July was so busy I didn't have time to get worried or anxious or depressed, but the last week has been a different story and I found Winston Churchill's "Black Dog" descending on me again. It's not helped by worry over the war in the Middle East, but a lot of my anxiety is irrational and unnecessary. I know it, but I can't control it. And the drug I'm taking to keep the cancer at bay is making it worse. I had a meeting with my oncologist a couple of weeks ago and she suggested a change of drugs. I'm waiting for a couple of weeks so that her letter gets to my G.P. and then I'm going to go in and see if we can get this sorted out.
In the meantime I can get out into the garden or go to work at the museum and that helps me to control my black feelings.Let me share some of my garden therapy! As you can see from this picture of one of our apple trees the fruit are ripening in spite of the drought! It's still very dry and warm here. In the past few weeks we've had a few showers with a quarter or an eigth of an inch each time, but it has barely wetted the soil, really. We're only watering things that are truly desperate or which have been recently seeded or transplanted and I've been surprised at how well most trees and shrubs are holding up.
This apple tree is the only one that has any fruit on it. The others had very little blossom and even fewer apples. I'm not sure why. I'll have to watch the buds more carefully next year. We DO have at least one pair of bullfinches and they love to eat apple buds so that may be the problem.
We've already had bumper crops of blackcurrents and gooseberries and today I picked a good handfull of loganberries (sort of thornless blackberries) which I plan to cook up with apples to make a crumble. I've frozen some of our rhubarb and blackcurrents so we'll be able to enjoy them later on in the year.
This picture is of the hydrangea under John's study window. It's quite small, but the color is lovely. We have two others, one a white climber and another which is a blue lacecap. Their leaves are browning off a bit, but otherwise they are hanging in there!This little hydrangea has had another role for the past couple of months, being the soft landing place for several baby birds which flew into the window. None of them have been killed, and only a couple were dazed enough to hang around for very long. The window strikes have stopped now, so we think they were due to the inexperience of the youngsters! Fortunately they weren't very good flyers either and therefore didn't hit the window very hard!
Boy have we had youngsters! It seems to have been a very successful nesting year. Last week we had up to six immature blue tits on the fat feeder at the same time. The babies are flying around in mixed flocks now, so we get droves of young blue, coal and great tits attacking the fat, peanuts and sunflower seeds. And down below them are several young robins, dunnocks and chaffinches waiting for the droppings. If you add to that our 3 pheasants, a pair of crows, several pairs of wood pigeons, two pairs of greenfinches, at least one pair of bullfinches, and a couple of magpies you can see that our feeders and bird baths are very busy indeed.
We haven't seen any baby mammals, but we have a couple of bank voles, assorted mice, a few pesky squirrels and the badgers, so we're doing ok on those guys too!
We took advantage of the dry weather to get down in the streambed and tidy up. We've trimmed shrubs and trees that were overhanging, pulled up some weeds (can't pull up too many as we don't want to weaken the banks) and taken out a bit of trash. I got really stung by nettles, too! One lot swung round and swiped my face and scalp when I was pulling them up and another lot got me on the arms. It's given me a bit of lymphedema in my left arm, but I expect it to subside once my remaining lymph nodes pump the poison out of my arm!But, of course it's the big drought resistant plants that are loving this hot and dry weather. Here's a picture of our Acanthus plants. They are tall, strong and vigorous and look absolutely wonderful. The bumble bees love them, climbing up into the flowers and getting completely lost in them.
This picture shows John's old cacti out having a summer holiday on our gravel "beach" in the back garden. These cacti are about 50 years old. John planted the seed when he was a little boy. His Dad looked after them while we were in North America until Joy took them over on his death. She was very pleased to pass them back to us when we came home to England for good!To give you an idea of their size, the tall one at the back is about 18" tall.
My last picture is a more general view of that beach area. Click on it to get an enlarged view. It's really a sunny little gravel patio. Behind the table and chairs you can see pink Phlox, orange Crocosmia and the tall umbels of hog weed. This latter has a smell that reminds me of an animal barn - I wonder if that's why they called it hog-weed?
But, take a look at the poor grass in the front of the picture. You can see that there are several very dry patches. Some parts of our lawns are now quite dead - especially where they were made up of moss or some weeds (oh- lawns are supposed to be made of grass, you say?). We're not too worried about it. I'm sure the grass will grow back as soon as we get some rain. It would be nice for that to happen soon, however.
Well, that's about all the news there is, for the moment.
Please stay in touch - e-mails from friends really brighten our days!
