So how have your gardens faired during this hot dry spell? I know we have been flat out early in the mornings, sometimes Hubby has been on the plot at 5am watering while I join him a little later. Watering is a two hour process most days, carrying watering cans back and forth from the cistern tanks that are placed at 100-yard intervals down the length of the allotments. It’s exhausting work.

But together we have managed not to let too many things shrivel up in the unusually hot Summer here in the UK… Not to mention those driving HOT winds?
Farmers in Lincolnshire have said how their potato crops are dying. And despite our watering our potatoes they are now starting to die off early and the main crop hasn’t even flowered yet.
It’s the same all around the globe for one reason or another it seems there is an assault on crops, and whether it’s the transportation or the chemicals used to grow them, it seems that shortages are a real threat.
People who have any sort of land I feel in the future are going to have to think really hard on how they are going to grow their own food supplies and look at ways of sustainability. We can already see a recession looming on the horizon as food prices shoot through the roof along with Energy Bills which are set to quadruple, they have already doubled here.
So new initiatives will be needed I feel as people I see are already coming together in small groups of pooling ideas of community gardens and ways and means of pulling together resources.
One thing that have flourished is the Gladioli. We replanted them the other year to form a line near the cold-frame which has afforded them some shelter from the winds we get that blow across the valley.
Here is a vase of freshly picked Gladioli, along with some of the Dahlias.
Our Cat Biscuit is at home here on the plot, he follows us there and back most days and it is his hunting ground for mice. Very often we will have two or three gifts waiting on the patio in the morning as he brings home his hunting trophies.
I will leave you with some more images and hope your Gardens are surviving and thriving.
Click the Images to make larger:









The waterlilies in the small pond with have with our fish, have done well too. Click Images to Enlarge








Our gardens take a lot of effort to maintain, but the joy in abundance and pleasure they bring is worth all the aching muscles and hard work..
The green thumb is equable in the face of nature’s uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.
–Michael Pollan
Happy Gardening
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