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Garden Diary – Goodbye to the hottest, driest July!
As the hottest, driest July I can remember drew to an end, the temperatures dropped into the much more pleasant mid-twenties. Finally on the last evening of the month we must have had rain as we awoke on 1st August to damp paths. Unfortunately, before we all got too excited about the second few drops of the month, it wasn’t much and had dried up before we’d finished breakfast, with no noticeable benefit. Who would have ever thought that we’d be craving rain in a British summer! We did have a few more surprise drops on the Sunday afternoon, that sent us scurrying outside to collect up the power tools…
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Garden Diary – Heatwaves to fleeces, roses and DIY!
Well, that’s the end of May, and what a funny weather month it’s been! I think we’ve had every weather type accept snow. At least we’ve ended on a hot note. It’s a long time since we’ve had a bank holiday as warm as that, great for all the families on half term! Unfortunately we spent the whole weekend inside, as we’ve finally had our new kitchen delivered and we were attempting to work out what went where! As it happens, it was far too hot to be gardening anyway, accept of course for the seemingly endless watering. I don’t mind normal watering every few days, but the greenhouse needed…
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Garden Diary – Picking fruit with butterflies bringing rain
Don’t they say, that a butterfly in Brazil fluttering its wings can cause a tornado in Texas? Well it must be true! As, no sooner did the garden fill with butterflies fluttering all around than we finally got thunderstorms and rain! Joking apart though, we have had more butterflies than I’ve seen for years, possibly in all the years we’ve been here. But I don’t believe that they are in any way responsible for the thunderstorms! My butterfly identifying skills occasionally need a bit of work though, with me regularly mixing up the Meadow Brown with a Gatekeeper, luckily social media is full of lots of knowledgeable people that helped…
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The Joys of June
I’ve finally come down off cloud nine after my brief appearance on Gardeners World at the beginning of the month. I think I’m now at the end of all the teasing about wanting my autograph! What strange weather we’ve been having. No wonder us Brits never stop talking about it! The coldest rainiest May followed by a super hot dry June – until now….. The flower borders are loving this hot spell especially the roses, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen looking so good As for the veg garden’s all over the place, some things doing well – like the rhubarb. All that rain followed by this warm sunshine…
