Ornamental

I was rather surprised to see a large ornamental poppy "pop up" again in the garden. I thought they were all finished, but on closer inspection several of the plants have another array of poppies coming along. They are so bright and cheery (and so large!), but also so flimsy and ephemeral. While the day started a bit humid and rather still yesterday, by mid afternoon there was a vigorous wind blowing (strongly enough to make the eleagnus fall over in its pot several times, so it's going to need a bigger pot....), so I imagine that by tomorrow this flower will be gone. Blown away.

I was mostly busy at my desk, but I did manage to spend a bit of time assisting / supporting Mr A in the building of his wall. As it was warm in the afternoon, the cement had set nicely by the evening, so I think this idea is going to work quite successfully. My "progress" photo is in the extras and contrasts nicely with the photograph from a couple of weeks ago, before I started digging out that corner. The progress photo shows the heap of soil that needs to be backfilled into the corner, and also shows how almost all the stump debris, apart from the really big ones which are basically intertwined with the wall, so will have to be turned into "features", are gone, courtesy of D and C on Saturday. Mr A's wee retaining wall is on the right. The aim is to get this corner finished and planted up, and then it can largely be ignored, not least because it won't exactly be the most visible part of the garden. But the mess in that corner has annoyed me quite a lot. When we arrived in August 2022 (ooh, almost two years!) it was overgrown with forsythia and various other shrubs which we wanted rid of, so we could start again. Job now, pretty much, done.

Anyway, that was Tuesday, apart from a trip to the beach with L, for a very windy, wavy and sandblasted swim. We managed about 30 minutes. It took about 20 minutes to swim south as far as the green door, and 2 minutes to get blown back when we turned round to return. I was exhausted when I sat down after dinner. Hence backblipping....

Oh, and while I was out someone came round to look at the fascia and soffit boards. While I expect I will (eventually) get a quotation from him, from the sounds of it I won't be taking it up.