Up-date on the wheelchair issue – the NHS has supplied me with a temporary wheelchair for now and has ordered a new frame for the NEW broken one. I can use it but it isn’t great (I won’t go into details) but it does mean that I can now get back into the garden woo-hoo! Lots of weeding and dead-heading but mostly trying to keep it watered as we have had no rain for weeks. A couple of tiny drizzly showers do not count as rain as it didn’t even wet the paths. I also found out that the very leaky hose gun was the cause of my increasing right shoulder pain that spread from upper traps, up my neck and also across my collar bone to my SC joint. The reason for this was that I was trying to use the hose without getting soaked so this meant having my right arm out at awkward angles and turning my hand inwards to prevent the water running up my sleeves. Couple that with the weight of the hose and you get lots of pain. One new hose gun later and most of the pain on that side has diminished.
I do have to be more mindful when performing any gardening procedures as I am right handed I tend to lean over to that side, and it was my right ischium that had the pressure sore. I do try to use my left hand more for doing tasks but I am so much quicker and better with my right.
At this time of year a lot of summer flowering plants are going over (verbascum, geums, hardy geraniums, lavender, and honeysuckle). There are still plenty of flowering plants here at the end of August though: cyclamen flowers have appeared before the leaves, persicaria (I have white, pink and deep red varieties), Japanese anemones, verbena, some hellebores, gaura, agastache, mint, roses(especially Munstead wood and Gertrude Jekyll), eupatorium, selinum wallichianum, fuchsia, erigeron, miscanthus red chief, and some heathers. Some have just a few sporadic flowers such as weigela, hebe and viburnum. And there is plenty of colour from the pink rowan berries (the berries of Sorbus hupehensis Pink pagoda are almost the same shade of the Persicaria affinis superba flowers that have gone over), bright red honeysuckle berries, black elder berries and orangey coloured crab apples, foliage from all of the different coloured ferns and heucheras, succulents like sempervivum chocolate kiss and the deep purple – almost black aeonium voodoo, the garnet coloured acer and the brightness of the silvery white ground cover of snow in summer.
The Japanese anemones Montrose are looking great. There are white ones on the other side of this bed (Whirlwind) that are slightly smaller than these.
The cool, shady side of the raised bed is mainly different shades of green at this time of year along with the garnet acer.
In the stumpery the spotty foliage of the Pulmonaria ‘Lewis Palmer’ is still looking good. That has been over the whole spring and summer and it is just starting to look a bit tired now.
Right now I am moving pots around on the patio so plants that have gone over can have a rest while the ones still in flower can show off. I am removing any annual plants from the pots to free them up for the bulb planting come September. It will be mostly narcissi and crocus. Any plant going to seed I will collect the seeds from just in case they don’t survive the winter. I can store the plants under the bench that way they shouldn’t get too much rain during the winter. I am still not sure about the rose ‘Jubilee celebration’ on the patio as it has very droopy roses on it. They look great when they first open and are facing upward but then they just droop. I had put it in a large pot and it is kept well watered so it is just the nature of that rose.
On my rounds of watering in the garden I noticed some plants are just not thriving in certain situations. Our next door neighbours took at a couple of trees which has led to more sunshine on one side of the stumpery but I had planted some things that liked shade so I really must move them to a more suitable place. The corkscrew hazel is creating an umbrella affect and the plants underneath are not getting enough rain water (it is also using up water as it has longer roots). The primulas will have to be moved.
I have checked my bulbs and only 2 were duds – they were soft – so the rest are ready to plant once the pots are washed.