Halfway Through June Already

Halfway through June and we already know that it isn't going to be a summer like last year, when everyday was glorious. I preferred last year but at least there won't be a water shortage and hopefully it means more raspberries  and a good boost to the new trees in the meadow. Thankfully here in Suffolk we've got away without the flooding seen elsewhere.

Last weekend there was a fete noted in my diary and a village with open gardens but I didn't do either. Instead I mostly stayed at home indoors in the dry watching the French Open Tennis Finals, and a little sitting outside in the sunny bits on Sunday, had to twiddle the thermostat for the heating to come on on Saturday evening - when it was just so chilly, seem to have been twiddling it on all week!

Sunday morning was fine so I popped along to the local boot sale, not many boot-ers there, I came home with just a small bundle of Vegetarian Magazines and a purple Perennial Geranium as I'm still trying to get a purple garden in the bed by the conservatory. Every year this plan is foiled by an invasion of a plant with yellow flowers that have yellow sap..............very nasty sap too. The plant is Greater Celandine and it is a real pain, it's definitely a weed but why only appearing in this one bed? It's listed as common but I'd never seen it before moving here and finding the annual invasion. Every year I pull it up as there are too many bulbs in this bed to do much digging.  The soil there is just a few inches deep over the shingle and hardcore that was once part of the driveway so is pretty poor and I've read that it doesn't like rich soil, so maybe I'll pile on some compost.


The grotty weather has made it an uneventful week except for having problems with a tyre on my car - who knew I had a warning light for low tyre pressure?

 I didn't until a strange symbol appeared on the dash and I had to look it up in the handbook. And who knew that cars don't have spare wheels anymore? Anyway I got my mates at the local repair place (the number of times I've had to phone for help with cars means they are nearly my best friends!)  to come and take the tyre off  and take it away to repair, but they found it was damaged in the side wall so ordered a new tyre and then found that there was also a problem with the pressure sensor in the wheel. Ho Hum!
 In the workshop were 3 wheels and one new tyre, the one wheel that fitted the car had an old tyre on it but Ashley put it on the car just so I could get to the next village for an appointment but I didn't dare use it for the planned trip to Diss to meet up with blogger Rachel so that's been cancelled until next week.
The guys said that there was a spare wheel + jack kit they could get that fits into the space which previously just held a mini compressor and the chemical stuff now used for mending tyres. So now I have a proper spare wheel and everything needed to change it. An expensive event but it's reassuring to know it's all sorted.

Before the fun with the car I did get over to Leiston to see youngest and Florence and also went swimming.While in Leiston I popped around to the fruit and veg shop where I knew they used to have Hostas for sale each spring. They just had a few left, so I got one with golden leaves for the clear-out price of £1.80. I'm not aiming for a big collection of them like I had years ago but they do look good in pots on the patio.

The weather was a bit better yesterday and while waiting for the phone call to go and get the car sorted I got loads of gardening done, mainly weeding  and edging round the rose-garden.



This week I am grateful for

• Tom and Ashley at the car repair place 
• A fine day to begin catching up with gardening at last 

Hope everyone has a good weekend, the weather forecast here looks much better thank heavens. Car boot sales and a Church Flower Festival and Art Exhibition are in the diary and much,much more gardening and grass cutting I think.

Back Monday
Sue