A frustrating fortnight ...

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Having decided to have our heating/water system updated before the Autumn and Winter arrive we booked in our regular plumbing/heating engineer.

As we knew that some carpets would have to be uplifted to access the pipework beneath the floorboards, and because I simply couldn’t face living with the disruption of no gas for hot water or cooking, we booked a Monday to Friday break in Dorset for the first week.

That went well, especially a visit to Holme Gardens.

We arrived home on the Friday afternoon to find all the new radiators had been fitted, ninety metres of copper pipe used, some painting has had to be done where the new rads are slightly smaller than the old!

That’s ok, I knew that might happen, but I was not happy to find we had no hot water until Monday as issues had cropped up, too technical to tell you about, meaning that the new water cylinder had not been fitted.

Finally the new system was working, so now there is a heated towel rail in the bathroom, wonderful, hot water timed twice a day and, when required, new radiators which will work more efficiently than the old.

To vent my frustrations while the work was still on-going for the second week, I decided to empty out the contents of the ‘Dalek’ composter as the high temperatures of a few weeks ago had really worked well on it and it was ready to use.

Many barrow loads later, the bin was empty, the compost had been spread over the flower beds and borders, job done!

Yesterday I got round to dead-heading and pruning some plants, took about twenty photos, uploaded them from camera to desktop, then promptly lost the lot!

No idea what happened, my I.T. support (daughter) was adamant they were still there somewhere, it was just a matter of finding them. To say I was frustrated was an understatement.

I took a few more photos today, lo and behold, while uploading those, all of the others appeared on the screen, hooray!
So I can now show you, in no particular order, what is flowering in the garden at the moment.

Also, at the end, there is a photo of the plastic saucer I place in an old leaky bird bath to hold water. If you don’t like seeing what was under the saucer, think how I felt, ha ha!

Yesterday the grass was mown and edged, hence how neat it looks today.

Here’s the saucer of water for the birds.

These are what I found beneath … yuk!

To end with something far more attractive … two Gladiolii staked together to keep them upright.

The water butts are full, as yet there is no hosepipe ban for our area, but very little rain is forecast for the coming two weeks.

I hope your gardens are coping well with the unpredictable weather.

• 23 Jul, 2025
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