Yes! We have no substacking...

We have no substacking today!

The triffids are out…an Epiphyllum with no name or provenance I can recall….perhaps someone out there can tell me who she is? She opened with the rain rather than the moon…and this is the first ever bloom on this gangly specimen, so an absolute thrill, even if I didn’t catch the upright bud stage…

And I am truly sorry, so I just wanted to pop in with a little apology. I was up with the full moon still high in a pitch black sky this morning, the stars still twinkling overhead. Began watering so early in the pale dawn light I could hardly see what I was doing…to get ahead of the heat…and all in prep for a day with a tv crew which is truly, truly not my forte! The garden…fine, but me? (Perhaps it will never see the light of day…at least I hope if it does it will be mighty heavily edited!).

All week I’ve been gardening (and cobwebbing the verandahs!), dusters in hand as much as rakes in preparation! Thalia’s been weeding, Larry edging and mowing. I cooked (just in case) and prepared Hildegard for a distillation (by the time we got to that I could barely string two words together!). Oh but there was a slick of essential oil!! A fine slick…which is promising given I want to open the possibility of a Rose Geranium Workshop in the coming weeks. It means the plants are on a high…filled with viriditas!

But my brain is fried, I can barely put one foot in front of the other and from nowhere that song ‘Yes! We have no bananas’ popped into my head as I was putting everything away and will simply not stop going around and around! Hence the title of this post. I just googled the lyrics - I always had thought the title of that song idiotic…and it’s just the kind of light hearted nonsense I feel like right now!

Fennel seeds aglow…

We had a glorious day of rain earlier in the week…causing droplets to cling to foliage and seed heads like shimmering baubles…

Like beaded jelly-fish….I almost expect them to expand and contract!

And myriad spider webs strung all over the garden - between openings in hedges and ‘twixt buildings and botanicals, to glow like finely beaded chandeliers (or sea creatures out of context).

But with that I’ll leave you. I need to bring Hildegard in from her wash before the sun sets and so I promise a longer post next week.

Warmest wishes as always

Mickey x

Productive garden notes:

Eating from the garden:

Potatoes (stored in the cellar now), onions, garlic, aubergines, zucchinis, tomatoes, coloured chard and spinach, lettuce, rocket (the odd shower of rain has brought on another lovely flush of gentle rocket leaves!). Jelly Wine Palm fruits. Basil, lovage, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives.

Going / gone: beans

Seed saving: parsnip, beetroot, spinach, chard, parsley, land cress

Sowing: if we weren’t expecting heatwave conditions this weekend I’d take sowing more seriously. Direct sowing is on hold as a result, but I might be tempted to sow pea seeds into punnets (though I’ll check the lunar calendar first). I’m very keen to sow some Cima di Rapa as soon as possible…

Planting: brassicas (kale, cavolo nero, cabbage, broccoli, kohl rabi, cauliflower), lettuce and fennel (bulbing) and bok choy seedlings. I have round one of all these in the ground but will plant more in the coming weeks…successional sowing is everything as we don’t want it all ready to eat at the same time…

Ornamental garden notes:

Picking for the house: frangipanis, tansy, dahlias, Cottonwood hibiscus, amaranth, ginger

Perfumes and aromas: Still the frangipani, nicotiana and Cistus ladanifer. White flowering gingers Hedychium coronarium have more stems erupting into flower ‘between the wings’, their scent spilling in through the dressing room and gallery windows which is divine!

Pruning and other: everything has been weeded and fluffed within an inch of its life!