Saturday 25th July 2026 - Checked, Surviving, Just 50p and Re-located

It’s very pleasant to be sitting on one of our garden benches, under the shade of our Portugal laurel tree, while I compose this blog.

Following on from my last blog, after the rain, I checked the soil in our garden and the water butts. The ground was still very dry and there is no noticeable increase in the water levels. There is a distinct lack of colour in our flower borders.  Plants which are usually producing new blooms, as fast as I deadhead them, are failing to generate more flowers.  I can only put this down to the fact, the plants are concentrating on surviving rather than flowering.  There is no rain, of any quantity, forecast for the foreseeable future.  What we need are days of almost constant precipitation to bring the soil back to its normal level of moisture.

Walking along a field edge, the other afternoon, we saw plenty of blackberries and sloes in the hedgerows.  Whether they will come to anything, in other words plump up, remains to be seen.  The grasses are brown and the thistles have gone to seed – see photo, above.  There were plenty of butterflies with a number of gatekeepers on the blackberries.  We did notice the lack of cinnabar moth caterpillars who favour ragworts.  We only saw a couple, one of which I photographed – see photo below.  In the past we’ve seen them in numbers, devouring the leaves, leaving the stems bare. 

As usual, on Thursday, we went to the car boot sale and believe it or not, I didn’t buy a single plant!  I began to think we would be going home, empty handed, until Peter spotted a display of new books covering food, gardening and transport, all for just 50p each.  I don’t need any more recipe or garden related books but we did buy a book covering cars and another on American train engines.  These have been put on one side for our eldest grandson who has a great interest in, pretty well anything with an engine.  When you think what you pay for a magazine (bulked out with loads of adverts), 50p for a hardback book has to be excellent value for money.

This morning we walked along the promenade to see if work has started on the repairs to the sea wall.  No change, nothing is happening.  What can you say?  Work was supposed to start late spring/summer to take advantage of the hours of daylight and tides.  However, it was good to see the porta loos have been relocated, away from the last beach hut and are now at the back, under the cliff. 

Don’t think this week has been free of plant purchases – it hasn’t.  I’ve mentioned before about JD Planting located in the grounds of Groveland in Roughton.  This is run by, Josh, a young man in his twenties.  Since he started trading, Josh has increased the area for displaying plants and garden related items.  A few weeks ago, I messaged him via his Facebook page and asked if he would be stocking seed potatoes for planting late summer to give new potatoes around Christmas time.  He confirmed he would be and yesterday messaged me to say they are in stock.  This is excellent service, I never imagined he would think to let me know, I assumed I would see them advertised on Facebook.  I am totally impressed.  We drove the Groveland this morning and while Peter was selecting his potatoes, I perused around the plant section.  I found a cistus to replace a hebe which has sadly been slowly dying over the past two years and then, would you believe it, two more plants jumped up into my arms!