Yet more wall

This might actually be finished by Christmas... Imagine!

Quick and blurry catalogue

Paul Bocuse (Guillot). Pale peachy pink.

Cramoisi Superieur

More pink than the red I expected. Lots of flowers for such a little plant. 

Graham Thomas (DA) with Poa labilliaderi. 

Jude the Obscure (DA)

Endlessly lovely

Sunny June. Fab singles, aphid magnet. 

Summer Song (DA). Favourite up the back. 

Golden Celebration

Well, the unexpected 37c October day did frizzle the first flowers on a few roses, but to make up for it my Golden Celebration (David Austin) has really gone to town with the blooms this year! Better late than ever, it had always been somewhat lacklustre before. This is one of the roses i experimentally 'self-pegged' and looks like this was a complete success. I'm super happy with it at the moment! 

[close up]

[effect of pegging the plant]

[GC is still small compared to the surrounding Icebergs, but covered in lovely flowers. Austrostipa mollis grass makes a fabulous airy tall background in the end of day light]

Almost there

After this lot, the lawn will be 3/4 finished... It is the project which Never Ends. 

Lotus at last

I love my bargain and rescue plants, but I can safely say my new lotus plants are not amongst them. In fact, it was a stretch to spend so much on two plants, but I've wanted my own lotus for so long I decided to go for it (after a lot of dithering). 

I bought two smaller cultivars: the red Bunga Baby, and white Angel Wings. The tubers spent a fortnight or so in two buckets of water, waiting for the new rootlets to appear. 

[Temporary glamorous home in a bucket.]

Then I potted up Bunga Baby into a very swish container: that garden stalwart, a polystyrene box, filled with garden soil, bought compost, seamungus pellets and a dash of blood and bone. I carefully covered it over with a load of all rocks from the garden do all the soil didn't wash out. Then I put it into the pond (giant black plastic tub) and walked away, whereupon while I wasn't watching, the whole lot flipped over and dumped the contents into the bottom of the pond. Oops. I decided to just leave it there, since it was covered pretty well still, and now I had a spare box again. 

Then I repeated the process, with the addition of some Dynamic Lifter I found in the shed, remembered to take some photos this time, and also remembered to keep an eye on the box as it sank into the pond. 

[New rootlets, pinky white.]

[Tubers like great white worms in the soil.] 

Fingers crossed for some flowers this year, or at least masses of lovely leaves. 

Four, five, six...

Happy phone-snaps with restless babe on my arm...

Yellow Charles Austin (David Austin, bargain buy).

Strawberry Hill (David Austin).

Can't remember, need to look it up! Yellow English beauty (possibly Moulineux, struck myself from a cutting from my mother-in-law's garden, I think. Why do I not record these things better?!)

Things are really hotting up out there, already the front garden has that dry, glazed, over-bright summer look. 

Munstead Wood

Third to bloom (I missed snapping 'Black Boy's' first flowers), is Munstead Wood. An unbecoming lopsided and particularly thorny shrub adorned with roses of the most luxurious dark crimson.