July in the Garden - flowers

 I don't 'do' bedding plants so at this time of year my garden tends to looks a bit dull with lots of floppy greenery hiding the flowers.


They're still peeping through here and there though

  and the lavenders are still trying to take over the path!

lovely scented roses

red hot pokers

path? what path?

sweet william

feverfew

sunflowers reaching for the sky

hardy fuchsia

'rescued' lobelia starting to flower

Reap as you sow....

I've saved flower seeds of one sort or another in the past and had reasonable success in growing them the following year. I've even managed to grow lettuce, peas, beans etc from home collected seed with no problems. So when the beetroot and spinach down at the allotment ran to seed, I collected some of that. Unfortunately the two types of seed look very similar and I forgot to label it. So when I set a row of spinach, something else grew!

Picked this week - 29th June 2014

A busy busy week - just harvesting!


Lots of lettuce....












Lots of peas.....
















Two tiny cauliflowers








the ever bizarre crystal lemon cucumber










and lots of fruit - raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, black and red currants, cherries (though this is ALL of the crop) and gooseberries from my parents.

Picked this week - 22nd June 2014

Plenty of mixed fruit - enough strawberries to add them to breakfast every day plus a few left over to dry,some blackcurrants and even cherries!

A second, rather small, cucumber to go with the salad leaves from the garden

The first of the potatoes

peas

and broad beans

Midsummer veg patch

The garden veg patch is more of a fruit patch right now - apples, tomatoes,blueberries and grapes are swelling; red and black currants ripening,

In the small veg patches, plants are struggling against slug and snail attack but the mangetout peas and decorative yellow and purple beans are just about surviving

a couple of lettuce which have survived - possibly by being hidden under a winter cabbage!

spinach planted by the purple beans to entice slugs and snails away

one solitary winter cabbage from a row I set but which got eaten by something. 

Midsummer Flowers

Midsummer's day has been dry and warm, not as hot as recent days and with threatening clouds this afternoon - rain would have been nice in a way as a lot of the garden is starting to look dry.
Ideally it's a time to sit out in the garden, enjoy the flowers and their scent - if only I had time! I did at least manage to nip out and take photos..... though not brilliant ones as they're off the phone.

The 'back of the garden' shady spot with pink and blue geraniums

Foxgloves still towering over the other flowers


























Lavender trying to meet over the path

Sweet Williams (left) and feverfew at the bottom of the garden path

To the rescue again

We were actually only supposed to be picking up a bag of compost but when I saw these cottage pinks on the dead-plant reduced rack, I couldn't leave them behind. I've been looking for some for a while, as they're a typical cottage garden plant they'll fit right in in my garden,but the price has been putting me off and I couldn't find seed for the right sort of 'pinks'. For the reduced rack, both plants are looking well and should grow - unfortunately the plant on the right lost a lot of flowers on the way home!