I got down-hearted over the wind damage to my rose trellis this week. I  know that’s not that big a deal in terms of international natural disasters but it rattled my cage  and challenged my gardening instinct to remain optimistic about the ebbing and flowing of the seasons.

Yesterday the man came to fix it and, well, the world went wild with summer. What can I say but hello hot weather and hi to all these colourful hints of summer round the corner. I’m happy again now but then I’m a very superficial kind of person. I took these photographs yesterday and thought you’d like to see them too. I’m sorry you can’t smell them but that’s another story.

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post The sun came out here in Lewes and look what happened! appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It looks colourful and luxurious enough from up here in my study but that garden is getting out of hand.

I have a small town garden in Lewes, England, that I have built from scratch in the last four years.

It is now showing its true colours at this, often the most unruly time of year for plants that have been left to riot and loot. Not so my new favourites, the vanilla scented and vividly coloured heliotrope plants that are currently adding their perfume to the whole garden.

They have made a richly textured impression outside my French windows, their colour nicely contrasting with the sky blue cornflowers that I grow from a few casually scattered seeds.

Elsewhere the rioting is in full swing and those clematis plants, once my idea of a subtle filler between the climbing roses, have decided that the world belongs to them.

In their youth, they looked so shy and well-behaved and, in those days, I could still see the lovely old flint walls.

The passion flower has the same tendencies even after the harshest of Southern English winters when I thought it could not possibly survive and when I even wasn’t sure if I wanted it to.

The roses, originally the main idea, are still flowering away in there somewhere but the time has come for a radical change…..

…not only is there less and less room for the roses but I am beginning to wonder where I fit in too so the clematis and the passion flower, sorry loves,  you will have to go.

The post When a small Lewes town garden becomes a small Lewes jungle appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

After the hottest April since records began here in England 350 years ago, our spring has been galloping away and now my tulips have taken on that petrified horror movie look which has its own weird splendour. If my tulips and irises have said goodbye then there is plenty more out in my small Lewes garden

It is the turn of my first clematis plants with their luxuriantly large petaled flowers…..

…they have established the new colour scheme for this period in the garden….with purples, white and magenta….

…and Falstaff, the richly perfumed and exotic climber is the first of my roses to bloom though the others are all about to burst their buds……

…my small daisies have arrived….sitting on the steps and welcoming me whenever I go outside – they will flower now until the Autumn…..

……I have the first signs too of my fruit crops…..the espalier Bramley cooking apple tree is covered in fruitlets……

…and my gooseberry bush is already in fruit……

…so it is  looking good out there and I will take a moment to stand and stare wondering at just how many wonderful plants can be packed into a tiny space.

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