renovation deferred

We conceded defeat today, and took the scaffolding down and stowed it away at the end of the house.  The Systems Administrator had been going to renew the gutter along the back roof, and paint the barge board while the old guttering was removed, but the weeks of rain put paid to that plan, and now the border behind the house is a jungle of new growth.  The SA prodded the woodwork in several places and pronounced that there were no signs of rot, and the job would keep until next spring.  Indeed, I suppose it could be done in the autumn, if we get an Indian summer and I'm brisk about cutting down the herbaceous plants, but the thought of trying to manoeuvre the tower in now among the hardy geraniums, and campanulas, and Lamium orvala, and the new leaves of Tetrapanax papyrifera 'Rex', and rapidly emerging shoots on the buddleias, was just too much.  I think the SA had visions of Rachel repeatedly weeping for her children, because they were not, each time another plant got smashed, and decided against it.  The problem isn't just the feet and outriggers of the scaffolding squashing the odd plant once it's up, but finding somewhere to stand all the component parts each time it has to be dismantled to move it along to the next section of barge board.  On dead flat, solid ground I suppose you could roll the whole tower intact, but not on a slope and on earth.

We need a settled spell of several dry days to tackle the gutter, since once the old one is off there is really no choice but to press on until the job is finished.  The weather now feels anything but, with the Met Office issuing warnings of severe rain.  It poured yesterday in Braintree and Chelmsford, big fat solid lumps of rain that the SA could see on the rain radar, but it all petered out before reaching us here, and we didn't get a drop.  It feels humid, though.  The SA wilts in damp heat, and the bees were a trifle tetchy when I went to see them.  It wasn't ideal beehive-opening weather, but tomorrow is forecast to be worse.

Some of the shrub roses are opening.  The white single 'Nevada' is full out.  I fell for that variety many years ago, after seeing one in a border in the formal part of the gardens at Killerton.  It is not much in fashion nowadays, though the RHS lists 19 suppliers, so it is not endangered.  The brilliant magenta single 'Anne of Geierstein' is also blooming.  She is well past her centenary, bred in 1894, and I am confused as to how rare she now is, since the RHS Plantfinder says that she was last listed in 2009, but the Peter Beales website offers to sell me one for £12.45.  Some mistake surely.  'Anne of Geierstein' is classified as a sweet briar, but I have never noticed any smell from her foliage.  My plant grows on its own roots, the original specimen having sickened and died after layering itself a metre away from where it was planted.

Less welcome is the epic growth of goosegrass, and I need to spend a day going around pulling it out.  The seeds are not yet ripe and ready, and I must get rid of it before they are, besides which, it would make the borders look much tidier.  That and finishing doing the edges.  Unfortunately tomorrow's gardening jobs will be geared towards making the watering intelligible to the (non-gardening) friend who is kindly looking after the pots as well as the cats and chickens while we're off at the wedding.  Collections of pots awaiting planting out have proliferated, and need to be gathered into one place clearly designated Water Those, while  the pots of dead things outside the greenhouse will only cause confusion, and since they need to be dealt with it might as well be tomorrow.

Our neighbour the retired farmer, who sold what was his farm to the lettuce farmer, came round to deliver the parish magazine.  I think he would like us to object to the planned polytunnels, but didn't want to seem to be steering us.  I sympathise with the owners of the house more directly affected by it than we are, who are related to him, but he isn't in a very good position to grumble in that he sold the land.  If he wanted to be secure from future agricultural developments he shouldn't have done that.