After the Wind and the Rain

Gentle Reader, the weather was not kind.  Today there is change for the better, and after three days of wind and rain the clearing up begins.  It could have been much worse!  There are a lot of leaves down in my garden from neighbouring trees, and that mess must dry before I start to rake and sweep.  That is the sort of work I expect to do in autumn!

The main casualties are the oriental poppies, which do choose to bloom when bad weather seems imminent every year!  As I said in an earlier entry, the cold has held the blooms back so not too  many were open for the destructive forces of nature.  Only one lily did not remain upright, but I am confident it will recover as it does not seem damaged.

Here are the poppies after I had tried to tie them up, but there is only so much one can do when being buffeted by wind, and rained upon.  I did what I could, we will see how they recover, and it will be interesting to see what happens next year when they are staked early on~

but here is one that bloomed earlier~

 
I think it looks like a gorgeous, pink clamshell, don't you?

This is the stone hedge that forms part of my boundary walls.  It is a Pembrokeshire stone hedge, and may well be two hundred years, or more, old.  I have no way of telling, or finding out~

Until last year it was completely hidden by the ivy.  I removed most of it last summer, and since then I have trimmed it twice, once in the autumn and again in the spring of this year. It looks so much better now, and I am hoping that two half yearly trims will keep it tidy and in check.

Since clearing the lower half, I am delighted to see that nature is returning, and ferns and pennywort have started to grow along the bottom edge and in some nooks and crannies of the stonework.  I love both, and they are the sort of plants you see growing on a stone hedge in the wild countryside~

 
Further along, there are foxgloves and primroses too!

Sadly, I had to cut back much of the lovely honeysuckle that is spilling over from next door's side.  It is so pretty, and the birds love it, but it has a habit of winding around my washing line, clambering over my roof, and generally cutting out my light.  I have done a quick job today, just to keep it away, but think it will need much more drastic attention in the autumn~

In just thirty minutes I filled my garden weed sack!  Later, when it is dry out there I will have to go and sweep up all the debris that was blown in on the winds.  It is too wet and messy right now.  In fact, I doubt I shall do much more until it is dry.  I can be such a wimp!  There are petunias to pot up, so I might attend to those later.  You will see the pictures of those in a future blog, I promise.



Until the next time, Gentle Reader, I leave you with a female blackbird, who is always hopping around the garden looking for grubs to feed her hungry brood of chicks.