Sunshine and hail

I can’t decide which was the more dramatic moment of the day: the hail storm at lunchtime, or the blue sky in the afternoon.

Both were a bit of a surprise.

And after the whopping three inches of rain the day before I was just relieved to find most things dry and not floating.

The mountain does tend to spring leaks after heavy rain, and there are small steams all over the garden.

One is right in the middle of the new walnut bed which is annoying.  And the middle path of the potager is ankle deep in water. And I found to my surprise that my left wellington boot (gum boot if you are Australian) has a small cut ankle high.

So I had a soggy morning in my damp left sock and boot, but soldiered on, planting like mad.

I’ve added more sedums and purple sage to the barn garden, plus an extra lavender for the gap here in the santolinas. Both sgae and sedum were propagaged this February, so it’s always great to get my free plants into the ground and bulking out the bed.

It’s such a fetching part of the garden now. Everything is just so lush and green.

There are new achilleas in the edge of the potager thanks to a packet of seeds from the Sarah Raven collection, and three large agapanthus in the barn garden bed.

And four small ones too. I must confess that I haven’t planted them out.  They are plunged in their pots and will come out in autumn so they are safe for winter.

Fun and games. And I actually thought that the weather would stay kind all day.

But no. There I was merrily weeding the edge of the courtyard and down it came.

And not only rain, but hail too.

So I stomped inside and lit the fire, hissing all sorts of nasty things under my breath, did more painting of the kitchen and waited for it to ease up.

And ease up (eventually) it did.  There was this strange thing in the sky called sun. So I oozed back out, slightly damp but determined.

Even Artur came out from the comfort of the potting shed to help me weed.

Well, he doesn’t help much; mostly he just finds the best spot with the most weeds and plonks down. And then glares at me if I try to remove the weeds around him.