Three things obscured serious attention to the Dumfriesshire garden this month. I was heavily involved in the logistics of ‘launching’ my first novel. We were away on a short but garden-rich holiday in the Cotswolds. At home, the weather was unpredictable, occasionally too hot, sometimes cold and breezy, and mostly very wet!
The month began windy, chilly and with blasts of rain. In the intervals I planted out Cosmos and Foxgloves. Both grown from seed. Cosmos will bring coral colours to this year’s borders. Foxgloves will make a big impact next spring. I have become very fond of them, especially the Alba varieties, but I’ve also stopped rogueing out our native purple flowers and decided to just let them be. The two together swaying in the twilight make one of the special pleasures of the garden.
The Rheums and Hostas flourished despite the blustery conditions. Their huge leaves of varied hues made the ideal foil for adjacent Primulas, Geums, Geranium and Meconopsis. Likewise, the coppery Cotinus was the perfect backdrop for a pink rose but also for the yellow Elfdock. The Ceonothus, a product of two small standard plants left to go shaggy in the border some years back, produced an unprecedented cloud of Californian colour by the terrace wall.
After a few years to settle, a clump of Japanese Water Iris bulked up to produce a fabulous pale lilac display next to the Ligularia. Meanwhile a long-standing resident rambling rose kicked off a couple of weeks of rampant pink blossom, just as the newly acquired pots by the front door learned to cope with deluges of rain one day and oppressive heat the next.
I made sure to walk the garden each evening, trying not to look too closely at the jobs that need doing. One day I grabbed an hour for weeding and felt pleased by the result. But distracted by other matters, I failed to make progress. As the month ended we hit that point in the year where I question the ambition of a garden at this scale. Weeds in the borders, rampant meadow grass in the arboretum, Sticky Willy just about everywhere, along with a forest of new Raspberry shoots, seeded by thieving blackbirds.
Recently, I resolved to remove all Raspberry canes from the allotment, thereby stopping that particular problem at source, only to find this June, at month end, a bumper crop of delicious fruit, the like of which we hadn’t seen in years. Those Raspberry canes must have heard my distracted remarks. It’s been a bit like that this June: but I did make some excellent jam.
Quotidian 
Your blue poppies – gorgeous! And the rest of your garden is, as well.
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