most cases.

 

[alp]

Misty / foggy morning but soon brightened up for a nice warm sunny day , I think that will be about it for warm sunny days this year.

I wouldn't be without the lawn as you say they set off the rest of the garden but I may dig up the front lawn.
Thought you had one greenhouse what are you doing putting them back to back.

The lilac colour plant is a phlox called franz schubert I remember buying these a good few years ago , I want on the bus to the GC especially to get them, to my dismay they had vanished until I found them in the sale section for a quid each . The white flowering plants also a phlox white admiral . I do have H. annabelle but I pruned a bit late which has impacted the flowering .
The eupatorium are doing well , next door kids have been breaking the flower stems off though trying to catch the butterfly's I presume , I am not to fussed they is plenty of flowers on it but Ideally not what you want , I'll not say out can't be doing with falling out with neighbours, you see your neighbours more than most of your family in most cases.

Just show you that if you wait, the prices could be astonishingly good. Wish I had waited as the clematis went for £1 and wish I had gone there on Saturday as there would be so many more to choose from. Got one Marie Bosselot which is boringly white, just like Miss Bateman. But as they say, only £1 - I just couldn't resist it.

My little Samsung died on me in Billericay gc! Now I'm at the mercy of Little Emperor!

Lockdown is here soon!

Can't put them back to back as they are bulging bits and one is not rectangular. The horrible thing is that they are just a tad too big for the plot and either way, I have to remove soil and plants or lose the path a bit.

Went to the allotment on Sunday and was surprised to see iris flowering

English Cottage - very fragrant - reblooming as well! Didn't like it at first as it's so subtle.

This is a reblooming one. Seems to have flowered 3 times this year. They looked prettier than this - light level adjusted by son

Two cameras in the running
Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ90 vs. Canon PowerShot SX740 HS

Personally, I prefer Panny - more robust.

 

[Perki]

Another misty start to the day but the sun come out around dinner time and disappeared soon after , its been a dark gloomy day since but now we have rain.

Problem with waiting you might not get what you are after , I've lost out on countless things on ebay and plants at GC due to thinking about it, once you get stung with jumping in buying something which turns out a bad buy you do tend to have an extra think about it.

The white iris is nice how come its flowering again ? One of my hellebores I bought this spring has got quite a few flowers on it.

Coronavirus now 2nd highest in the country here 176 out of 100 thousand , they not even a 100,000 people live in Rossenadale more like 70,000 . Probably played the last game of football now for another 6 month are so . I've twisted my ankle so plenty of time to recover

 

[alp]

Oh, dear! Hope your ankle doesn't hurt that much! Employee had a bike accident and was quite shaken. I also lost out, but £9 for a small plant was just too much. The 2nd time around, I bought it, the man said the plant wasn't good enough. I then bid again and it was stuck in the covid void. When it came, it died. I also bought Phyllis Fancy Salvia and it had grown but yesterday, I saw some twigs on the ground. The nasty foxes were romping everywhere. My tiny green wire fence has been no match to them. I should have done some cuttings there and then. Yesterday, we fetched some 10 buckets of horse manure.

The rises are reblooming varieties - not those glorifying your April or May time.. I have bought loads from T&?? and they all turned out to be Indian Chiefs. Then I bought some from J Parkers and some from ebay (this lot turned out to be nothing) J Parkers was all right. Cayeux I am not so sure as they said Cadeau and yet even the cadeau had a different labelled name to the invoice. The rhizomes were terribly dry and will probably take 2 years to flower. I left the stapled labels on and I know they are NOT they are alleged to be.

I am very annoyed as quite a lot of my irises have died because of the heat, the foxes .. and me ..

Hellebores can be flowering any time of the year. My double green is flowering now. You can remove it as it might affect flowering in spring.

I had a bonfire as employee saw me watering my newly planted and divided hellebores and told me it would rain tomorrow. I vaguely remembered seeing a rain icon, but here in East London, the icon has no meaning. But it's drizzly now. He said it would be a good idea to have the bonfire yesterday evening. It was hellish smoke and stench. I burnt the big chunks of mulberry that he dug up and this morning, it's more or less gone. Now I have 9 bags of dry leaves to turn into leaf mould. And one round on the lawn mower worked up a dust storm. I told Little Emperor to stop. It's not fair on him. Now I need to find bags or an area for the leaves to do their job. P

Wouldn't call that rain! Just a drizzle. Yesterday, it was hot. When collecting the manure, I had sweat coming down my eyebrows twice and it was 10am. Summer is over, but as long as the sun is out, it will be great weather for me.

The drizzle has already stopped! Rain? What rain?

Salvia Lady in Red

Duo

Frost lip

Frost lip

Lady in Red is fantastic here!

 

[Perki]

Been raining all day that fine stuff . I saw a fox in the back garden last week and noticed recently one of the dahlias in the garden looks like something jumped into it.

I hope your helper / employee is ok doesn't sound good .

 

[alp]

I wish I had that fine stuff. I wish it would pour! Not enough to go to the soil in amongst the plants. Yes, foxes are a nuisance. Did you watch some lady tidying up the hedges only to see them out of shape the following day. Video on and captured foxes jumping up and down and over the hedges. In my case, they emptied the plastic bag of compost (from the drug raid down the road and spread them all over my hellebores. One of my dahlias was broken near the base. No chance of any flowering now. Then they howled and howled and really struck fear into me. I thought someone was being murdered in the darkest hours of the night. And then there are holes everywhere. One hole was dug into my Cornus Rubra which looked like dying. I am really worried. Don't think I would be lucky enough to get another one for £10 or a fiver! I might air layer it. But all the leaves are limp.

Employee never moans long. One day he missed the step outside my door and hurt himself. After seeing that, I felt very ill. If it were me, I would be screaming my heart out. I quickly used some pavers and fashioned a stepping area using floor tile grout. Very pleased I had done that as the gap was vertiginous.

 

[alp]

The sweetest of sound - raining and serious and continuous as well. Music to my ear.

Some dahlias are struggling to flower. Judging from the weather forecast, there will be no rain for a long time.

Doesn't look like a bad day as rain has been overdue! With a bit of sun, more can be done. I ripped up some Toms which had been blighted. Weeded a tiny bit of area. Erected the tiny green fence again and put some stinky ash from the bonfire to deter the foxes.

Allotment has been a disaster this year. The Scarlet emperors were so heavy that they toppled over the potatoes. Lobelia Tupa has taken over, All the direct sown seeds failed to come up because of the voracious bugs. After last year's hole infested veg, I hadn't attempted to grow green vegs there as I knew that the leaves would be full of holes and no one would want to eat them. Sweetcorns were a disaster. I planted some seedlings but they were no match for SS. One Echiinacea Twister hasn't seeded well. I have now come to conclusion no matter how good some shop bought compost was purported to be, they are no match for real soil in the ground. This Twister was on a raised bed and it was filled with shop bought stuff. Quinoas gave allotmenteers impression that I was growing weeds. They are tall and straggly and snapped in the middle. I have not attempted any harvesting. I just removed them as I am worried they will be growing everywhere next year. Even the Hommineki raspberry failed to give me one fruit! The only consolation is the
mini munch cucumbers which yielded quite a few and as I housed them inside a mini greenhouse, they are still going strong.

I removed the fig tree bearing tons of fruits but non-edible. In its place, I planted one of my cutting. This cutting now has 2 figs. We went to freegle something and this lady was fantastic. She made tons of face masks and profits go to NHS. She sold them on facebook. There I saw this fig tree with tons of fruits on its branches. Every single branch bore fruits - 5 or 6 of them or more. I will contact her to get cuttings.

7am and it's getting lighter.

Not very good pic - Salvia Coccinea Lady in Red

Black Petunia and it's black, not a different colour rendered by Samsung

Amethyst Lip

Echinacea Kismet series

This colour is simply velvety and stunning!

This colour is simply stunning! The photo is a failure though!

Penstemon Black Bird

Bought this as a tuber in Spring time and now for the first time, I have raised a canna!

Frost lip

Now this is a sweet surprise - circis siliquastrum - Judas Tree in flower. Sorry for the poor quality - but the flowers are a bit of all over the palce.

This plant can take a lot of abuse - in a pot in the hottest and driest place and suddenly, it smiles with flowers! I remember buying seeds and scraping the hard bits and all a waste of time!

 

[alp]

So far, I've been managing very well without a TV licence. In fact, I enjoy watching all the catchups on all channels. The only gripe is that Gardeners' World has been recorded badly on youtube - videos blurred or sound funny. My friend has told me this

You only need a TV licence if you watch or record TV as it's being broadcast or use iPlayer – if you only use other catch-up sites, you don't need one. ... But that doesn't apply to other catch-up services, so the ITV Hub, All 4 and My5 are legal to use without a licence as long as you're not using them to watch live TV

from money saving expert. So I can watch all the catch ups on all channels, just not to touch anything related to BBC or any live TV. Since I am not keen on footy, it's fine by me!

Dug up about 2 feet to extend the patch where the greenhouses are supposed to be. I need to be quick as weather is turning and 6c is on the card.

 

[Zenj]

Morning all a dry day at last rained for 2 days and nights pond overflowing again ,bought some more alliums as lost all last winter due to wet will try planting them surrounded by gravel ,picked some lovely purple carrots yesterday tried them in a container and got a decent crop .

 

[alp]

Wow! I had purple carrots but they like like a needles and even smaller than Adam Frost's Well done! So sad to have lost plants. We were working out day as employee finally turned up at 11am. I had pushed the greenhouse out and that meant more work for all. Any way, he's gone again. He was trying to show me up by telling me what to do, which I was clueless. I just let him talk. I really don't like to be at others' mercy. But if he didn't do them, the things would be there, staring at me.

It's so windy here. Just plain awful. Because of the cold, no more courgettes. I have a new dahlia coming up and will upload it tomorrow.

Enjoy the carrots, Zenj. They are sweet.

 

[Perki]

Fine day today but wet and cold this morning, its feeling autumnal now leaves coming off the trees cold morning and goes dark all of a sudden .

Speaking of carrots I lifted some the other day called Atomic red they are more of a pinky red and weird shapes, I don't know why I bother with carrots I find them erratic germinators and they are relatively cheap to buy anyway.

I plant all my alliums with about an inch of sand underneath them @Zenj , I throw a hand full on top of expensive allium bulbs. I've lost quite a few myself during the last wet winter.

 

[alp]

Hard one to call whether to grow carrots and potatoes. 50p a bag reduced and 38p on a good day for spuds. But I know they are organic and it's the journey. Now, I have learned to put all potatoes in a bag. I hate the idea that 10 years later (when I am not here), they will still come back. They really belong to a bag. The man Callum in Beechgrove was an expert. He had his lovely potatoes in a bag and I think he's very good. Shame nobody put Beechgrove on youtube. I'd love to see them, even in a blur! LOL! I steamed my carrots till they were tender. The sweetest I have ever had. Germination is easy here. But in the allotment, even though you go there with seedlings, they won't make it the following week. There are some voracious teenager SS there, not to mention direct sow. Direct sow is to add organic matter to the soil.

It is sooooooooooo wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiindy here! I retired the chickens early. They were like hungry adolescents. Nightmare and if you feed them every time you pass by, you WILL be BROKE! It's like a bottomless pit. But it's so coooooooooooold! I just chucked a lot.

For the alliums, I think you two need gravel, rather than sand. Even sand holds on to water and will rot the bulbs.

 

[Zenj]

Yes been very windy today went for a walk along the coast at Blyth the sea was rough and not many people out.

 

[alp]

Yes been very windy today went for a walk along the coast at Blyth the sea was rough and not many people out.
View attachment 71611

Isn't nice to live near the sea, especially when the sand is like gold dust. Ex's parents used to live near the estuary, but the beach was full of stones. The sound of leaves rustling was exactly like what it has been today. Bet your radiators are on!

 

[alp]

Little Emperor couldn't get his act together and I am still without photos. Last night, I went to bed with a double fleece jacket. It was that cold and is still not warm. Just need a cup of tea to warm me up and get going. Er, no! No water from the tap! Open Reach must have dug into the water mains again! And it's Saturday!

Just when you think everything is back to normal! No water, no tea and I can't do my laundry. No machine. The eco-bubble was sent back and I am glad that I bought it from ebay and I was refunded. They knew it wasn't a new machine. It was flogged around and unsuspecting people might keep it, only to have trouble later. Buying stuff online or from Currys can be so dodgy. I won't get my washing machine, not until the 9th October. How do the others such as AO deliver so quickly? Argos for you.