The Heatwave

 Hopefully the worst of the intense heat has passed although temperatures in the high twenties are forecast for the next fortnight.

Whilst being confined to the house at the hottest part of the day, which was often from 11 o'clock in the morning until 9 in the evening, I tried to use my time usefully as far as the garden was concerned. I sowed seeds of wallflowers, sweet williams and antirrhinums for next year. They were doing fine indoors but as I have the dining room covered in seedlings from January to May I felt that I couldn't leave them indoors indefinitely so that we never had a tidy house. Although I must say that there were no comments from the Under Gardener!! So they migrated to the porcherie/potting shed with a view to moving them to the cold frames when the weather cooled a little. However, as there is no sign of that at present they are languishing in their halfway house.

In addition to producing plants for next year I did a lot of thinking and redesigning, John has apoplexy when I say "I've been thinking" as he says it always means more work for him. Well yes that's true and he has started by widening one side of the iris walk. The soil is atrocious there (something I didn't know when I had my new ideas). It is vitualy all stone so we have been moving garden compost from the bins at the end of the alley (ie. from one end of the garden to the other) to try and create some soil to plant into.

Stage one of the new design is to plant a dwarf lavender hedge adjacent to the grass. I scoured the internet and found 50 inexpensive plants which arrived today.

I will be ordering the bulbs for stage 2 next week.