It was July 29th, 2024, and the summer season was just galloping by with no sign of good sunny weather arriving.
I walked out in the back garden, and I felt a certain sense of excitement. I heard bees buzzing and I saw my first Red Admiral butterfly of the year. As I went up the steps to the top of the garden, I noted some very busy ants moving grains of dust. They were scurrying around, and they seemed more active than usual. It is time for the annual nuptial flight so maybe I will get a chance to witness this great mating event in the ant world.
After all the wet weather there seemed to be a lot of blackflies attacking the dahlias and roses. I went into the garage and got my Bug Free Organic spray with its natural active ingredients, to give my flowers some added protection. Having completed this task, I moved along admiring some newly emerging summer flowers.
While I am looking at the Lovely Agapanthus Blue Nile, I notice some invaders in the form of snails clinging to the underside of some leaves. I start to remove them and place them on the garden table. Their tiny antlers are up as they try to relocate their position.
Summer weather had arrived, and nature was belatedly showing off its traditional colourful floral display. The rain sodden flowers were beginning to lift their heads as they dried off. I also noted that there was a lot of deadheading to be done and as I returned my spray to the shed, I grabbed a secateurs and bucket to start snipping and deadheading our dahlias, roses, euryops, daisies, hostas and cosmos.
As I went around, I noted some plants that were very dry in their pots, despite all the rain, particularly one agapanthus. It was really pot bound and very dry so I went off and fetched the watering can and poured some water into the pot, but it just flowed back out. The whole plant was totally pot bound. We will probably have to break the pot to get it out.
We have been eating our fresh organic scallions from our garden supply for weeks now. We bought one packet of seeds earlier this year and planted the seed in rotation in a garden pot with a small few additions every few weeks.
Just above them on the garden steps in another pot I am carefully nurturing my three tomato plants ensuring they are watered regularly and get their weekly feed of ‘Big Tom’ super tomato food every week. I now have fourteen green tomato babies and hopefully with the help of this sunshine that has arrived this week they will mature into tasty red salad tomatoes.
Our sauce hollandaise daisies put on a mighty floral display for the past month but have taken a battering from the excessive rain fall this summer and now are in urgent need of large-scale deadheading.
But let’s not despair because our annual garden rescuer, Rudbeckia Fulgida Goldstrum is ready to burst into bloom and unleash its lavish annual display of gold-coloured flowers with black eyed Susie centres which will keep us mesmerised until November.
Meanwhile it has been a fantastic year for Hydrangeas which seem to have thrived in the rain. Ordinarily they need a lot of watering, so the rainy season suited them well. We see their name originated from two Latin words, hydro, meaning water and angeion, meaning barrel.
I hope you get out in your garden today to do a bit of weeding, take out the barbecue, or just sit out in the sun, sip a coffee and read a book or flick through your phone or I pad.
Whatever you chose to do, relax and enjoy yourself in the outdoor world of the garden.
Mick O Callaghan. 30/07/2024
You have a lovely garden.Very interesting comments and observations too.Margaret.