I have just been driven inside by the threat of rain. The Systems Administrator warned me at lunchtime that there were some extremely heavy showers around, with flooding in Cambridge and sections of the A14 running with water. Rain has apparently been falling at the rate of 30mm per hour, which is a lot. If I felt the first raindrops I should rescue my radio and tools and get under cover immediately, as I wouldn't have several minutes to spare wondering whether it was raining hard enough for me to go in before it quite definitely was.
So when I felt the first drops I put my things in the garage, came inside and closed the garage door. And now it isn't raining, and the rain radar shows that the rain cloud has mysteriously evaporated. They've had heavy downpours in Colchester, Ipswich and Chelmsford, but there's nothing to speak of out in the Tendring peninsular. I should be pleased really, since I don't want it to rain on the beekeepers' barbecue tonight.
In the back garden most of the leaves have fallen off the Magnolia grandiflora. They'd been looking unhappy since the winter, and I wondered if this was a delayed response to the sudden plunge in temperatures in February. There are still some new leaves, which look healthy, and some leaf buds, which is a hopeful sign. On the other hand I don't like the look of a dark patch at the base of the trunk. The bark is very slightly cracked, and there is a suspicion of oozing. Again, maybe it got damaged in the cold weather, but infection seems all too possible.
The Coronilla varia that I planted last year has filled in a space in the island bed very nicely. This is a perennial member of the pea family, about 40cm high, with smallish to medium pinky-white flowers, which are attractive to bees. I put it in a gap in the bed which it has covered completely. The boss's label said 'spread indefinite' which should probably be interpreted as a warning signal, as I have just read on Wikipedia that it is a tough, aggressive plant that will crowd out its neighbours in a show garden, though good for stabilising banks. Oh well, at least it is covering up the sheeps sorrel and regrowth from the horsetail. I'll just have to pull out the pieces I don't want.
The wet weather has suited a late-flowering clematis in the rose bank, which has suddenly sent out a great mass of growth, mostly knotted into a lump on top of a tree peony. I spent a meditative half hour disentangling its stems from one another. The climbing clematis (some don't, you know) hang on to their support by coiling their leaf stalks around anything they can grab hold of, generally tying their own stems together in the process. If you are patient you can uncoil the leaf stalks and separate the stems out. I resorted to cutting through some of the most densely tangled leaf stalks, where several leaves were involved, but managed not to cut too many off, and mostly managed not to knock off the developing buds. I draped the stems across the face of the rose bank, hoping that the clematis would consent to spread itself out.
I reduced some of the long shoots of the shrub roses, which grew much taller than usual in the rain and then flopped out over the tops of their supports and leant across the lawn. I don't think high summer is generally recommended as the time to prune shrub roses, but they were obstructing the lawnmower as they were and looked silly. I have a theory that when in doubt July is a safe month to prune almost anything, as the sap has stopped rising, but there are still several months for the plant to start healing and recovering before cold weather comes. For plants due to flower next year on this year's growth I can see that I might hit next year's display, but I reckon I'm relatively unlikely to cause injury. I cut back some long growths from the rambler roses on the rose bank, that were growing out over the border above, but I'm not really worried about hurting them. They are such rampant growers, my snipping away will be a mere flea bite.
And now, since the threatened rain still hasn't arrived, I am going back into the garden.
Addendum Spoke too soon. It's raining.
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