The shrubby ivy has been loud with the sound of bees foraging, and I was worried that they would put ivy honey in the supers that are still on the hives. Ivy honey tastes vile, as I discovered when I once took a late super of honey off, thinking it was an end of season bonus, and found it tasted so nasty there was nothing to do with it but give it back to the bees. Then I remembered that ivy honey is notorious for setting rock hard in the comb, so much so that some beekeepers advise against letting your bees overwinter on it for stores because they need to collect so much water just to make it liquid enough to eat. That was fine, then, since if they did put ivy honey in the supers it wouldn't spin out the next time I was extracting honey. I thought about going and getting the supers, but it was so hot and so sticky that I could not face the thought of immolating myself in a bee suit and trying to shake bees out of their boxes, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't be pleased to see me.
It was ridiculously humid. The Systems Administrator, who wilts like yesterday's lettuce left out of the fridge in this sort of weather, has had a low grade but constant headache since the current sticky spell started and gave up, sitting in a deckchair under the 'Tai-haku'. Yesterday Mr Fidget sat with him, too hot to fidget, but today he could not be bothered to walk that far. Our Ginger lay on the drain cover by the front door, Mr Fluffy lurked in the turning circle, and Mr Cool vanished into the wood and was not seen until teatime when it started to rain.
I occupied myself until then cutting the edges of the top lawn, pulling out horsetail from the beds, and trimming some of the shrubs around the lawn. The rambling roses had sent out more long tentacles since I last dealt with them a couple of months ago. I used to try and twiddle some of these errant stems around so that they grew in the direction I wanted, but nowadays I am more ruthless about simply cutting them off. They tend not to stay obediently twiddled, but bulge and sag outwards, so the roses might as well put their energies into developing all their other shoots that were going the right way to start with.
The older branches on some of the shrub and old fashioned roses tends to flop outwards, while this year's strong, new, as yet unbranched shoots grow upwards in the middle. The tell tale sign is when the SA can no longer mow up to the lawn edge and an arc of unmown grass starts to appear that I have to cut by hand. I trim back the flopping older growth from over the lawn, while trying to preserve a soft, graduated outline rather than facing them up severely like shrubs in a supermarket car park.
The golden yew by the conservatory is slowly but inexorably trying to advance beyond its allotted space. It is rather a nice, spreading form, Taxus baccata 'Summergold', not the rarest thing but not the most common. Nine UK nurseries currently list it according to the RHS Plant Finder. It isn't prostrate in habit, but doesn't seem to have any central trunk. Instead, branches amble out sideways then every so often decide to send a shoot upwards, from which new side branches emerge, drooping slightly and gracefully. This gives it a rather lively habit, and my aim in trimming it is always to keep the open grace of it rather than chopping it back to a blocky outline. It shares its quarters with a semi-prostrate cotoneaster, which sends long, delicate shoots out through the yew, some of which I allow to remain. I like plants to mingle. After fifteen years the yew is up against the lawn on one side, a potted Acer on another, and the deck by the conservatory on a third, so regular trimming is called for.
I faced up the wild hollies at the end of the top lawn. I am happy for them to present a sheer, shining dark green face as a backdrop for the potted Hamamelis and Acer. A plain and rather elegant metal arch over the gateway into the wood had become obscured with hazel twigs, and I removed some of those, all the time trying to keep a natural outline for the hazel so that it would not look as though it had been pruned, but just as though it happened to be exactly framing that arch.
And then it began to rain, and I staggered indoors for a cup of tea, vest sticking to my clammy stomach. We are due to get a good dose of rain over the next twenty-four hours, which will be very useful for watering all the new planting down by the gate, and after that it should be much fresher. The seven day forecast shows the daytime temperature only recovering to 20 C by Sunday, which is fine by me. 19 or 20 degrees Celsius is a lovely temperature, warm enough for anybody.
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