Amazing

 I shouldn't be amazed by the regenerative power of nature and in particular rain, but I am. I walked round the garden after 24 hours of showers and couldn't believe what had recovered. Plants that I had ear marked to remove all of a sudden were looking great. I have to attribute this to the lower temperatures as well as the rain

I would like the flowers to look like this all the time but I have to be realistic about the impact of global warming. I am well aware that time distorts the memory but we are sure that the weather is very different from when we moved here 14 years ago. Lets hope that the mild winters continue.....but you can't be sure.

Meantime it's still "onwards and upwards". I have moved plants out of the old white bed and the Under Gardener has prepared the area to move the turves (when they grow) to create a new shape.

A Happy Gardeners is ...

 ... one with a plan!

But for the Under-gardener, it's always ominous as it usually entails work (digging, lifting plants, chopping down trees, etc, etc) and I fear that we are going to go into overdrive!

 

Summer has been very hard.  It must have started a month earlier than usual (we were watering in May!) and has gone on and on until yesterday.  The weather has finally broken for us and we've had our first rain since we can't remember when.  This prolonged period of extreme heat and drought is forcing the Head Gardener to reconsider the garden in all aspects ... what will grow in these fierce conditions and what we can keep going with lengthening periods of water restrictions.  So, there are lots of changes envisioned over the course of the Autumn and Winter but a number of these can't be started until this year's flowers have been cut down and/or dug up and moved.

(Hosepipe being used to mark the new shape of the bed ... more digging!!!)

 In the meantime, the Under Gardener is working on the new 'Shrubbery' which is being developed at the source of the Dry River.

I've edged all around the area we previously sprayed to kill off the grass (although you might find it difficult to see the difference between that and the rest of the grass which has just died naturally!")  The idea is to plant shrubs in the bed and then finally cover it with geotextile and wood chippings.

At the same time the Under Gardener has become dissatisfied with the Prairies.  So he has ordered a quantity of perennial meadow wildflower and other annual wildflower seeds.  These seeds will be sown in random cleared areas in the Prairies. 

So, as you can see, we don't understand what all this business of 'lockdown' is all about ... we're far too busy!

The rain doesn't just regenerate the plants ... it regenerates the gardeners as well.

Conundrum

 Sorry folks this post is for the gardening  geeks (like me) amongst you. Before the Covid restrictions I regularly visited the bargain section of the local garden centre, needless to say I have felt thoroughly deprived since March, and bought countless half dead plants. Just before Christmas I found a pot of azaleas which were covered in faded blooms but appeared healthy in every other respect. They were described as multi-coloured which I soon found out was that the pot consisted of a lot of different cuttings. At home I potted these up individually and they flourished, so I eventually planted them in the Japanese courtyard. I imagined that they would flower in April with all my other Azaleas, but no, one started flowering in mid August when the temperatures were around 40 degrees C. I thought that this must be a rogue until others followed.

When I bought the plant (for 2 euros) in December I assumed that it had been forced into flower and would revert to normal Azalea flowering rythm when it was planted in the garden. Can anyone offer an explanation?