Early - Mid Summer Blooms

It feels to me that the year is whizzing past so quickly that I feel like I am running to keep up, yet I am still falling behind.

You see, I can hardly believe that it is August already. The early - mid summer blooms have come and gone in my garden. The compilation on the left show some plants that I managed to catch. However, there were many more that my camera missed - including my clemantis, some wild geraniums, white Astrantia and my remaining delphiniums (the slugs and snails usually feast on these while they are tender shoots).

Mind you, it has not all been a success on the gardening front though. Ahem! I only read the instructions on the outside of my David Austin bare root rose packaging that I received late last autumn. Do you remember - the pink Hero rose I ordered last September that it has taken me three years to obtain?!

Ahh well, the instructions on the outside of the packaging advised that the rose should be placed in a frost free place if it could not be planted straight away. So I thought it best not to open the packet. Instead I put it, unopened, into my garden shed.

Oh, don't ask - if common sense had entered into this equation at all, I would have thought through the fact that something alive should not spend the entire winter in the shed without any light, moisture or air.

I am guessing that the instructions on the packet were intended only for a week or two, not all of the winter into early Spring months. As a result, I opened the packet, took out a very dead looking twig, read the more detailed instructions inside (which pointed out the error of my ways) and I sighed.

On a bright note, it seems that I am afflicted just as equally by gardening denial, as I am by knitterly denial. So I must be an optimist at heart? You see, I planted it out into a pot (just in case). And lo! Here it is, 5 months on:

Yup, as dead as a bloomin' dodo!

Also, have I ever mentioned that my neighbour's garden is trying to take over the earth, one square inch of bindweed and ornamental vine at a time?

The nasty stuff has started to come through their fence and has started to pop up in my flowerbeds - it's a constant battle. Although my tree peony is putting up a good, strong boundary defence, it seems that the darker elements of next door's plantlife decided that my absence at the GB Open was the ideal opportunity to launch another world offensive:

It may not look too bad in these pictures but trust me, these are sly plants. Left unattended, they spread and spread, either quietly choking all in their path or clambering over them with hobnailed wide, vine leaved boots, obliterating out the light for everything below them.

Now I appreciate that a weed is really only a plant in the wrong place but these intruders from next door are total thugs and as you can see from the image below, they seem to work very well in partnership:


So, is anyone else out there battling persistent weeds or bug infestations, in the global battle for greater gardening good this summer?!