Our house sale fell through a couple of weeks ago when the buyers backed out, we therefore had to back out of the house purchase, fortunately it was just a couple of days after agreeing a price so we hadn’t incurred any legal costs. After a couple of weeks mulling things over and my daughter craftily talking to us both individually and planting a seed of an idea…we have decided to stay put and hopefully get help for the garden, as she pointed out it’s a dormer bungalow so perfect if we get to the age when stairs are difficult as we can live quite happily downstairs as both our bedroom and the main bathroom are downstairs! We’ll look at ways of making the garden safer for me too.

Having neglected the garden somewhat since we agreed the sale, I thought I’d better start some weeding and tidying up at the weekend.

My OH helped weed round the lawn by the pond…

Down by the patio I have a couple of lovely hydrangeas in flower. In the spring I moved two from pots into a newly dug bed. Of course the beautiful pale blue one I bought about five years ago at the Harrogate show looks really healthy…but yet again not a single flower!!! It hasn’t flowered since I bought it!!! However, the gorgeous cream one I bought on Otley market has three stunning blooms, they’re huge…

I’ve another light coloured one in a pot which has several flowers on it too, it’s one of those which fades beautifully…

I’m thinking of moving this one to the raised bed in the autumn. Considering what a dry summer we’ve had, I’m pretty pleased with these, I’m not exactly good at remembering to water plants!

I’ve a couple of late flowering clematis down by the patio which are still covered in flowers, these are both many years old, well probably about 15. This purple one is called Romantica, it fascinates me as some of the flowers have five petals and some just four, I’m pretty sure it’s not just that one has fallen off.

August tends to be a bit of a funny month in a typical English cottage garden, most of the summer flowering plants are past there best and the autumn ones haven’t really come into their own yet. I was pleased to see a little vista from the path across to the big fence has still got lots of interest. The coarse leaved plant at the front with little blue flowers is actually a shrubby clematis, I bought it a few years ago at the Harrogate show, it’s not a shrub you often see for sale here, it’s not the most interesting plant but it fills a gap in late summer.

The pink rose in the foreground is called The Alnwich rose, the pink flowering shrub is a spirea and the white rose further down is called Champagne Moments, we bought these when we got married and they flower their socks off all summer and into the autumn.

It’s been a very dry summer here in the UK, we currently have a hosepipe ban until the reservoirs fill up again. Apparently many mature trees are struggling and dropping their leaves already so it’ll be interesting to see which ones survive the winter. Our black sambuscus on the right is already loosing it’s leaves where as usually it’s leaves don’t drop until mid autumn.

I’ve quite a bit of work to do in the garden now, starting the autumn tidy-up and pulling up the weeds before they set seed. I think I need to discipline myself more to get out in the garden more regularly!