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.

Colourful July flowers - GBBD

It is the middle of the month and Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day - and I have been pondering about what to call today’s post. I named the previous post ‘From a rainy London’ and I am afraid that title is still just as appropriate despite that we have been repeatedly promised better weather. OK, so we have had one day here and there without rain, today was such a day and it was brilliant the few moments when the sun was shining. We might be in for a week of better weather starting from tomorrow, but we have been promised hot summer weather so many times now so I am taking one day at the time. Yesterday I had my iPad with me out in the garden where I can see BBC weather for my postcode hour by hour and for every hour it said sunny intervals – while the rain kept coming and going and I had to seek shelter in the shed together with my camera. So much for local weather forecast!

I have so much in flower right now that I can't possibly show you everything, and even just one photo of each plant would have been way too many photos so today I have used the mosaic feature extensively. Fill up a mug of your favourite brew and come for a walk with me in my July Garden.

Glorious days, chilly at night - March GBBD

The warm winter weather we had in December and January is long forgotten, it has been a very long spell of night temperatures down to almost freezing for ages - more or less the last 6 weeks. As soon as the sun goes down it gets cold very quickly and it will typically be min. 2-5 C at night. The day temperatures are not bad though, 8-12 C (46 – 53 F) and the sun is getting stronger every day. But I am fed up with dragging tender plants in and out of my shed so a few more degrees at night would make all the difference. In my garden I have only had 3 proper frost nights this winter, one in November, one in February and one so far in March – each night the temperature went down to -1 C for a few hours just before sunrise, and by the time the sun was up the temp was well into plus again. Winter in London isn’t much to write home about really! And I have had no snow this winter either....hope I don’t jinx it by saying that, I certainly don’t need any snow this late – but the latest I have seen snow here in London is actually 8th April! It didn’t lay long of course, was gone after a few hours, but even so, no thank you, I am more than ready for nice warm weather now.

Last year’s daylilies

Last year I kept promising I would make a separate post about my daylilies once they all had finished flowering. The first one started to flower in June and I took photos of them all when they were in flower, and waited for them all to finish, but there were several that just kept throwing out flower after flower - and the last daylily flowered in mid-November! I therefore decided to wait until now to give you the whole presentation – after all, what could be more uplifting on a cold January day than a whole bunch of cheerful daylilies?!

My Amaryllis

I used to have 5 amaryllis bulbs, I had them for many years, they flowered every February/March and I always took the plants outside during the summer. And in late autumn every year I took the bulbs out of the compost, cleaned them up and put the bulbs in a container under my garden bench for the 6 weeks that they needed to be chilled in order to flower again. But one winter we had a lot of rain, the water managed to enter the box where I kept my amaryllis bulbs and they all rotted. I had to throw them all away and that was the end of it – for quite a few years.

My Hellebores

Today the meteorological spring starts here in Britain and although some people stubbornly keep to the astronomical start of spring, which is 21st March, here in London 1st of March is a good time to start talking about spring – the gardens and parks have usually started their spring flowers well before this date anyway.

My fuchsias

Summer is still going strong here in London, it is Bank Holiday Week-end though and the obligatory rain will appear in a few hours time – in buckets apparently, and it is supposed to rain until lunchtime Sunday. A whole 36 hours of rain might not be so welcomed by the carnival goers but it is going to be marvellous for my parched garden, I hope we get as much as we are promised although I can do without the warned flooding, thank you very much.

My lilies

My oriental lilies are finally flowering! I wish scented blog photos were invented so you could smell my garden right now, it is like standing in the middle of a flower shop, with your face buried in a sea of lilies! All the plants in my garden has been very late to flower this year, thanks to the exceptionally cold spring we had, it seems like the delay has just continued and still is. I never thought I had to wait until August to get my oriental lilies in flower!

My roses

I have waited a long time for my roses this year, a very long time, but finally I have roses in my garden! The first flush of flowers is always the best with the most flowers, but all my rosebushes are repeat flowering and will go on producing roses until February next year when I cut them down. Normally it takes around 8-10 weeks from cutting the bushes down in first week of February until the very first flowers appear, and the first big flush usually comes sometime in May. But this year nothing is as usual in my garden and everything is late, many things very late. All the more welcome though, now that the roses finally are here :-)