IAVOM ~ Sunshine & Showers

It's certainly been a case of more showers than sunshine of late but the garden is lapping it up after this hot dry summer. In my vase this Monday are a trio of :

• Rudbeckia fulgidia var. dreamii - a reliable late summer flowering perennial which simply just glows summer sunshine even on dull wet days, of which there have been a few just recently. My plant came from the fabulous nursery which is close to our caravan in the Lake District. The nursery Abi and Tom's Garden Plants is going from strength to strength featuring in both last week's episode of 'Gardeners' World' as well as in this September's edition of the Royal Horticultural Society's magazine 'The Garden'. Definitely a must to visit if you ever find yourself in the south of Cumbria. Below is a photo one of the garden spaces in the nursery when we visited in the middle of May this year: 

• A couple of strands of the golden hop - humulus lupus 'Aureus' - it's having a good year but it's not been as rampart as last year probably in response to the drier summer. It's has just come into full hopiness over the last week. 
• A sprig of an old stalwart clematis jouiniana x Praecox' which is an excellent scrambler and a pollinator magnet. 

My vase was a memento from a holiday last year when we stayed just over the English border and visited a small ceramics studio in Coldstream, Scotland. I felt that it would be churlish to leave empty-handed - well that's my excuse 😉

Thanks must go to Cathy over at 'Rambling In The Garden' for her excellent hosting throughout the year. Do visit if you haven't already and see what she and other bloggers are filling their vases with this week.

Here another week without much in the way of any gardening tasks being accomplished. As already mentioned there's been a lot of the wet stuff over the last week and the cramping middle finger hasn't gone away. The rain has precipitated a rash of briza maxima seedlings to appear overnight. They will have to wait until they are bigger to get hold of to extract from where they are surplus to requirements. I have however sent my spring bulb order off which is early for me. I still have tulips to order but don't really want to store these for any longer than I have too so will wait a while longer, maybe another couple of weeks or so. I've taken one or two cuttings and hope to do some more as the week goes on as well as sow some hardy annuals with the imminent arrival of September tomorrow. What have you all be in up to in your gardens? I'd love to know.