Midsummer

"Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly..." - Pablo Neruda

Mulberry tree (Morus nigra) in fruit

Light, butterflies, wet - we're having lots of all three apparently.  But I'm glad to say the earlier rain is now paying off in terms of fruit... prolific mulberries, small but succulent, their generous branching trees shading the waterside at our local port; raspberries are ready, apricots abound and cherries are almost over.

Wild plum

Christina has a passion for wild plums which we occasionally come across on our walks.  They're not much bigger than cherries and in a good year the poor trees are weighed down with them. We've been known to pick several kilos and religiously de-stone them before freezing them in bags for use in pies - cooked with star anise, they do taste quite like cherries with a pleasantly acid tang.

Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa violacea)
 on Salvia turkestanica

Our wet Spring has also led to an anticipated rise in the insect population.  We always have a few of these distinctive carpenter bees bumbling about but they are gentle giants of the insect world, far more interested in flowers than in humans. 

This year a couple of them have decided to nest in a length of bamboo used as a support for our tomatoes and you can hear them loudly munching their way through the inside of the hollow stick, prior to depositing their larvae within.  It looks like we've inadvertently supplied them with a 'des res' ...

Dragonfly or 'libellule'

On a warm evening recently we were invaded by a host of golden dragonflies which must have just hatched.  They darted around like so many fairies with jewelled wings, delicately alighting on plants and sticks where they could admire one another and soak up the last rays of sunshine.  We'd just watered the beds with sprinklers, so maybe they were enjoying the moisture too.

Although we have a number of waterways and ditches around here, it's unusual to come across dragonflies or damselflies unless they're simply passing through. This brood of about 20 have stuck around for a few days now, entertaining us with their lively display.

Geum chiloense 'Mrs Bradshaw'
with pink Salvia and Californian poppies

In planting our borders we've tended to avoid using red flowers in case they clash with the various pinks and mauves already established. But we wanted to grow some Geum and couldn't find any with orange blooms, so I picked this RHS-approved strain which has bright scarlet flowers and really glows alongside its neighbours.

Now we've come to appreciate these vivid pinpoints of colour dotted around the garden like poppies in a meadow. Their erect stems provide a succession of flowers and I'm happy to report that they seem to be snail resistant too!

Hoverfly visiting Mrs Bradshaw

Scarlet is a much rarer colour in the butterfly world, but I snapped a Red Admiral looking distinctly dapper against the pure white blossoms of Escallonia macrantha.

 

Shrub of the Month

From being an unremarkable evergreen hedging plant, our Escallonia has put on a fair bit of new growth this spring and suddenly burst into flower about a week ago.  We also have a pink-flowering version but this one is much more striking and provides a thick hedge for the front of our rental cottage or gite.

Escallonia macrantha 'Alba' in bloom
with mulberry tree behind

We chose it to replace an ugly conifer hedge which had fallen prey to dieback and was clearly unhappy at being buffeted by salt-laden breezes.  It grows quite quickly and has attractive glossy leaves which stand up well to moist salty air and strong winds.  So far, it hasn't fallen victim to any of the other 'maladies' that beset hedges here and have their owners reaching for the Bordeaux mix!

Delphinium tatsiensis

One of the plants I grew from seed a couple of years ago was this delicate delphinium from Western China that almost got lost amongst our annual larkspurs which are distinctly more robust.  It has beautiful spurred flowers that last well and I'm hopeful that more stems will be produced as the plant matures.  

Perennials often demand patience but give them a couple of years to develop a good root system and you'll be amply rewarded.

Papaver somniferum and its seedhead

Annuals, on the other hand, are the floozies of the flower world - none more so than poppies which scatter their tiny seeds all over the place! 

Like so many people starting a new garden in a warm climate, I was looking for bold and exotic colour when we first came here. Poppies provide that hit of instant gratification, but their seeds linger a lot longer and still come to life whenever we turn the soil. Mostly I weed them out because the foliage can get big and untidy, but sometimes it's tempting to let one come to flower and just enjoy!  

The ex-potager has now become a herb bed, filled with colourful salvias and hyssops which are all flowering their socks off. Threaded amongst these are a few geraniums such as 'Ann Folkard' with bright magenta flowers which look good against the rough, purplish leaves of culinary sage.

Ann's finely-cut foliage is quite a pale green and also adds contrast to the surrounding herbs, so it's easy to see why she's one of the most popular geraniums for sun or shade. With stems of up to 60cm, she can hold her own at the front of the border without taking over.

Weed of the Week

Oxalis corniculata

This is another of those creeping things which look innocuous at first... you may well find it tucked into the corner of a flower pot or flashing its little yellow flowers at you from a crack in the paving. 

You might think it's a sweet little sorrel with bronze leaves, but don't be fooled - it's a Wicked Weed!! Those yellow flowers will produce capsules which ping out their seeds with great efficiency and the plants themselves can soon become entangled in the roots of your choicer specimens. 

Perhaps I sound a shade neurotic but I dislike anything which competes for the scarce moisture and nutrients in our soil. (Plus, of course, it just doesn't have a lot going for it aesthetically...)

An Aesthete keeping his eye on the herb border!

Rich Pickings

"I must have flowers, always, and always" - Claude Monet

The delicate hues of Rosa versicolour

As in England, June is really the month for roses to come out in all their glory... and here on the coast it's sometimes the moment for a cruel wind to come and blast them off their supports!  Luckily we were forewarned of strong gusts in excess of 60kph and were able to pick a good display of the most vulnerable stems beforehand.

Roses with allium and foxglove
- painted by an 'Old Master'?

Although we'd had some lower branches lopped off our big ash tree last autumn, the weight of leaves was too much for another higher branch which had been thrashing back and forth in the gale.

I heard an ominous cracking noise during one particularly strong gust and ran indoors for car keys in order to move our Peugeot out of the line of fire.  Luckily the branch didn't actually break whilst I was underneath but it's a salutary reminder of how brittle our trees can become with age, even after all the rain we've had this year, and it's worth getting them regularly checked by a specialist.

We went to buy some wine from our local vineyard today and asked if the new growth had been damaged by recent turbulent weather, having seen how these winds can rip off young stems.  Fortunately their vines seem only to have been affected by the lack of sun and resulting pale growth... we live in hope that there's time for this to be remedied!

Dianthus gratianopolitanus

Meanwhile, our garden still manages to put on a good show of colour and edging plants like campanula and pinks provide wonderful cushions of flowers and foliage.

Some types of dianthus make better 'mounds' than others and I particularly like this one which I grew from seed and is supposed to be the original 'Cheddar Pink'.  It has delicately fringed, deep pink flowers and is happy growing on dry limestone in full sun.

Now is good time to put pink cuttings in a very gritty compost - if you can actually find some non-flowering stems to use!

Another herb which provides vibrant flowers is a form of small leaved sage, Salvia microphylla, which is also suitable for container planting.  There's a popular variety with bi-coloured red and white flowers called 'Hotlips', but we prefer the single shades which are really intense and velvety in texture.

Here in this vase you can see two different kinds of red - one scarlet and one slightly more fuschia.  There's also one with creamy flowers and others in shades of blue, purple or salmon pink.

Toadflax or Linaria purpurea

In the same vase are some blooms of purple toadflax, an unassuming but neat plant which grows just over a meter tall in semi-shaded areas.  It has attractive blue-grey foliage and an upright habit which means it can be useful for flower arrangements.

So far it appears to be fairly drought- tolerant and pest-free - all of which makes it a good garden friend and worth pursuing in seed catalogues to find out if there are other slightly more exciting varieties to be cultivated.

Larkspur flowering and in bud

A fine, upstanding type of delphinium is the annual larkspur which has seeded itself around our garden, together with good old love-in-the-mist (Nigella damascena) which has similarly light and feathery foliage.  

Whereas Nigellas tend to get too bushy and we end up removing most before they've finished flowering, the larkspurs form more open, branching plants which look quite stately in the border, particularly those with dark mauve blooms.  White and pink varieties are often sold in a mixed packet of seeds but these colours don't seem to come back as readily as the mauve which just goes on seeding itself in sunnier areas.

Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica

Several sages have come into bloom this month and I particularly enjoy the slow unfolding of petals or bracts on the Salvia sclarea opposite.  Its creamy, green and pink-tinged flowers will eventually be vertical  and the stems exude a distinctly grapefruit odeur on hot days!

Many sages are surprisingly scented, including some of the microphyllas mentioned above which smell of blackcurrants.  It's certainly a good reason for growing lots of different salvias in your garden and most of them are more ornamental than culinary, with quite a long flowering period.

Verbascum hybridum
"Snow Queen"

We've come across verbascum apparently growing wild in chalky places around here, so it was a reasonably safe bet to try starting some from seed last autumn. I sowed these in pots originally and planted them out at the end of winter.

The first of these began opening its flowers last week, having reached a height of about 120cm, unlike the wild yellow ones we see which can be well in excess of two meters and rarely manage to stay upright.  I'm glad to say that its leaves, too, are fairly restrained and don't take up too much space.  Hoverflies seem to love them and the bundles of pollen remind me of miniature Easter chicks...!

On a more prosaic note, we spent an afternoon turning our compost recently as it's probably not been done for six months and we were in need of some rotted material to use as mulch.  We have a home-made bin under the ash tree into which we put our fruit & veg bits as well as most of our garden waste, all carefully cut up so that it rots down more easily.

If we had lawn clippings, the heap would warm up and make compost quite rapidly; but with a large amount of woody offcuts, it needs to be kept moist and turned at least once a year.  Once it's started to become dark and crumbly underneath, we dig out the bottom layer and put it in a plastic compost bin with a lid to finish off the process.

Close to the compost area, we came across this young tree frog relaxing on the leafy branch of a Cotinus bush.  Not exactly the best form of camouflage you might think, but then again he can squirt out a noxious liquid if attacked by a predator - as our cat has discovered in the past!

Reinette resting on a smoke bush