Blissful drizzle

The forecast was actually true. It rained overnight. You can’t imagine how excited I was to open the shutters and see grey.   Overcast, foggy, rain on the ground. Utter bliss.   I raced out to the rain gauge: over half an inch.   And the day promised more.

That meant I could tick things off my list without having to haul any hoses. No more asparagus watering by hand over at Jean Daniel’s, no more careful watering of the aspargus and raspberries in my top vegetable plot. I can now ignore the carrots, parsnips, potatoes, clover (green manure) or any crops on the lower potager as well.

Weeding will be easier, trees will be happier, the shrubs won’t suffer. It’s all great news.

I nipped up to have a look at the newly planted mini hedge; and I even managed to take decent photographs of the main hedge, the terrace bank above the potting shed and the shade garden.

In bright sunshine you can’t even see all the honesty plants that are pushing up in the shade garden right now.   So it’s great to have a record of the plants.   They are all blow ins.   I just scatter the honesty seeds all around when I do my dried flower displays, so it’s a bit of a lottery.

And naturally with so much drizzle outdoors, you can imagine that I spent most of my gardening time inside the potting shed.   I was joined by Artur who found his favourite wooden wine box (lined with old cashmere sweater) up on the shelf at the end of the building.

I actually have an action shot here. I think he moved just once in ten hours. And that was just to stretch, jump down to the floor, look baleful, and then go back into the box.   Great life.

The rain sounds so much more impressive under a perspex roof. It’s a bit like being under canvas in a tent. It sounds like it’s pounding, but it really was perfect gentle soaking rain. Something we so rarely enjoy.   I did have to nip out and sort out the water butts – some are linked together so they flow nicely, but the one at the far end of the potting shed seems to fill the fastest, and just overflows. So I have been decanting into the spare barrels.

I kept busy by sowing lots more seeds. Here is my very own action shot of verbena bonariensis and gaura seeds in a big tray. I know, not madly exciting but the shed benches are filling fast.

Todays tally: verbena bonariensis, gaura, rudbeckia cherry brandy, eryngium gigantium, sobi cabbage, cosmos tall sensation, tsoi sim, turnip greens, sunflower claret. A truly mixed bunch.