Category Archive

A pleasant day, mostly sunny, about 20ºC. Hopefully, we have left behind those days of fierce heat. No good for flora or fauna. It rained a little yesterday, enough for us to skip evening watering last night, but today many plants were suffering. So we watered on. I took down the leaflets for our Late Summer Celebration which was last …

It’s been a hot, dry week with temperatures reaching 33ºC. Today, it drops to 24ºC which is more bearable but it remains dry. We spend much of the afternoon filling our barrels from water we ferry over from Kevin’s flat in Sprowston Road. And then we water the garden. We have lots of plants in pots and some of our …

Most of our flowers have finished their season but there are still plenty of bees. I suspect they are going for levels of nectar they would have disdained a month ago, working harder for less reward. There’s a bumble bee on a clump of purple toadflax. It’s hairy with a sort of brown scarf round its thorax. There are 24 …

August is a month that begins in summer and ends in autumn. Today, mid month, feels like an early autumn day. It is warm and windy, and many of the flowers have finished blooming, so you need to look a little harder to see what there is. We have three small pear trees by the back stage all with fruit, …

A painted lady and cabbage white butterfly fly through the pergola. There are lots of butterflies around, and bees too, in the remaining flowering plants: hollyhocks, globe thistles, gazanias, and lychnis. But it is also the time of year for blackberries and there are quite a few by the side of the pond, but difficult to get at as they …

It’s warm in the garden when I arrive and cloudy. At around 3pm, the sun comes out and it’s hot. This is the walled garden effect, which is why large country houses wall in their vegetable gardens. It protects fruit and veg from the worst of the weather, and gives them more heat in summer. Our walled garden is not …

The hottest day of the year, peaking at 37ºC in the garden. It’s a record for July in the UK (38.1ºC in Cambridge) but that’s no cause for celebration. These hot days are a prelude of what is to come, payback for our reliance on fossil fuels, on our meat consumption and the population increase. The UK climate is becoming …

It rained this morning, not a lot, a few millimetres, but enough to liven the plants for the day. And limit our watering to the greenhouse plants and those under the pergola walkway. The month has been very dry; we have come in during the evenings to water, especially those plants in pots which dry out quickest. Last night, the …

It’s hot and dry, with water stocks low. So reminiscent of last year’s drought. We have had so little rain in the past few weeks that I am too aware of what is to come in the coming decades with climate change. Just before leaving home, I read in the paper about a report from the Crowther Lab, a Swiss …

Britain in Bloom are coming to judge us tomorrow. So we are having a tidy up. A lorry load of woodchip arrived yesterday, and today we wheelbarrow it around the garden, and spread it over the paths and between the raised beds. But all this tidying up sets me thinking. We have put down more artificial grass by the side …