Can I find summer in Lost and Found?

Hello, I am still around....but someone took my summer and ran away with it – I can’t find it! And now the weather forecasters on TV keep talking about autumn. Eh? Not yet please, I want July and August first, I have been too busy, last time I looked at the calendar it was late June.

This is what’s been going on here, my bathroom is not finished yet....but we’re almost, almost there. It’s been a very slow process with workers being off site more of the time than working here, but it’s only one small job left – and then it’s the inspection and signing off the work to do. I have promised not to plaster loads of photos on Facebook of the finished bathroom as it is really looking gorgeous (they let me choose fixtures, fittings, colours, floor and tiles etc so everything fits nicely together) – the surveyor from the council was slightly worried they would have a rush of people wanting to have the same. So I am not ‘plastering loads of photos on Facebook’, I am just posting ONE photo on my gardening blog, and quite frankly I don’t think there’s much risk of many council tenants in my borough reading gardening blogs from looking at most gardens in my neighbourhood. So here’s a photo from my renovated and especially adapted bathroom. The most important part of the bathroom is the bath lift which means that I now have a bathtub instead of the old, difficult to use shower and can safely get out of the bathtub on my own. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy having a soak in the bath after having been working in the garden in the evenings!

It has been extreme weather around the globe the last few months, London has not had anything we can call extreme but we have smashed a few records both in terms of cold, hot, dry and wet – all in the space of a few months. This photo is from first week of July when we had a long spell of mid 30s C. My neighbour’s cat knows where to find water.

The garden today is mainly about keep watering, I am not doing much else, it takes most of the time I have. It has been raining now and then, but a single day with rain is just so very inadequate. We need 3 weeks with constant rain. At least. The trees are already losing leaves because it’s so dry, and I didn’t get any apples this year because of drought. But the roses are growing like mad, they seem happy enough – if you can disregard the mildew here and there. Some parts of the garden you need a machete to get through. I can see some pruning being on my to-do list soon!

They say you can’t grow plum tomatoes in Britain without a greenhouse – so I had to try, of course. Despite a chilly August they are ripening nicely and taste delicious. I hope they all have time to ripen, failing that there’s always airing cupboard, works a treat for cherry tomatoes so I hope it will work for these too.

I have been eating food from my garden since early June.

Not sure what happened to these cherry tomatoes, they are not split so I don’t think it is my watering regime. It was only one branch, but in any case – they tasted just as lovely!

Today’s harvest.

The raspberries are the most productive food plants I have – they have become a jungle next to my front door. These autumn raspberries were meant to be small and compact, suitable for containers. Hah! I have cut down, pruned and pinched since April and it’s still a jungle – and I pick a bowl of raspberries every day. The pharmacy driver who delivers all my medication is interested in gardening and keeps asking questions about my plants, I know he has a much bigger garden than me so I have given the 2 containers to him. Once we have had frost and the plants have died down he will get them and the plants will get a new home in the ground where they will be much happier (and bigger!) and provide food for his family for years to come. I have already bought some new (definitely compact!) raspberry plants for next year.

I have taken so many photos since last time I wrote a post, I can’t possibly show you all, but I have made some collages to enable more photos today. To best view the photos you can click or tap to get them full size. More photos will be on my Facebook page in the next few weeks.

Rosa ‘Wildeve’

Rosa ‘Wildeve’

My brugmansia, now so big I can just about squeeze past to get into the kitchen!

Brugmansia.

Brugmansia cutting, and the cutting I took in November last year, now a flowering 1m tall plant. Yikes!

The last of the lilies, no more lilies until May next year.

The darkest rose ever!

Rose ‘Gaujard’

Hydrangea ‘Mega Mindy’ is an amazing hydrangea, the flowers slowly changes colour from white to red over the course of summer into autumn!

The soft pink stage is very pretty.

And this is the colour today. Will it be even darker red?

Cosmos

Dahlia Gallery......can't remember which one, but she is sweet :-)

Zantedeschia aethiopica

Gladiolus callianthus murielae.

My experiment with cucamelons has been more than successful – I have cucamelons coming out of my ears!! I am giving away to anyone coming here, and I knock on my neighbours now and then and give them too – I have even given away to Tesco delivery drivers if they have wanted....well, better than putting them in the compost bin. They really need to be eaten the day you pick them and are best when they are firm like a cucumber. They taste a bit sour, I think they taste a bit like cucumber with lime, some people say they taste a bit lemony and some say just a bit sour. I guess we all taste a bit different – if you leave them too long they go soft and loose the flavour and don’t taste much at all. They should feel like biting into a cucumber and that’s when they are really yummy. You could go and just eat them like that, or cut them in two and toss in a salad or a stir-fry or anywhere you use cucumber – or find inventive use for them online. I bought mine as tiny seedlings online and as they are perennials I will try to keep them for next year. Failing that they are easy to buy from nurseries here.

Dahlia ‘Onesta White’.

My only martagon lily – I can’t make up my mind what this colour is – orangey-pink?

I keep getting questions about the foxes, yes, they are still here, I see them every day and they often pass me in the garden unaware that I am sitting by the table working - suddenly we end up face to face and the foxes run for nearest bush to take cover. The cubs are getting quite big now and only when you see them together with their mum can you see there is still a difference in size. There is however still a marked difference in their bark and other sounds, and when the cubs are play fighting in the garden it sounds like they are tearing each other and the whole garden apart! I have had to go out quite a few times to break up their fights as I have been afraid they would make too much damage to my poor plants. Fortunately they are still afraid of me so cubs and mum scatter as soon as I come out and give them a stern talking to!

I have been trying to take photos and movies of them ever since they were born, but they didn’t emerge from behind the shed until late April and being so shy it has been very difficult. I never carry my phone around in the garden, and neither my camera, except when I am taking pictures, and the few times they seem opportune to appear right when I am standing taking photos you can bet your life all I get is a blurry line. This photo I took the other day is the closest I have got to a cub photo, and you probably have to enlarge it to see the cub next to the rubbish bin in the background. Cue the chilled out cat in the foreground! The foxes and the cats live side by side here and don’t bother each other. It is a myth that foxes eat cats – foxes are scavenges and the foxes in London would much rather have a half-eaten Mc Donald meal than having to go through the trouble of killing and eat a cat :-)

I have managed to film one of the cubs though, a small piece is part of today’s garden movie at the bottom of this post, around 3:15 minutes into the film.

My most successful pelargoniums, they are mostly surviving outside all year.

Hydrangea cuttings from my previous garden.

Cosmos.

Last photo - of beautyberry flowers. Soon these flowers will turn to gorgeous dark plum berries and it will be autumn.

My garden movie was filmed Monday this week – apparently the hottest August Bank Holiday Monday on record, it was 31 degrees in my garden during the day and filming had to wait until early evening.

Music: Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka by Antonín Dvorák, performed by Joshua Bell.

As always, my movies are best viewed with the sound turned up, in HD and full screen if you have the speed for it.

That was a brief update, so much to tell – so many photos to show you. Monday this week we had sizzling tropical summer, 3 days later we have only 18 degrees C – it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the British weather. If you have found my summer, please return it to me, I could do with another month or two :-)

Until next time, take care.