Garden Diary – Sunday Dinner with Patricia, the longest day!

As predicted the week before, the heatwave has begun. I have resisted moaning so far, remembering the cold drizzle of last week. Apparently it’s set to be even worse next week, so I probably will give in and have at least a little moan.

It’s been nice to sit out on the patio of an evening, especially with the mass of pink flowers from geranium ‘Patricia’ to enjoy.

She was planted in the woodland border, but I moved her last year into the raised bed, bordering the patio and she hasn’t looked back. I can’t believe so many blooms can be on one plant!

The other plant in the garden astonishing me with the amount of flowers, is my rose ‘Gabriel oak’, and the scent from them is divine. When I’ve been dead-heading it, I put my bucket into the greenhouse to fragrance it.

On Wednesday it had started to get quite hot so I went and sat by the pond at lunchtime as I love frog spotting. It’s getting quite difficult to see them in the now overgrown pond, but I found some. I really envy them on days like that, hopping in and out of the water to cool off.

It’s looking likely that we are going to have to think more carefully about the plants we choose, if our summers are going to get hotter and dryer. One super hardy little plant is Mexican fleabane, very drought tolerant and just seeds itself everywhere.

As we have so many ladybirds in the garden, it follows that we have a lot of ladybird larvae about too. I’ve suddenly been spotting them on all sorts of flowers. They are veracious aphid eaters so extremely welcome in the garden. We mainly have the seven spotted variety, with a few harlequins.

Sadly lacking in the garden at this time of year are honey bees. The lavender is now fully out, and up until last year it was completely covered in honey bees. You could literally hear them before you got there, so much so that counting them would have been an impossible task.

This year however, each time I walk past there are just 3 or 4 bumblebees. It’s all very depressing!

Luckily the other flowers in the garden are doing a great job of attracting lots of other pollinators, including all the tomato flowers in the greenhouse. You can tell they’ve all been busy in there as we have many tomatoes growing.

My new flower for this year is an orange cosmos that started to bloom this week, after my I sowing it back in March. They don’t look like a traditional cosmos, but I’m very pleased and the hoverflies are already very interested.

And so, we ended the week eating our Sunday dinner with Patricia on the patio, thinking this is exactly what mid-summers day should be like! Happy summer solstice.

Monday 15th June 2026

Is this enough magenta for #MagentaMonday ?

Geranium ‘Patrica’ has already been flowering for weeks, & will continue for weeks to come 🌿🩷🌿🩷🌿🩷🌿

#bloomscrolling #geraniums #pinkflowers

Wednesday 17th June 2026

‘Gabriel Oak’ is still blooming his head off, now joined by the dozens of coreopsis flowers bursting from their buds 🌿🌼🩷🌼🩷🌼🩷🌼🌿 #RoseWednesday #roses @DAustinRoses

Great place to have been today 💦🐸💦 What a warm one! 🥵

#wildlifewednesday #frogs #ponds #wildlife

Thursday 18th June 2026

Hello little 7 spot ladybird larvae 🐞You enjoy yourself on my geum 🌿🧡🌿

In this, the 4th Instar stage of a larvae’s life its at its biggest & eats massive quantities of aphids to fuel its upcoming transition into 🐞#InsectThursday #ladybird #insects #wildlife