Let’s not talk about the weather. Let’s just enjoy it! Even though a bit warm for me to do much in the garden other than some dead-heading and watering, I have removed all the tulips from the pots and cleaned and stored them, ready to go into the garden in November. I shall buy new bulbs for the containers. I also gave my weeping Kilmarnock Willow tree a haircut. The branches were touching the ground all the way round giving it a ball-like look instead of the droopy image it should have. So, dead branches removed and many shortened have given it a more graceful look and the wind can now flow under her skirts.

1. Lilies. Oriental lilies to be exact, which look pretty, but have no perfume. I have had these  for years and when on a balcony they added summer colour, now though they just attract the attention of the S&S and get their leaves bitten and flower buds chomped and even the petals look as though something has drawn a razor-sharp tongue along them. Time to perhaps condemn them to the compost heap and buy something more exotic and resistant to the molluscs.
   
2. Musk Mallow (Malva moschata) –  you may remember that I mentioned sowing a raised bed with a packet of bee flowering seeds last summer (the bed used to kill off part of the lawn) and I was rewarded with loads of Californian poppies, nigella, lacy phacelia, a few musk mallow and some red flowers I never did identify. Then this spring bright orange wallflowers appeared followed by a mass of hedge woundwort and these musk mallow in pink and white. It is attractive to both butterflies and bees and produces a faint musky smell during the evening. Unfortunately stuck in the middle are the sweet peas I planted, completely overwhelmed by the rest of the flower bed. Next year I shall know better.
   
3. Penstemon – variety unknown as these come from a cutting off a neighbours plant a few years ago. Coral pink and definitely not in keeping with my colour scheme. Trouble is they propagate so easily that I have no less than three big clumps of them now. There was a fourth, but that succumbed to the snow we had in March.
   
4. Yellow Loosestrife or Whorled Loosetrife (Lysimachia Punctata) – another inherited plant this grows happily in my ‘Woodland border’. Apparently attracts butterflies, but they have been conspicuously lacking in my garden this year. Seems a hardy plant and resisitant to the S&S, only issue being it grows quite tall and suffers badly on a windy day. This year I have spared no expense and purchased a couple of lovely supports for it.
   
5. Hebe. I have two three hebes in the garden, one Hebe ‘Silver Queen’ (Hebe elliptica ‘Variegata’) has variegated yellow and green leaves and a deep violet-blue flower which appears in summer and in the late autumn, the other has tiny leaves and is more of a ground cover plant, not always flowering (and I suspect I have planted it in the wrong place), but when it does the flowers are a very pretty pale baby blue. Possibly Hebe vernicosa. The third one is from a cutting so I don’t know the type, longer flowers spikes and green leaves. I had forgotten planting it out last year.
   Bees love hebes.
   
6. Last this week is my unidentified white rose. As a Yorkshire lass I am partial to a white rose, so that’s good. There are three of these growing on the fence between me and my neighbour. Not in the best of shape, but I have been doing my best to encourage them. This year the one which grows from one spindly stem has managed to give me no less than 24 blooms. Lovely flowers too, before the wind gets to them, but no fragrance. I may cut all of them down to around 1m in the spring and see if that encourages new and sturdier growth. If not it will be the compost heap for them and maybe some new roses for me. I don’t have time to hang around waiting. And I do prefer roses with a scent.
   

Meanwhile there is some cloud cover today, so I might just nip out to visit a nearby garden and see what they are growing in their summer borders. Can’t do enough research 🙂

See here for the participant’s guide.

Six on Saturday