Saturday, 21 June 2014

A summer solstice

white flowered cirsium palustre
White flowered form of thistle Cirsium palustre, not particularly rare but the first I've noticed here.

I thought I'd do that thing that people do sometimes on blogs and link back to the 'on this day' entries for past years but looking through it seems that there are no entries for some years. Still, reading the history confirms my thought that this year, planting is ahead of average and everything should be fine.

pyramidal orchid
Anacamptis pyramidalis - fairly rare meadow orchid

Even so I can't help fretting that things aren't growing as verdantly as I'd like them too. The ground here is very impoverished and we plan to have a soil test done so that we can make an educated guess on the best ways to bring it back to full productivity but at the moment with little in the way of good compost to apply and a reluctance to use commercial fertilisers, even the organic sorts, plants seem sulky and uncooperative. Or maybe I'm just projecting too much.

sunny weeds

I'm having some computer problems too, a piece of malware seems to have become resident and two virus checkers and two malware removers don't seem to be able to shift it. I've just tried a third and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. The trouble is this is an old XP machine which I was hoping would see out the summer with me. I don't really want to be rebuilding or buying new when I should be doing more useful things.

sweet potato
A single sweet potato plant from a slip raised two years ago and maltreated until now.

I promised vegetable updates. Soon, soon.


2 comments:

AlisonC said...

Gosh, redcurrants already! I thought impoverished soil was right for wild flowers, but perhaps you mean the vegetable-y bits have it too?

Catofstripes said...

I do, wild flowers are lovely but don't make a very substantial dinner.