Hard to see, but the rain is falling in our yard after several days of scorching heat that despite watering have dried out our hanging baskets.
Thunder is constantly rumbling south of us. I’ve checked blitzortung.org and you can see a large concentration of lightening strikes happening now about two miles away. I tried taking a screenshot of the website but this phone is an awkward beast at times. I’m going to post a video online but not here, I haven’t got enough memory anyway there’s some hail mixed in so it must be cold up in the storm.
Enough space to live, to fit in, to get what you need. But not too much, so you crowd everyone else out.
I like the ideas in Japan where space is at a premium so it is designed to be suitable for peoples needs. Things like fold up beds, or rooms that convert from one use to another. Innovation and recycling of materials.
There is a TV programme called George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, where every week someone is trying to get the most home space out of a tiny space. Some of the solutions are incredible.
Look at the Earth and our cities, we are too wasteful. We want too many things, we want the biggest car or house, without realising less is more. Each of us could accept slightly less and share out assets better!
So town planners need to consider the resources we have, the cost of living, how things can fit together to make things better (or worse). Just having a little garden space can be very fulfilling. Life doesn’t have to be awful in cities, but it does need to be less haphazard and more organised, otherwise things tend to the chaotic and entropy builds. Cities fall as well as rise. We need serious thought and planning.
Very leafy, I need to pot some small flowering plants on but not while my arm is shaking and sore. I’ll try and use some pain killers to stop it hurting so much. Hubby has dumped a big bag of compost in the way and I need to get it moved so I can get further up the yard. Some of these plants survived the winter, they are very leafy, to be honest I could move them into the main garden but I don’t have the energy and there are some dodgy steps as you walk round the back. I must get hubby to get some sand and cement to replace some loose bricks.
I chose yesterday’s #bandofsketchers prompt. I suggested house. Well I decided to go off piste with this and do a digital finger painting in Artrage app. It’s meant to be a summerhouse. With splodgy flowers in front of it. I used different brushes to create the varied shapes.
Don’t plant this thuggish, invasive plant! We planted two of them ten years ago and they can scramble and climb forty feet or more in a season! It dies back and leaves tangled vines in the winter but it can grow tough ropey tendrils in the summer. A true triffid of a plant. Hubby was up a ladder dragging filaments of it out from underneath the shed roof and from the alleyway behind our house. It needs more work but it was exhausting for him. I’m tired and all I did was steady the ladder!
A few weeks late because I couldn’t afford them earlier. Some of the trailing plants got damaged in their transport in the back of our car. I would like to get a few small colourful plants to dot around the yard and make it more colourful. I will see what cheap plants I can get locally.
These cheer me up. I know they will last well into autumn, and looking out the window on a cold damp day brings up my mood. X
Alliums are part of the onion family and are grown for their spiky round flower heads in purples and reds.
This display was at the Dorothy Clive garden a week ago. I think the leaves are from a different plant that was growing below the allium stems. I think if we go back in a few weeks a completely different set of flowers will have opened up. If you are in Staffordshire I would recommend a visit. The garden is down a country road and is on a sloping hill. Lovely on a summers day.
I wish our garden was sunnier but we planted a lot of trees soon after moving in and now the garden resembles a jungle. Still that must be good for our carbon footprint.
Deep green foliage, a gravel pathway and a bench. A calm place to rest and relax. Light streams through gaps in the planting. Bees hum and buzz. I wish I could go every day. Plants spread and cover the ground. The rhododendrons are in flower. This is the quarry at the Dorothy Clive garden in Staffordshire.
Mallaband-Brown 