Garden notes, end July - early August 2019

Over the past two or three weeks the garden has moved from being full of scents and colour, to a minimal palette of mauve, with a few pops of yellow as the rudbeckia starts to appear. The glorious Regale lilies have all gone now. They were quite spectacular this year, doubling in number from last. I think I will have to re-pot the bulbs, in the hope that they double again, in which case they will definitely need a bigger pot!

The weather has been hot and humid during July, and so far early August has brought thunderstorms and torrential downpours of rain. In July, I was doing my best to protect the Gentle Hermione roses from occasional heavy rain, but the blooms have all gone now so there hasn't been too much damage in the last few days. The sweet peas survived last night's onslaught from the skies, and they are flowering and smelling delicious this morning. The runner beans and climbing purple French bean, Cosse Violette, are beginning to fruit. Hooray!

We have been enjoying some of the Painted Lady butterflies which have arrived in the UK this summer, in their millions. They have been dancing around the lavenders in the outer garden, the fennel and Verbena bonariensis. Glorious!

The raised bed has been completely swamped by the nasturtiums! There are a few small yellow and green courgettes. The tomato plants are a law unto themselves this year! Not doing that well, but it's fine. Last year's haul is still sitting in margherita pizza sauce form in the freezer, so I am not too worried about those!

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In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Coastal walk from Gullane to North Berwick

By the time I have walked about four miles, my toes are screaming at me - it's the arthritis, you see. One of the joys of being that little bit older than I was. However, for a long time, I have been keen to walk along the beaches, and follow the coastal path, between Gullane and North Berwick. So, having worked out the tide times, I decided today was the day, and off we went. Below is our starting point, the bay at Gullane. It's a lovely beach, very popular with dog walkers. This is looking east, the direction Tilly and I were going to take. Looking back, up the Forth, the unmistakable bulk of Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh's skyline, just clear enough to see. For most of the walk, there is the choice between wandering along a series of beaches, or following a path along the top of each. There's no denying it, at heart I am a shell-seeker. I have loads of shells at home. We lived on one of the out islands in the Bahamas for a just over a year, a lo

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage

the running wave

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