My garden in June

June in my garden was very much a month of two halves. The first half of the month the garden was green and lush, and then the hot weather hit. Our garden, like many, has become drier and with very little rain arriving or forecast, it looks very different. We also had the long-awaited tree work booked in, typically on the first of the very hot days so our garden had a double whammy to cope with.

We have taken to watering the pots in our garden every few days, as they are suffering the most. But with hosepipe bans likely to be announced we’re also looking at how we can use our ‘grey’ household water more efficiently. This means using our washing up water on non-edibles, and potentially a bucket in the shower for the same purpose. It makes a lot of sense for us all to reduce our water consumption and consider how we treat what is after all a valuable resource. And it’ll take some getting used to, I’m sure.

While I’m missing the green and lushness of our garden in the first part of the month, the trees were long overdue a cut. They were due for their usual cut in the autumn of 2020, but that didn’t happen what with it being a most peculiar year. Once things had started to return to more normality than there had been, we had terrible trouble trying to find someone to replace our usual tree man who had retired. Both our neighbours and us had tried several people, who either showed up, quoted and then ghosted us, or didn’t even turn up after making arrangements to. Incredibly frustrating, but we got there in the end.

At the start of the month we had our bunting up for the Queen’s Jubilee, and it looked so good it stayed there right up until the day before the tree work, when along with the strings of lights, I took it down. The lights have finally gone back up, but I’ve resisted putting the bunting up, though it does look pretty!

I wasn’t expecting many cherries from our little cherry tree this year. It tends to go in cycles with less fruit following a year of abundance. Some years the birds beat us to them, and others - like this year - there’s a truce and we share the cherries. As this was due for a catch-up cut, I didn’t think the cherries would survive - but they did, and they were also enjoyed by the team cutting the trees too. A perk of the job I’m sure.

Flower-wise the mock orange was starting to make its fragrance known, and in the back beds some foxgloves were starting to flower.

Towards the house the fatsia was thriving - it needs a cut really, and it’s easy to do, but I know like anything, cutting it will make it grow even more vigourously. So I postponed its cut in June (and now in July I’m wishing I hadn’t!), mainly because working out where to cut takes more time than actually doing the work.

The hydrangeas which I have in a pot close to the patio started to flower. I thought I’d lost them, but this one came back - the other one under the tree canopy wasn’t quite so resilient. These have been great to watch develop, and I’d definitely buy more ‘Annabelles’ for a future garden. The pretty geraniums I brought back from my FILs garden are flowering, and with a ‘Chelsea chop’ have flowered again since.

The roses on the patio are doing their best to grow within the frame I’ve provided them with, but not quite managing to get in the right spot. But never the less I think they look pretty good. These white roses are pretty prolific and while I’ve been deadheading, they’ve been flowering as much as they can.

You can’t beat home grown cherries! Throughout the month we’ve had regular visits from butterflies, with this orange one (most likely a moth) paying repeat visits most afternoons. I’m under no illusion it was the same one, but humour me.

Midway through the month, the outlook for our garden changed as I mentioned above. The difference in one day is amazing, but with a team of six men working hard all day it’s easy to see why they made such great inroads. But it’s a lot of garden and tree cuttings to dispose of, and as we teamed up with our next door neighbours as they also had some trees cut, we were fortunate that all of it went over the fence and through their garden. We can’t thank them enough for this, though the lads working weren’t quite so appreciative, though they did managed to take one of the trellis panels down to help, the fence panel wasn’t budging.

Isn’t it amazing how much of a difference it makes?

It was the harshest cut we’ve given our tress, but as I said earlier in this post it was long overdue. It is a shame to cut so much of them, but they do need managing. We’re not even two months on as I write this post, and all of the trees are sprouting new branches and leaves, so I’m confident they will re-leaf over the next few months.

Our tallest - and wonkiest - foxglove was a casualty of the day felled by a falling branch. There wasn’t much to be done with this so I cut it down - but that too is showing its resilience and it is now regrown and flowering again - though I seem to have cornered the market in a miniature foxglove! I’ll share the picture of that with you next month!

How’s your gardening coping with the warmer weather?

Heat, feet and my happy place

Don’t worry, there aren’t any pictures of feet - but mine, or rather one of my toes has been giving me some gyp this past week or so. Instead, you’ll be relieved to know I’m including photos from the flower garden in Greenwich Park, aka my happy place. My toe is improving with the antibiotics, but I suspect it has a little more in store before it’s totally fixed. That along with the high temperatures, and life generally have conspired to keep me away from my laptop for longer than I intended.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Since the middle of June - in fact the day we had all our tree work done - the temperatures here have been warm, and warming up with a red weather warning and temperatures of 40 C forecast a month after this. I’m not sure it made it to 40 C where we are in London, but it was pretty close - and extremely warm!

Our garden has suffered since the tree work was completed. The grass has turned straw like without the canopy the trees provided. We expected it to bounce back pretty quickly with some rain (and still do), but so far the rain hasn’t shown up. Instead it’s got warmer, much warmer. But as you know a garden waits for no one and so I’ve been pottering about in the garden aiming to keep it tidy. I’ve also been picking up many, many branches which appear where I’m sure I’ve already cleared, while timing this pottering outside of the hottest parts of the day.

TREES IN THE FLOWER GARDEN, GREENWICH PARK

On those two hottest days, it was like nothing I can remember experiencing in the UK. I know 1976 was warm, but at 9 years old my experiences and memories were understandably entirely different, and the temperatures were four degrees cooler. The first day I ventured out, briefly, fully sun-screened up and with a rather glamorous large brimmed straw sun hat. Both destinations - the local supermarket, and the dentist - were air conditioned and appointment booking me was very impressed with managing to coincide an air conditioned appointment with a very hot day. Glossing over the fact that it was still the dentist!

Our house got warm - the warmest we’d ever known it, and so a change of tack was required the following day. As well as keeping the curtains shut, being awake early meant we could open the bifold doors into our north facing garden, until it started to warm up around 7am. Then they were closed for the rest of the day. MOH ventured out onto our patio briefly at lunchtime quickly coming back in declaring that it was “like Barbados out there” - and he wasn’t wrong.

A STUNNING BLUE MOPHEAD, GREENWICH PARK

Even late into the evening it had that warm air feel you get when you’re on holiday, and so we spent the evening in the garden under the umbrella. Some very welcome but only a few drops of rain appeared, but they had almost dried before they reached the ground, and no way enough to make any difference to our grass!

ECHINACEAS, GREENWICH PARK

It’s clear that our houses and infrastructure in the UK just aren’t designed for these temperatures, and will need a rethink if the temperatures continue as is predicted, as will government policy. I expect we’ll see more houses adopt shutters like those in the Mediterranean do, whether they’re internal or external. I think it’s something we’ll seriously think about when we move (no news yet!), as while retro-fitting isn’t easy, retro-fitting in a decorated and ‘finished’ space is even harder.

I did feel a bit cooped up those two days though, and that’s where my happy place comes in. With the temperatures a whole ten degrees cooler I was keen to get out, and so I did. I realised that it had been far too long since I’d been to Greenwich Park, and so headed out to the flower garden, a place that from these photos is easy to see why it makes me smile.

COSMOS, GREENWICH PARK

So much colour too, and while the grass there is a similar shade of parched as ours, the flowerbeds were being kept watered. The grass around those noticeably greener. And it was good to get out, strangely these two days felt much worse than lockdown when we were each allowed out for an hour a day. I’m not sure why, perhaps because then, while it was warm, the garden was still a relatively cool spot - that tree canopy worked obviously playing its part.

With a walk to Greenwich Park and then various errands and a trip into town for dinner and the excessive temperatures behind us (for now) all was good, mostly. That’s when my toe started to swell. It had swollen slightly the week before, and was brought down by ibuprofen - that wasn’t working quite so well this time round, even after a weekend of doing very little and sitting with my foot up and iced it was still twice as toe-sized as it should be.

CROCOSMIAS, GREENWICH PARK

Cue an emergency doctor’s appointment, some bright red antibiotics - thankfully not the same ones I had recently for my tooth infection which I had a reaction to (yes, I’ve been in the wars a bit lately - I’m putting that down to stopping work, seriously). The swelling is reduced, but not gone and similarly for the pain. It’s remains red and has been likened to a cocktail sausage rather than a toe, and there is definitely some likeness.

I’ve still some of the course of antibiotics left to take, but I think there’ll be another doctor’s appointment before it’s well and truly fixed. But I know this for sure, enforced rest isn’t all it’s made out to be, but hopefully there’ll be good toe news soon!

Silly Greens on tour

This post contains items gifted from Silly Greens.

Did you know you can receive micro greens to grow at home by post? Me neither, but you can - and that’s where Silly Greens comes in.

Silly Greens post seeds that grow straight out of the box, the micro greens, which are seedlings of herbs and veg, and they add a burst of flavour to your meals. They’re short-lived crops, which cut and come again and arrive through your letterbox ready to go, no need to do anything other than open the box.

And it really was as simple as opening the box. In your first pack there’s a leaflet explaining more about the seeds, and the seaweed jelly that they grow in - that helps keep the seeds in place during their journey, and keeps them hydrated too - when they arrive they are well on the way to germinating so you don’t have too long to wait to see them spring into action. And when your micro greens are finished the jelly shrinks back and because it’s natural it can be composted, and the packaging can be recycled.

Radish, Rocket and Turnip

My box of micro greens arrived a week or so before we headed off to my brother’s wedding in Yorkshire last month, and so to get the most of them they came with us. Of course they did! MOH wasn’t sure I was serious to start with, but then remember he knows me well and realised I was serious. In the wedding hotel, they happily sat on the window ledge. They moved on with us when we headed for our week in the North East and were a great way to pep up salads, and even in our burgers - in fact, with less condiments available than we’d have at home it was a great way to add some zing.

The seeds in my first box were pungent, peppery radish, a classic rocket and an unexpected inclusion, turnip. The picture below was taken three days after they arrived, and as you can see they’re well on the way to growing into proper micro greens. You can probably also see some root hairs, or fluff - don’t worry - the booklet explained simply that “root hairs were good, mould was bad” so all is well.

Not unsurprisingly the radish were quick to get growing, much like when you plant them in the garden or vegetable plot. They’re a quick cropping crop which is why you can grow them alongside slower growing crops there.

The advice that comes with the seeds is to keep them covered until the seeds lift the card, and suggests you can also weigh down the card. I didn’t believe that the little seeds would be able to lift the card. However I trusted the advice and even so was surprised when they actually did. Isn’t nature wonderful?

For me the rocket was the slowest growing, and as you can see on the card above it suggests covering it over will help it stretch - I kept mine covered the longest of the three, but had the least success with the rocket, but even so they still grew, just perhaps not quite as long (or tall) as I thought.

Each box is £5 including postage and packing (which is all recyclable); the boxes change each week and there’s details about each micro green on the Silly Greens site. If you’re wondering why you’d want to grow these at home, that’s a fair point. Apart from their ease of growing and their versatility, growing them at home means they’re fresher than buying them ready cut from the supermarket - plus you get to see the seeds grow, and to see them lift that card (they really do!)

We enjoyed adding these to our meals, mostly sprinkled over the top of salads - which worked well for us. I like salads, but I do get bored of them quite quickly so I’m always looking for new additions to change them slightly, and these worked for us as they kept on growing for a couple of weeks.

My second box arrived yesterday - and this month’s box includes a heritage pea mix, coriander and amaranth and a spicy mix. The box is opened and the card is waiting (and weighted) to be lifted. I’ll share how I get on with these.

With thanks to Silly Greens for providing this box of micro greens for the purposes of this review.