What a summer. After the gloom lifted briefly for the Olympics, which was good timing on nature's part, it is back to grey skies and rain showers. I read in the Telegraph about the unhappy campers who have opted to holiday in this country, struggling in rain and wind in the West Country to put their tents up. Here it was dull all day, which somehow managed to combine with it being windy and very humid at the same time. At five it started to rain, and I was driven in from the garden.
I'm still working my way up the sloping bed. Some of the tufts of grass I'm pulling out are attached to running roots, so I'll need follow up with spot treatments of glyphosate, which is easier said than done, when there always seems to be an amount of wind that makes me glad that at least I'm not at sea. I have been throwing away handfuls of Libertia grandiflora seedlings, which seems wasteful, but I don't want to use it in any of the other beds, so if I potted them up I wouldn't have anything to do with them, and would be reduced to pressing them on (possibly reluctant) friends. This Libertia makes a big fan of pointed leaves, which do at least stay looking decent to their tips, unlike bearded iris, but dead leaves accumulate round the edge of the fan and within the clump, and gradually the plant starts looking tatty. The dead leaves pull out pretty easily, but it is a fiddle, and one more thing to find the time to do, and I don't always. Overall I was probably more keen on it a decade ago than I am nowadays, but I'm keeping some plants, while digging out a couple of the largest and messiest clumps, as well as the misplaced seedlings. It copes pretty well around shrubs, where it is shady, dry and rooty, so it seems gratuitous to reject it entirely. Its white flowers are pleasant, but not something you'd make a big effort to see.
The mushroom compost, spread out over the area I've weeded so far, looks very neat, dark and even. I enjoy applying it. The rich, crumbly brown top dressing makes a statement that this bit of the bed is Done. The sensation of done-ness is a delusion, since weeds will start growing there quickly enough, and the horsetail will sprout up again. I need to follow the compost with a layer of Strulch, which does a fairly good job of stopping annual weeds from germinating. but to do that I have to order another pallet of mulch, since I'm down to the last three bags, which means I then have to commit to being at home when it is delivered, so I'm deferring the order until after my talk and the Chatto wildlife fair next week.
The young oak tree is sending up Lammas growth. In a second flush of activity for the year it is producing new shoots, as yet unbranched and leafless and by now a good 30cm long, as it does in late summer, except in very dry seasons. The canopy has darkened to a dull green. The leaves of many of the roses are shocking, those that haven't fallen off, disfigured by blackspot. Seasons like this test my no-spray philosophy to its limit. I still don't spray for blackspot. Roses that can't hack it will get evicted to make space for something else that can. I've got my eye on some red floribundas that have never done much good, where the space could be more gainfully occupied by a nice Buddleia crispa, which would like the light soil much more than the roses ever did.
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