The pond was still intact this morning, which was good news. I even caught the blackbird having a dip. Some of the beach stones had rolled further down, but I’m happy with just scooping them up from time to time.

I was hoping for the next piece of wildlife to turn up and Mother Nature took the hint and gave me a pond skater when I was on my way out of the plot!

I did a mammoth weed of Bed 11 to allow the oca room to grow. It’s doing quite nicely and I think I’m missing two plants is all. There are also verbena seedlings in this bed and elsewhere, which I’ve left to mature further since my wall of verbena in the left bed has decreased considerably.

The first cucumber is doing very well and I’ve found another seedling under a borage leaf. There’s no sign of the other two, so the wigwam is just kinda architectural at this point. There’s a lot of borage in Bed 1 and 7 and it’s just started to flower. It’s still going to get ripped up if it gets in the way though.

I had little zinnias still at home, which I’ve pinched and put in Beds 6 and 7. Bed 6 is one of my disappointments. The nasturtiums really haven’t done much yet and the various  seeds I put in are coming up, but not spread out very well.

The woodland bed is quite pretty with weeds and seeds. I weed it bit by bit, taking out weeds when they’re obviously bad. There are small bits of log hidden in there too.

I mowed the whole plot on 1, which was delightful. It’s so much nicer (and quieter) to walk on when it’s this short.

I also did all the feeding, with tomato food going to the tomatoes for the first time. There’s no rain around at the moment and I think the butts are getting down a bit.

I ended up in among the apple tree, cutting back brambles and cutting down five foot tall nettles. If I had a bigger plot I might have set up a nettle fertiliser tub, but I just don’t have room.

I did the deadheading and finally planted the fuchsia that’s been languishing at home. I had to pull up a corncockle and a little poppy, but the fuchsia wasn’t going to last any longer in its pot.

The flowers are looking good and I have to keep telling myself that the plot actually looks really good if I don’t think about the few bits that are a little disappointing / slow this year.

Flowers have arrived on all the tomatoes and the beans have started to flower.

I did some major weeding: the woodland bed, Beds 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 9. This year there are lots of bramble seedlings over on the right and little unknown shiny-leaved volunteers.

In the afternoon I worked on the pond, digging out under the liner at the shallow end, deeper and further than I’d begun the night before. I had a collection of new farm rock and a bowl of foraged gravel to aid the new design. The beach is now wider and the sides are not quite as steep. I didn’t change anything under the big rock, so farm rock has made a nice wall there to cover the liner. The end of the front shelf was a real conundrum and I had decided to get more bark from the stream pile before I found a great piece under the apple tree when I was placing a new log there. I tried to bend it and it broke, so it’s actually wired together, with the wire hidden in plain sight. Hopefully the crows won’t immediately flick it into the pond.

A post-work visit to do the strimming. The clover had come up enough that I basically mowed the place with the trimmer too. Touring the plot shows that unfortunately every bed needs weeding.

Most of the ocas have come up in little clumps of foliage. In the next bed the onions have started fattening up. I need to water things again – though there was a random small, but heavy shower later in the evening.

Flowers have appeared on the runner beans and the tomatoes have flower buds too. The sweet peas are fattening up a bit, but have a long way to go. The front of the bed has lobelia and some candytuft coming, but it’s not going to be the sea of candytuft I had in a previous year.

The nasturtiums in Bed 5 are picking up. Bed 6 is still kinda weedy-looking. It’s not the best year really. Things just aren’t taking off the way I want them too. Maybe July will be better – although Bed 3 is on the turn to July emptiness now that the nigella has gone to seed.  The bought cosmos are robust though – but bizarrely non-random in their lines.

 

Just a deadheading visit – which included snipping the scapes off the silly garlic.

Another round of feeding today. There’s been good rain, so no need to worry about that. Beds 1, 4, 9, the sunflowers and the perovskias were given general feed.  The cosmos have started flowering, so they got tomato food.

The cosmos I bought was all mixed, but so far all but one are dark pink.

I went back at the end of the day to mow and was stalked from the very beginning by the baby robin, fairly unfazed by the sound of the mower.

There was a brown lump in the middle of the track today when we went down to do some errands. I feel like I might have driven over the same thing the other day, but this time I got out and discovered a sleeping hedgehog. He was just about responsive, so I scooped him up and put him in the car. His spines were incredibly sharp. In the afternoon I took him to the wildlife hospital, so we’ll see if he recovers.

In other news, one freesia from the new bulbs is out, but being completely squished by daffodil foliage. No sign of any others.

An exemplary non-weekend watering visit. The water forget me not has just begun to flower and the first ocas has just started to come up between the garlic.

New life spotted: it looks like I have a new cucumber up. Though I didn’t actually lift the lid to see if it was a borage instead. And in the pond a bit of weed clearing brought up a bunch of wildlife. I now have to be careful when netting. There were lots of water lice in the net, along with other unknowns.

The last day of my week’s holiday was marked by a flyover from 3 DC-3 Dakotas – a few times in fact.

I had finally managed to germinate some cucumber seeds with a second round in the airing cupboard. So I’ve put those in at the 3 empty canes, plus the last one between two canes as backup.

I’ve fed my struggling perovskias. Both plants were beautiful last year when I bought them. Where have they gone?

Doing the first round of deadheading and some weeding, I discovered that some interesting seeds are coming up at the back of the beds, so maybe late summer will be a little better than usual?

I now have at least two big beetles in the pond. While one came up to see me, there was at least one other further away.

I’ve planted the remaining crappy nasturtiums into Bed 6 to help fill it up. 3 zinnias have gone into Bed 7. I’ve potted on the 4 smaller ones for later pinching and hopefully colour that could be used in a late summer hole.

All the calendula has gone into Bed 1, with one by the shed and one in the triangle. They too need to buck up.

I discovered that the mad clover that I’d seen before had spread into about a 3 foot circle. So I’ve pulled it all up from the grass and cut through its roots, before covering the patch with grass need.

I’ve put all the lobelia into Bed 9. Just as well I put them in a slightly bigger tray at home; they never would have survived otherwise and they’re noticeably larger. I fed Bed 9 with half-power feed (1 cap per 4 litres) and gave some to the sunflowers too. The tomatoes and cosmos got full strength feed.

I deadheaded the pond irises and cleared the pond, though there wasn’t all that much weed to gather. The forget me nots have their first flower buds.

I added a bunch of corn cockles around the sunflower and borage in Bed 7. They might help each other stand up. The courgette had been pulled out and was dead. Although I have a spare at home, I think I’ll just fill this space with the zinnias.

The marigolds that I grew at home have gone in near the cucumber (and site of possible other cucumbers!) and a few more in Bed 1 too.

There’s not much more to do in my big week off now. Beds 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 are all done. Bed 1 needs calendula, Bed 6 needs more nasturtiums, Bed 7 needs zinnias and some more cucumbers if they can play ball. If I magically have time, I do still want to dig under the beach of the pond and make it a gentler slope.