Yesterday just in time for lunch the heavens opened and we received torrential rain for several hours. This is in some way a good thing, the ground was beginning to get a little dry and hard in places even though we don’t seem to of had many sunny days yet, just humid muggy heat.
But yesterday the rains came down, and this morning we are reminded of the wonderful wet June we had last year.![rain damage1]()
When if we weren’t sheltering from the rain we were fixing the devastation that it caused. And this morning it’s no different, all hands of all departments are on deck fixing the pathways.
At the moment this is however going to continue to be the way things are when we receive a heavy downpour, it’s partly down to the nature of the site, gravel paths in a valley setting is not really a good idea. And unfortunately at the moment we don’t have the recourses to correct this in any way that is going to make a significant difference to the problem.
But on a lighter note this week has been a good one, we have been getting on top of our usual garden maintenance, weeding, dead heading roses and a little cutting back of Salvia x sylvestris ‘Mainacht’ and Knautia macedonica, this will hopefully encourage them to produce a second flush before the end of the season as it did last year in other areas of the garden. All areas are looking great everything is healthy and lush, and many plants such as Astilbe and filipendula are doing much better this year than they have in the last previous few, where in some cases they have suffered from signs of drought before making it in to flower.
Also yesterday I was able to take advantage of the wet weather and look through some bulb and seed catalogues to plan container displays for the spring. This year I’m hoping to get seeds to grow in the next few weeks so that I can have some winter interest in my containers before the bulbs flower a little later in the spring, in previous years I have used only bulbs which look fabulous in the spring when in flower, but it’s a very long time from removing the spent summer displays until the burst of spring, at least this way there will be interest all season long.