James Nottle and joyous January

Kniphofia 'James Nottle' ( yellow poker ) has been a joy this Summer.
 And there I was thinking that I only wanted  soft lemon colours in the rose garden. It (he?) has been a stand out and definitely one to split up from this bunch and add to the other beds.......or should I just let it clump even bigger. Oh good grief, I'm already contemplating again!

 We have gone into holiday mode this past week.
A lot bit of relaxing and reading and keeping cool.
But then we had rain!!!!
And that changed everything.
( loving my gummies...thanks Amy x)

Bill attacked the clay/rubble pile that was removed when the brick path went down.

And relocated it to the Garage garden.

I removed the clods ( now there's the perfect word ) as he went and bucketed them into the Moat Garden (named by Bill).'
Clods.....those clumps of clay that remain together even after being bashed with the shovel.

And then this morning Bill took the big trailer to the old bonfire site and brought back some lovely dirt. Who knows what that is a mixture of. It will be full of potash though! It looks and smells gorgeous.......and there are no clods.
He has been shoveling it onto both garden beds and they are now full. 

The moat is not really a garden bed, we have just filled in the space.The red colour on the garden room is concrete. But I am going to dig up some alyssum seedlings from around the place and throw some seeds in there and the rain can do the rest.

I have no doubt that Bill's consistent watering ( and a bit of rain) has turned these tiny seedlings dug up and planted in July.........

.....into these monsters bursting out of their plastic skins.

I removed the covers from most of them at the weekend but left the sticks for a bit of support.

(Garden clippings ready to be mulched in the foreground). Let's not even mention what you can see in the background.....still.

The clippings have been taken from the catmint and salvias. If you do this, there will be another burst of new growth to come. Normally I can't be bothered in the middle of summer but I'm glad I did this time.

Little scalleywags....