Patience, patience

They say patience is a virtue, but my goodness – my patience has been wearing thin lately when it comes to my bathroom adaptation. I have worked hard to drive the case forward since moving in here in May 2015 and I have no idea how long it would have taken if I had just left everything to the council, but this week the work started, FINALLY!!!

Endless London summer – EOMV 2016

It’s the last day of August, the last day of summer and autumn is officially starting tomorrow – but here in London the summer is far from over. We have had the best summer for years, once it finally got going, and the reminiscences of the unusually cold spring and early part of the summer is now a bleak memory. The good weather started on 16th July and today, nearly 7 weeks later I can look back on several short heatwaves with well over 30 degrees and the rest has been in the mid to high 20s. Last week we had 34 degrees a couple of days and for me that’s a bit too high, I am happier in the garden with around 25 degrees C. Despite having had some rain forecasted a couple of times we have only had proper rain once and it was a welcome 24 hours of rain – but that was back in July. Everything is really dry and the ghost of mildew is hovering over my garden, threatening to invade. So far I have managed to stay clear but all the watering is taking its toll. I wouldn’t mind 3-4 days of non-stop rain....

No August slump in my garden - GBBD

I started last post by saying summers are a bit hit and miss here in Britain – but here in the South East we can’t complain about the weather the last 4 weeks, it has been just warm enough to be called summer, not too hot and with plenty of sunshine. Only thing missing would be rain for a few hours every night so I wouldn’t have to do all the watering – but I am being picky now! It has actually rained only once the last 4 weeks, it was a good rainfall of almost 24 hours, but being nearly 4 weeks ago it is now a bleak memory for my garden. The clay soil is bone dry and like concrete and I have given up getting anything more planted a long time ago, it will have to wait until the winter when we get proper, prolonged rain again.

November GBBD – from a stormy London

It’s middle of November and our stormy season has just started, bang on schedule – with Storm Abigail. Here in London we have only noticed the storm as rather windy weather but spare a thought for Scotland where especially on the western side they had winds up to 80 miles per hour (128 km/h or about 70 knots). And only 12 hours after Abigail left, the remnants of Hurricane Kate is right now hitting our shores, dumping unusually high amounts of rain on us. Some places in Britain we can expect up to 250mmm of rain in 36 hours with subsequent flooding. Living here in London I feel rather lucky, sheltered from the worst of the weather, be it snow, rain, storms and flooding. The 10 minutes hailstorm I watched from my window yesterday seemed more like a curiosity and didn’t do any damage. And although it has been raining hard today there is no risk of flooding and the free water from above is just welcome in my garden.

How to tackle Red Lily Beetles

Today’s post is mainly going to be about a topic I have had questions about many times, how to tackle Red Lily Beetles. I absolutely adore lilies and can’t get enough of them, and when I moved house earlier this year I lifted as many bulbs I could find and ended up with 164 lilies in pots – the rest I left to the new tenant, probably nearly 100 of various size. Over the years I have tackled a lot of pest and diseases in my garden, some more frustrating than other, but lily beetles are not really a big problem to me despite the fact that I live in London where the problem with lily beetles is very common.