29.08. My cat and a throw

Hello, how are you? Are you enjoying the last week of summer? Or are you wondering where on earth the summer has gone – again?! An average temperature of 20 degrees in London in August is…pathetic! No other word for it. I have my heating on every evening, in August! The winter will feel very long when last time we had 3 days in a row or longer with higher temperature than 25 degrees was back in May!! We can still have some great days in September, but it’s not really the same, the sun doesn’t take the same way and it doesn’t feel like summer, even if daytime temperatures can reach quite high in the middle of the day, in the sunshine, if you can find any sunshine, and if it isn’t too windy….well, I’m not too fussy after this summer, as long as it doesn’t rain much in September, I’ll be happy…although, as I am writing this, late August Bank Holiday Monday evening, it is 9 degrees outside. NINE!! Ugh.

28.08. Under the stars

Hello again, tonight I got some quite spectacular photos for you, no plants or flowers in sight, promise :-) You see, every August Bank Holiday, Newham Council has a 4 days event in my local park called ‘Under The Stars’, and the 4th  day, the Sunday – today, the event is rounded up with an amazing classical concert by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. So first we have to endure an evening with modern jazz, on the Thursday, and then on the Friday evening it is different kinds of Asian music, Saturday the theme can vary, this year it was ‘Newham Rocks You’…but I think they had dug up some really old rockers…perhaps a bit too old ones, they didn’t rock me, what I heard of it anyway.

21.08. Achantus spinosa

Hello, here are the rest of the pictures from my garden that I took yesterday, there were just too many to put in yesterday’s post so I had to split them over two days. Yesterday I concentrated on the summer flowering Hellebore that is lighting up the end bed of my garden at the moment; today I have photos of a rather more peculiar plant – Acanthus spinosus.

20.08. Hellebores in flower

A miracle has happened in my garden again! One of my Helleborus orientalis is flowering again! It might not sound like such a miracle to you, but firstly; hellebores are winter flowering plants and in the UK usually flowers from late December to March. Secondly, my unusual, summer flowering hellebore has already flowered this summer! It started producing flowers in mid July, and if you have a look at my post from 1st August you will see the flowers from the first stalk – and that’s what this plant usually produce; one stalk with 5-8 flowers…that is if it flowers in the summer at all, it doesn’t do that every year.

18.08. Chicken Korma

Hello again, first of all, sorry for being off the net for such a long time! My recovery from the hip replacement operation is going very slowly and I just haven’t had the energy to sit down and write. Besides that, I haven’t had much to write about lately – as the weather has been pretty grim and I’ve hardly been out in my garden the last 10 days – hence no garden photos today. Yes, I know it’s August, and supposed to be the summer month of the year, but someone has messed up, again – and we have ended up with all the rain we didn’t get last winter. Ehhh…I would have preferred to have the rain back in February, thank you very much!

06.08. Another garden movie

I have been filming in my garden again; this is the third movie I have made from my garden this year and I think I will continue doing this for a while. The differences between the seasons are so immense and although I take pictures every month, the movies are a much better way of documenting the horticulture events and sometimes miracles in my garden.

04.08. The Prophet's Mosque

I have just seen an interesting series of programs from BBC2 which I recorded over the last few weeks, but only watched the last few days. The title of the series was ‘The Life of Muhammad’ and the three-part series, presented by Rageh Omaar, charted the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Apart from being very interesting history and important background facts, the programs were also beautifully filmed in a part of the world where I have never been and where I will never be able to visit.

02.08. Another Bonsai

Today has been another warm day, it passed 30 degrees this afternoon, but we had no sun the whole day….imagine how hot it could have been if we had got full sun :-) I spent the day in the garden, pottering about, doing a bit here and a bit there; everywhere I turn there are jobs to be done, after 6 weeks of practically doing no gardening at all. But I did one thing today which I have wanted to do for a while; taking care of the Bonsai trees.

01.08. A grey squirrel

It was 32 degrees in my garden this afternoon, for someone like me who is always cold and wearing a cardigan all year round it was lovely! I even ditched my cardigan today :-) But I still haven’t worn a short sleeved shirt or jumper this year, so I don’t really know how hot it would have to be before I would swap my roll neck jumper for something lighter…anyway, we are promised more nice weather for a few more days so I am just enjoying it while we have it. I promised you more photos yesterday, and here are some from my garden taken over the week-end.

Viewing Blog Movies

Do the movies on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet 

play ‘catch-up’ all the time when you try to watch them? 

Or do you have to view them in the lowest quality to be 

able to view them at all? There are several ways to work 

around a slow Internet connection, but here is one way

to watch the movies in high quality.