Blooming into Flaming June

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Keeping the potting shed party going from the previous Rhubarb Society thread and all threads before it.

Please feel free to join in all gardeners, whether novice, professional or aspiring. Plenty of blackberry gin for all.

I agree with Rhubarb. How awful if funnyson is deterred from NGS visiting.

Groombridge Place sounds delightful. Today I have impulse-bought a standard rose from Tesco and a dress that makes me look like a giant pelargonium. I missed Monty on the telly but will hope to find it/him on iplayer.

I want a dress that makes me look like a pelargonium. That sounds fabulous.

Do you really? I'll find you the link. I think it's too young for me, but it's fun and DH likes it, so it's staying!

Here it is.

DS will recover - he became a socialist because he says I took him to too many stately homes when little- he thinks feudalism is wrong and is convinced that the English psyche remains feudalistic rather than democratic (hence the popularity of Downton Abbey and such like he says) and the garden episode only served to convince him that elitism and capitalism etc etc are alive and well even where gardens are concerned. It will be interesting to see what he grows into. I'm glad he isn't a Tory though I think the Tories are here to stay for a while. The stately home outings backfired as you can see, even DD now runs a mile from anyone who says they live in a largish mansion, which annoys me because obviously I want her to marry a property owning millionaire as I am Mrs Bennet personified, and the DC's resultant antipathy to mansions is one major reason I am no longer a member of the National Trust.
I wouldn't bother complaining because it is a free country and it was their garden and I'm sure we didn't miss much, and thank goodness our own gardens are beautiful enough, but on principle a garden which opens for charity to the public should be willing to open to all. Oh dear I must stop going on about this.

Dress is fun. It is the perfect weather for it.

I don't feel you should stop going on about it. You are a respectable person who holds down a respectable job and being turned away for the crime of looking forrin is beyond appalling in this day and age. Rage away as much as you like.

The dress was an extravagance but months of illness mean I have lost a lot of weight so I need new clothes.

sorry to hear you have been ill Maud. The dress is gorgeous.

maud that is a very pretty dress!
I hope you feel much better now.
we had a toad situation this morning. we decided to take the netting off the strawberries and it was tangled in the netting. poor thing. we operated with nails scissors, wet cloth and a bowl of water.
it can't have been there long, it was still moist and trying to get away. the dc watered the release site generously before letting her go. hope she makes it and eats all the slugs.
funny I hope you get a good result from your complaint!

Good gardening day today. Put up horticultural wire and trained the winter and summer jasmine.
In doing so, the winter jasmine became a lot less rampant. This was deliberate, as this spring I admired a neighbour's neatly pruned winter jasmine covering almost a third of her front house wall.
However once it was done, I realised I like the flowing trails of rampant jasmine and roses. There is a softness and abundance which trailing growth and flowers have. Trailing is less formal.
Also I dug out the plant in a rectangular patch which I have been watching, and it is definitely a weed, which propagates by invidious white root runners which I tried to dig out of the soil. Hm.
I hope those who go to Hampton Court have a nice time. Do tell us about it, especially the roses!

maud I am sorry you have been ill. Is your cough better now?

I have just been going round in circles on the RHS website, trying to buy a ticket for tomorrow. Eventually in despair I rang up, to be told that they have stopped selling advance tickets but they can be bought at the door. Then why not actually say that on the website, eh?

So, I expect to get there at about lunchtime. If anyone fancies a quick meet-up, PM me!

I have very rampant summer jasmine and clematis purpurea plena elegans tumbling off the top of an obelisk and creating a curtain across the path. It is very neglected informal.

Maud I'm sorry you've been ill too. I hope you are on the mend. The dress is beautiful! I love all these floral prints that are around at the moment. I picked one up in Zara this week that is a veritable cacophony of roses, tulips and primulas. I've gone a bit nuts on the little girl dress front too as usual, dd's wardrobe is resembling a floral marquee at the moment. Love it.

Oooh Maud! Will pm you immediately.

Oooh, Rhubarb. Can you do a linky to your new dress? I rather like the photographic prints, like my pelargoniums. I like to think I am très très à la mode.

::hollow laugh::

This is my new frock. First shift dress I've found since having the offspring that doesn't make me look like a sausage

I was having a bit of a floral moment actually and bought this bed linen too while I was at it. It's rather like sleeping in an old Dutch still life, but I do like it. And it was in the sale. Can't resist a floral bargain.

Oh, that's lovely too, but too fitted for a fat old blimp person like me. I like floral bed linen too so dh gets no choice in the matter.

Love that bed set but i will restrain myself as i already have more duvets than i am likely to need in this life time.

The dresses are nice but i never wear a dress and am more a tatty shorts and husbands old t shirt type otherwise know as a right scruff

That dress is perfect. I already bought designers guild bed linen in their sale (floral of course). And 'strawberry thief' curtain material in the slate colourway in another sale.
You two (rhubarb and maud) have ideal figures.
I wonder....if I take dad out in the garden early perhaps I could make it to Hampton Court to see the roses and buy some seeds and be back in time for a bit of gardening......

All your talk of garden visiting and multitasking in the heat is exhausting me just reading it!! I have zero temperature control left, am heavy and achey and can do little else but roam the house trying to find the coolest room to lie down in. Yesterday I made short bursts of activity but then needed to sit with an iced drink for about 40 mins per 5 of movement.

Have enjoyed watching the Hampton court programmes on iplayer - glad they let Monty stay in his fisherman's smock style and not have to ponce up. (Do you think that is on his 'rider', along with a bowl of the finest tap water for Nigel...?)

I must water my pots before it gets too hot today. The water from my second butt that I installed against the shed at the north end of the garden (I.e. in full sun) is seriously stinky. I've used it on plants and it hasn't killed them, so I think it's harmless but it smells as potent as comfrey feed. I didn't wash out the butt before putting it up, anyone knowledgeable think that adding some of the water treatment additives would sort it or do I need a better solution? Would it work to put willow/bamboo screening around the butt (v limited space though, would be just a blanket not a fence) or do I need something reflective?

Just joining in the frock-love too, here's mine from the Monsoon sale two years ago... The first one on this page, blue and red with a blue patent belt. Hope I can fit into it again after this baby!!

I love the floral dresses, sadly I'm a bit too curvy fat to suit them.

The summer bulbs have come up blues and whites plus one random burgundy one.

Dh are going to commission a curved metal arch way inspired by the rose walk.

Humph and Tyne, I always feel sorry for anyone pregnant in this heat, staying inside is sensible .

I went to a garden fete today was lovely with the local high school band playing and jugs of pimms but they let themselves down by not having a plant stall. What is the world coming to when you organize a summer fete but leave out the most important thing? Dogs show and band are nice but i want plants.