EOMV June 2016 from a rainy London

It is End of Month View again and I usually open to say something about the weather the last month, but what can I say this time to describe the miserable summer weather we have had, except call it…....MISERABLE! An afternoon or morning here and there without rain doesn’t in any way make up for the next 3, 4 or 5 days of rain. And that’s how it has been for ages now. I did water my garden a bit in May, but I haven’t touched the hose for a very long time, it hasn’t been necessary, not even for the pots and containers and they usually dry out even when it rains. But the kind of rain we have had lately has been buckets at the time so even the containers have been happy. In fact, the garden is mostly very happy with the weather – lots of rain and rather chilly, with max day temp of 16-22 degrees (60-71 F) – perfect for most of my plants. I am the only one not happy with a summer like that. Oh, and my dahlias, they are not happy either. Here in my new garden the soil is very different to my previous one, much more clay, so the soil, combined with heavily saturated ground made the dahlias rot, all of them – all the ones I planted. Those few I didn’t get around to plant are still fine growing in pots, but all 20-22 or so that I planted in the ground are lost, never even emerged. Oh well, maybe dahlias won’t be a feature here in my new garden then!

June roses - GBBD 2016

It is middle of June and it is 4 weeks since I came out of hospital – no idea where those 4 weeks have gone! Thank you to all well wishes on my previous post, I am getting better and have had help in my garden both from gardening friends and from the Great British Weather – it has rained and rained and rained and....good for my garden - and good for me so I haven’t had to water. The very cold and late spring made everything bloom much later than normal this year, I didn’t have a single rose in April which is very unusual for my garden, now I have roses, lots of roses – many of them presented here, but I thought perhaps showing you all 26 would be a bit too much....oh, yes, I have got a few more roses here in my new garden compared to my previous garden – more space, more roses. I think I might be able to squeeze in possible one or two more eventually! But here are today’s GBBD photos.