We’ve had a lot of wet weather recently, yesterday it rained steadily all day, so there was no way I was going outside for my ‘meander round the garden’! This morning was overcast but dry, so I managed a couple of hours in the garden, transplanting seedlings (Thompson and Morgan reckon they’re ‘garden ready’!! ,…not in my garden! and moving plants around to make way for new ones.

The astrantia and the big pink geranium have gone a bit mad round the patio, the geranium is gradually climbing up the garden, it’s already reached the rose bed above. I’m planning to sort that one out in the autumn. The astrantia is lovely but it has self seeded pretty much all over the garden. I looked at the clump to the left of the arch…

…there’s at least seven clumps there, goodness knows how many are on the other side!. I decided to be ruthless as they were squashing a lot of the other plants nearby. So I’ve dug up all the ones on the left and offered them to my OH for the front garden, any not required there can go on the back lane. I bought two white foxgloves and a cream lupin on the market on Saturday and I’ve also gained a purple sage from my daughter, so I don’t think this corner will be empty for long.

All the bird feeders or on the other side of the arch, they’ve been busy again, emptying the sunflower hearts in a matter of days. During nesting time we seem to go fairly quiet with birds for some reason, but we now have the fledglings visiting too. We have gold finches, bullfinches, chaffinch, great tits, blue tits, coal tits and robins all visiting regularly. Early one morning we even saw a baby woodpecker clinging to the wooden fence.There’s a clematis growing up the birdfeeder at the moment, I think the birds appreciate the little bit of cover it offers. I bught some niger seed and a special feeder as the finches are supposed to love it…they haven’t touched it, we haven’t seen a single bird on the niger seed!

The roses are all doing there best to bloom, not helped by the wet weather which has turned some of the blooms into brown blobs. This one is called Port Sunlight, it was one I found still in it’s pot in my mum’s garden, it’s settled into my amber & amethyst garden nicely.

The top garden is looking pretty full with roses and shrubs all mingling together. The two yellow flowers you can see under the cottinus are day lillies just starting to flower.

All in all it’s looking pretty colourful at the moment, lots of weeding and dead heading to do as usual, but it looks good from a distance!