The worm in the bud..

Or rather the slug on the lettuce - or rather the lettuce inside the slug, or the snail. The lovely hollyhocks pictured above are riddled with rust - I haven't taken the leaves off because they are to some extent masked by the surrounding rampant vegetation. Down below is a snail doing relatively little damage on a seakale plant, whose tough leaves the gastropods can't munch - but as for my poor lettuces - I have had to resow and even the beer traps haven't saved the current upcoming crop from the horrible huge red slugs who, empowered by the damp weather, wander across the lawn seeking what they can devour.


And then there's bindweed - at this time of year most rampant, and since my neighbour on one side doesn't do anything in the front garden, it is overflowing and smothering my winter-flowering viburnums and I haven't yet had time to deal with it.

I'm not really moaning - recent events would make complaints about bindweed and slugs rather frivolous, though the slugs do seem a bit like rioters and looters, this year. I know they have a role in eating decaying vegetation, but my lettuces aren't decaying... I really actually am doing this post because I didn't want to portray the garden as a paradise where nothing goes wrong. Far from it!




So that picture was my perforated dahlia plant, though it does still seem to be producing nice flowers, which we bring into the house, so it's not all misery! In fact, at first glance you'd never notice the things that go wrong.




Sometimes one has to respond pdq, and fails to - as with this lovely winter squash,

suspended in an obelisk, that is growing itself round the obelisk, and I can't slide it out downwards without pulling it out by the roots. Ah, well, it will be the first to be eaten, cut out of the obelisk and roasted this autumn.


Things go wrong in writing, too, and in life generally, so should gardening be any exception? Of course not. But on the topic of the things that go wrong, I want to recommend a nice on-line magazine, beautiful photographs - the editor designs for the RHS - and useful tips. And yes, I do know him, but I wouldn't recommend these webpages unless I thought they were good. So do visit www.egarden.info/
And there is an article about weed-control, too! Though I personally loathe using weedkiller..

What wondrous Life in this I lead

Andrew Marvell's Thoughts in a Garden are undoubtedly misogynistic (think what fun I can have without you, ducky!) but there's no doubt that both sexes can find gardening pretty sexy. And when he wrote:
Ripe Apples drop about my head;
The lustrous clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wines;
The nectarines and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach -

he really did manage to capture the delight of fruiting time in the garden. Not that it's as effortless as that - the apples have to be picked up from where they lie if they drop - or plucked before they can drop - and it takes a lot of time to pick - not grapes, in my garden, but Japanese wine-berries. Of which more anon.



But it is wonderful to be surrounded by so much lavish deliciousness. We ate our Two Peaches this weekend; they grew on a small tree in a pot that I keep outside the kitchen window and have furnished a lovely view from the kitchen. They were exquisite, almost spicy and lush yellow, with a sweet juiciness the most delicious supermarket peach can't match. One of them was Huge, the other 'normal' size. I hope for more next year.



Though probably they'll never become as prolific as the quince, which started with one fruit, two the next year, four the year after that, then sixteen, then about forty - and so on till now it bears more than a hundred fruit and I am giving them away. They are clad in brown fuzz at present, later they will glow yellow among the autumn leaves.



Courgettes, of course, are arriving daily in this warm weather;



the autumn-fruiting (really late-summer fruiting) raspberries are beginning, and we already have apples; a Tydeman's Early Worcester that has been getting earlier every year. This is the first year they've arrived in July, though. They have the most wonderful perfumed flavour.



But the most glamorous apple in the garden is certainly the Sunset apple; already deceptively deep red, it looks as if it should be ripe, though it's the last we pick, in October.



I got two wineberry plants about eight years ago, having seen them in a potager open to the public, where the gardener broke the rules and let me taste. They have a flavour like no other berry, red stems which look marvellous all winter, and a turn for drama. The white flowers open, then once the bees have done their bit the outer case closes round the fruit, which stays in hiding till it's formed then 'ta-da!' they open their casing again and present the pale orange fruit to the world.


Later I re-read the memoir my father left behind and found that my grandfather actually grew them in his garden in the 1920s. My father said they had a flavour like no other fruit he'd ever tasted - they do - and 'set themselves freely'. They do - I have given a lot of plants away. I wish I could ring him up in the Beyond and tell him. If any spirits do the Internet and find this blog, please will you send its url to Frank Baker?