1st August
'Lucifer', the crocosmia on this month's cover, is still flowering well and cannas are adding to the splashes of red round the back garden. The hard-to-eradicate crocosmia that looks like a giant montbretia,is now flowering to. What with the dahlias and gladioli coming into bloom, August will be a colourful month.
3rd August
I've come to the end of my Webbs Wonderful lettuce. They really are my favourites and I wish I had grown more of them. Slugs, though' like them too, and will leave the cut-and-come-again while Webbs are available.
4th August.
The tomatoes are ripening well. Sungold and Gardener's delight as flavoursome as eve. The Marmande has flavour as well but the plum tomato, Roma, my plum tomato,is a huge disappointment. No flavour at all, even less than shop bought tomatoes. I shall use it in cooking. A pity I included a pack in next year's seed order. I might try planting a few outside and see if that improves the flavour.
10th August
The raspberries and loganberries have come to the end of their fruiting but wild blackberries round the garden are ripening already.
19th August
Chris and I cut down fruited raspbery and loganberry canes this morning and tied the new ones in. I have ordered some later raspberries and something called perpetual raspberries. I have ordered a thornless blackberry too and if it grows well I will have an onslaught on all the vicious wild ones round the garden
26th August
To my surprise, one bush of the flori. Grace Abounding, which has been very weedy for the past five years and did nothing earlier this year, is putting on a respectable show, though not with giant trusses. Roses seem to do this when you stand over them in early summer and tell them you are going to dig them out in the autumn.
31st August
There have been many days this month when I have sat in the garden and felt as If I was in my own little patch of paradise. Perhaps I wouldn't have felt that way if the weather had been consistently fine, but the storms, combined with warm weather have suited the garden. The lawn, when freshly mowed, looks really good. Dahlias stand up to rain and hail far better than most flowers.