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..