Friday…a stay at home, garden day.

The August garden is quite pretty and very interesting! The Cosmos that I sowed from seed, and took ages to grow, has suddenly put on a spurt and flowered; I love the contrast in the pink colour.

The most common butterfly in this garden is the Gatekeeper. Easily identified with the two little dots on the ‘eye’, this helps to not confuse it with the Meadow Brown Butterfly.

I sat and watched as this Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus) shared this pretty pink Allium with a White Banded Drone Fly (Volucella pellucens). And then later on, a different Drone Fly arrived on the same plant.

Meanwhile, if photos could smell, these would knock you out! Three different mint plants that ‘pong’ in the nicest possible way! I deliberately brush against them as I walk past! Gorgeous! 

 

My Comfrey patch is doing well after I cut it all back and made ‘Comfrey soup’! ( By that, I mean ‘soup’ as feed for the garden!!😄) It’s splendid stuff; all that you need to do is put the leaves into a bucket of water and just leave it there for a few weeks…it then stinks the place out! 😱 But it’s wonder food! I either use it as liquid feed or I throw it all into the compost bin. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy potting on next year’s Honesty and Foxgloves. The above is Purple Honesty. I’m still drying the White Honesty. And the Foxgloves…well who knows?! I’ve sown purple, pale pink, apricot and white..and I haven’t labelled them! Oh well…pot luck as they say! I sowed the last of the Foxglove seeds, today as I was just waiting for one plant to set seed.

Today, I took cuttings of a very pretty but old and woody Erysimum, ‘Paintbox’. Not something that I’ve done before but I made sure that I took cuttings with a ‘heel’…and so fingers crossed! 

The new garden sign has settled in very nicely! 😁 It was a bargain from, ‘ The Range’.  ‘Potting Shed’ is more apt than ‘Garden Shop’ but I can pretend! The thing is that I’ve always fancied doing one of those roadside stalls with an honesty box …but we’ve never really lived in the right place for doing this! And now it’s impossible as we live in a private road, in a cul de sac! 🤣 So, to quote Basil Fawlty, ‘ That particular avenue of pleasure has been closed off…’

( Good ‘n proper!)

And now…roses…

‘Peace’ still reigns! I have three different ‘Peace’ roses, all slightly different and all doing their own thing. But the best one is the rose that came from Harkness Roses! It’s truly stunning.

Meanwhile, after much deliberation and my other half having picked the final bunch of Sweet Peas, I’ve decided to grow two climbing roses at the back of the garden and I’ll grow the Sweet Peas elsewhere. Thus, I visited all the best Rose growers and spent ages trying to decide. There was one rose that I really wanted; it was called, ‘Meg’  (that being the name of my granddaughter) but it was not available. I loved the colour:

And so I decided on these below. These are from Peter Beale Roses. The first one, a similar colour to ‘Meg’, is ‘Schoolgirl’. This is an older rose and I bought it when I had my very first garden, back in the late 1970s! I know that it’s reliable and that it’s repeat flowering…with a scent.

The second climber is ‘Golden Showers’. I reckon everyone has heard of this one! We had this in our previous garden and oh boy was it good! It flowered and flowered all summer! So reliable! 

I’ve collected plenty of my own seeds, this year and I’ve already sourced some wild flower seeds to encourage butterflies and moths. However, I couldn’t help but notice that T&M had a brilliant offer …spend £20 and get £10 off!  Many of the seed packets were also already reduced and so, as my seed box is almost empty, I took advantage! Naturally. 🌺🌼🌺