A plumber has fixed the leak in the water pipes coming to our tap. So we have running water again, and don’t we need it. We have not had a decent downpour since early April when we had 3mm of rain. A dribble. It goes on and on, this dry spell. It was why we had running water put in, for dry periods like this. Drought is becoming more frequent with climate change. We collect as much rainwater as we can but as the days warm, it will run out quickly. So we need that tap.
Our tap has a concrete slab over the connecting pipes which is why we took so long to realise we had a leak. We are going to replace it with a grating, so we can see if there’s a leak, and not run the risk of paying hundreds of pounds for wasted water. We are still hoping to bring the bill down.
I pull out blanket weed from the pond. It is an endless task, as it grows so quickly, the conditions being perfect for it: warm water and nutrients such as nitrogen in the pond, a very heaven for blanket weed. All we can do it keep pulling it out, as we are not going for a chemical remedy.
Irises are out on the pond, tall stately, almost a metre high, bright yellow blooms, you can see them across the garden. There are still some to break into flower.
The geums near the Fothergill bed have been in flower for months, pinkish red. They go on and on. We have replanted the fothergilla shrub. It so nearly died on us. We dug it out and put it in water. The rootball was so tight. Pot bound they call it. A condition where the roots can’t get into the surrounding soil to grow. I eased it somewhat. I hope enough, so it can get established.
The buddleia is twelve feet high. How that stuff grows! And never mind the drought. It was brought to this country from China in the 1896, and first grown in Kew. And how it has thrived, escaping cultivation, even growing in walls, high up. Quite a show off.
I counted 17 female flowers on the walnut tree. The male flowers have long gone, to stop self fertilisation. We will only get walnuts if there is a walnut tree nearby wafting its pollen this way.
I have been doing an audio book of my crime novel Jack in the Garden. It is fiction but features our garden. I wrote it in the drought of 2018. We didn’t have a tap them, but how we wanted one! We were bringing in water from home, Kevin was hosing it down from his second floor flat on Sprowston Road into our buckets. A subplot in the novel involves stealing water, but I won’t dwell on that, just say crime writers think that way. The way into the garden then was via the side gate. The front gate was pretty hellish to open with three padlocks. Our container was opened at the front, not with the back door we now have. And the fence was an eight foot wooden fence with a colourful mural on it of plants, birds, and various insects. All this comes up in the novel. It strikes me it is almost an historical document. Mind you, though the setting is true, in my tale four people get locked in the container while a man with a gun, wearing a Harry Potter mask, wanders the garden.
Never mind the man with the gun; doing the audio book brought back to me all the changes in the garden since 2018.
There are pink roses by the Chatty bench, and the flax is getting almost as high as the wire grating covering it. To protect it from foxes. But very soon, I shall have to take it off, and hope the flax bed is of no interest to vulpine diggers.