I am shocked to see how long it is since last I wrote here!  The summer season is here and the guests of Discover England Tours, the family, the pets and the garden have taken precedence over the blog!

The vegetable garden is looking much more complete that a week ago. All the climbing beans are planted: runner beans, pea beans and purple climbing French beans (Trionfo Violetta) are climbing the poles. The celeriac is planted out and a succession of lettuces is coming on well. We dug the first potatoes today - first early Red Duke of York and ate them with BBQ sausage, lettuce and radish. The winter brassicas that were plated out three weeks ago under Environmesh are settling in well. The courgettes are planted out, three green and one yellow (for Happiness Soup). It will be time to plant more lettuce, radish and maybe more carrots.

The greenhouse tomatoes are setting their first trusses and working on the second. The cucumber Telegraph is enjoying the top greenhouse but not the lower one - I shall have to figure out what's going on there.

In the main garden the roses are on the point of flowering (Madame Alfred Carriere is already well underway). There is lots of lovely scent from several varieties of Philadelphus. Oriental poppies are looking good but there is a colour problem with them and the wild Gladiolus which are a vivid magenta. Perhaps we will do some rearranging for next year! Its been hot today - about 25C and I spent some time digging the wild type Aquilegias out - I am happy for the unusual varieties to self seed but there is a limit to the number of wild pink ones we can sustain. I made some nice discoveries when these were removed such as two nice Penstemons looking for some air and light.

All in all the garden looks lovelt.  Its a bit dry, we are running the leaky pipe irrigation on the veg plot and the whole garden could do with more rain, though there is none in prospect!

Happy gardening....

Susy