"Fairest of the months! Ripe summer's queen The hey-day of the year With robes that gleam with sunny sheen Sweet August doth appear." - R. Combe Miller
Well August and the school holidays are coming to an end now. Despite the regular showers, our garden has been full of young visitors playing with the different tyre worlds and the cars. There’s certainly lots for them to do. Actually lot of our dinosaurs have gone missing. In fact on Wednesday there were no dinosaurs in dinosaur world at all. So I went on a hunt. The pterodactyls had flown onto zoo world. Unfortunately the zoo’s desert island had been hit by a tornado. Other dinosaurs had moved into the fairy kingdom where our invisible fairies live. And into the raised bed and Diggerland. I think they have a secret life of their own when we aren’t looking.
The garden still has lots of colour. We grew sunflowers this year, many of which are in the garden. We have several different varieties and colours too. I’ve measured the tallest in the garden so far, in Peters pumpkin patch. It seems to be about 2.8 metres. It’s quite a lot shorter than the world record of 9.17 metres or 30 foot and 1 inch though.
Another plant we planned for colour were our nasturtiums. They don’t need a lot of feeding, which can be useful. But although they have grown lots of leaf, including a variegated variety, they have produced very few flowers. Not sure why this is. Anyone any ideas?
Our tomatoes are going red, particularly the tiny ones. And we have our first yellow one too. I’ve been collecting them and putting them on the table for people to take. They are great for kids as the tiny ones are really sweet.
As a result of someone jumping over the wall by the veg garden, our artichoke has been damaged. Not sure if it will recover, as it’s not looking very happy now, but I hope so. Anyway, I have moved the artichoke away from the wall now and replaced it with a prickly berberis that we had in the yard. So if you feel the urge to jump over the wall you have been warned...
The Blooming Old Gardener