July days

I’m not quite sure how we have arrived in July when I am sure it was much earlier in the year the last time I looked!

I think that being off the blog for 3 weeks whilst it was moving platform has somehow made the time flash past more quickly – probably because usually, when I am taking photos and writing about the week or so just gone, I’m much more aware of how the time is passing.  Anyway, I have PLENTY of photos stored up so today is going to be a bit of a catch up.  It’s been really lovely whilst I was moving bloggy home and to read through my old posts again as I was updating them, and I was reminded of so many times that would have passed by and been forgotten if I hadn’t written them down.

I do love seeing what I was up to in the garden in previous years.  This year, I was so pleased with how it was looking as the Spring moved into Summer and I am very glad that I took so many photos – we had a large tree cut down last week and as the logs were cut from the tree, they crashed down into the borders and so many of my plants were squashed.  I’m hoping that they will recover, and thankfully most of them had flowered earlier – plants are mostly resilient things so I am sure they will grow back next year.

My Oriental poppies bring me so much joy every year.  My “Mrs Perry” ones that were eaten by slugs or possibly the rabbit that we have seen visiting the garden never recovered but it has been amazing to see the others which have seemed to be more prolific in flowering than usual – have you found this in your garden too?

Also flowering prolifically were the roses outside the front door – this is my climbing rose Emily Grey …

and Félicité Parmentier which is an old rose and has a scent that almost knocks you over when you come out of the door.  I didn’t know whether either of these would flower very well this year as I was a bit heavy-handed with the secateurs earlier in the Spring, but although Emily Grey might have had fewer flowers than usual, this one has been incredible!  It must like me being heavy-handed with the secateurs! 🙂

Elsewhere in the garden, the Centaura montana is as beautifully blue as ever …

and the Allium christophii that I planted years ago and thought were never really going to do anything have surprised me this year as well.  There were loads of them!  Far more than I originally planted, I’m sure, and they look so fabulous when you’re close up – like little stars!

The foxgloves have been stunning as well, and have been alive with the sound of bees buzzing inside them from morning till night.

I don’t want to bore you with too many garden photos but here’s just one more of one of our Aquilegia.  We didn’t seem to have so many of those this year although I see the leaves popping up everywhere – perhaps I just missed them!

Elsewhere in the garden, I have been busy installing a new irrigation system into the greenhouse.  I’ve had the same system for years which involved a tank of water and terracotta probes but last year I noticed that even more of the probes had cracked and it was super-expensive to replace them – added to which I very often forgot to fill up the water tank so it was a bit pointless having them anyway!

I found this system instead which draws water from the water butts next to the greenhouse and I like the idea of using the rainwater straight from the butt and not having to keep filling a tank myself!  This is what the system looked like when it arrived.

It’s a click-fit system that fits onto your water butt tap and then you put the pipe where you want it to go around your plants.  Excellent!  Ten minutes and I’ll be done, I thought.  I headed outside.

And then I saw the water butts.  They’ve not been used for a while as I’ve got another one closer to the house that I use more often.  I’d better just clear the vegetation away, I thought.  Another ten minutes.

That’s when I looked inside the two water butts connected together and thought I’d better just give them a quick clean out.  That won’t take long …

And it won’t take me more than a minute or two to change the tap on the water butt so that I can attach the timer …

Oh My Life.  It took me four days to get those water butts connected to the irrigation system.  Four days!!  It turned out that one of the butts had a crack in the bottom but because they were connected to each other, it was going to be a proper faff to disconnect them and seal the connection … as luck would have it, our new neighbour is a builder and is a handy person to ask all kinds of DIY-related questions that I don’t know the answer to.  Unfortunately for him, I don’t think the people selling the house warned him that I might have lots of questions or he might not have bought the place, but I am being careful (I hope) not to assume that he is Building Wikipedia and we’re getting along with him and his wife very well 🙂

Oh, and in case you want to know how to repair cracks in water butts, Duck tape is the stuff you need, along with some waterproof sealant.

So here it is, my new irrigation system, all fitted and working in the greenhouse and keeping my tomatoes watered.

I am very good at completely underestimating how long things are going to take me, but even I wouldn’t have expected it to take as long as it did!  It’s rained for most of the last week and the butts are filling up nicely now, so hopefully the tomatoes will be well-watered for the rest of the summer!

Phew, I was very glad when that was over!

So what else?  Well, I’ve been back to Yarn Lane TV – I wasn’t quite organised enough to let you know when I was on but you’ll be able to find the show on YouTube now if you want to look for it.  This one was about the Winwick Mum Seasons yarn collection and I know that I’ve already talked about that on the show, but it’s always nice to talk about it again! 🙂  I’m going to back on the show on 26 July – they’ve got a busy all-day line-up and I don’t know what time my slot is yet, but I’ll keep you posted!

I’m not really any further on with the sock that I showed you in my last post as I’ve been busy doing behind-the-scenes knitting.  It’s all very exciting but frustrating when I can’t show you any of it just yet!  Not long to wait, hopefully!

I’ve also not forgotten that I promised to write a tutorial about yarn pooling around the gusset when you’re knitting with hand-dyed yarn (this was the sock I was knitting at the time) – I had an unexpected blog house move which got in the way but it is on my list and I’m hoping to get started with it soon.  It’s only 2 weeks until small daughter breaks up from school for the Summer holidays and I have grand ideas of the amount that I am going to be able to catch up on whilst she’s off.

Have I mentioned that I am very good at underestimating how long things will take me to do …? 🙂

 

Have a lovely weekend, I’ll see you soon! xx