August was a busy month in our garden, and I know that because I have lots of photos to choose from for this post! It was one of mixed weather and the month that we took delivery of our new log store which MOH started to build in the garage, thankfully it wasn’t too heavy for us both to move into position, alongside the bins. As well as storing logs, it has a really handy side cupboard which is ideal for storing bags of compost, bark, grit and gravel, which aren’t exactly the nicest things to look at are they.
It is now finished, and I’ll include the finished picture in next month’s update - but here for chronological order and correctness it is under construction. In our old house we didn’t have a garage, so didn’t have a space like this to act as a temporary workspace - it’s been a godsend though, as it also has level flooring and I’m told that assembling this on gravel wouldn’t have been the thing to do. Thankfully there was agreement that the patio wasn’t a suitable place either!
Anyway onto things more pleasing to the eye…
We had another spell of roses flowering which was most welcome, and it was great to see the spots of pink from the patio and out of the window. The roses will idc find more permanent homes, but not just yet.
Elsewhere in the garden it’s been about sunflowers and produce - peaches, tomatoes and chillies mostly.
Towards the start of the month the sunflowers were still relatively small, they’d grown a lot, but they hadn’t reached the top of our garden wall and peering inside the flower heads weren’t formed yet. Keeping a close eye on them over the month meant tracking their height and progress, and it wasn’t too long before they were level with and then taller than the wall, which acted as a good measure for my informal tracking.
By the end of the month both of them were taller than the wall and the main flower head was starting to form. Phew, though there was still some way to go if we were to get flowers, and hopefully a bit more summer too.
Our outside border had really grown and so one morning I took my secateurs out there for a workout, the result was much lower bushes and a better view up the road from the window. The lavender has also gone over already so that’s another job to add to the list, trimming the eight or so bushes we have throughout the garden - at least it’s fragrant work, if not a little slow going.
It’s great to see the lavender in full flow though and is a great waymarker for people trying to find our house!
My £1 chilli plant continues to do well and has produced more chillies since we’ve picked the ones it came with. Not bad for a £1 and a very fruitful walk back from the pub one evening. I am concerned about what I’m going to do with it when the weather turns, but for now it’s happy on the garden table under the crab apple tree.
We’ve had quite the success with our peaches, from the nectarine stone that dad planted some years ago. I think they must have reverted to peaches as the skin’s definitely furry like peaches, not smooth like nectarines. We had three fruits but one we lost fairly early on, leaving just two to develop into peaches that look like proper peaches.
This one dropped off towards the middle of the month and looked to have some kind of rot on one side. I’m not sure what the cause of this was, but as only one side was affected we tried a couple of non-affected slices (and have lived to tell the tale) - and it was so, so sweet we had high hopes for the remaining fruit.
With the warmer weather appearing most days, or at least for some of most days, I took advantage and moved my sun loving indoor succulent onto the garden table. It wasn’t long before the edges of its leaves were tinged red, a sign that it’s happy I think, rather than sunburn.
The crab apple is doing its thing too - we don’t have as many fruits this year, so they may be heading for an autumnal wreath rather than a jam jar, but that’s to be expected I think as we pruned it last autumn and I think it would prefer a spring pruning - something to note for next spring.
The tomato plants, in pots again this year, are fruiting and I’m hopeful we’ll have a fair few cherry tomatoes for the kitchen. They seem to have been green for quite a while, so I may need September’s sun to ripen them.
But there’s always something to do isn’t there? We have three or four Ceanothus or Californian Lilacs and they take up a lot of room in the garden bin, so I’ve been spacing out pruning them. I’m done now, but having my own compost heaps in the future will help I’m sure, though I think these would need to be chopped more finely beforehand or else they’ll still be there, fully formed, the next year!
But that’s something to think about another time.
