We’ve been having a superb summer here in Lewes, UK and my small urban garden has repsonded appropriately with garlands of flowers and vibrant greenery.  I’ve been reduced to a bit of dead-heading, some fruit picking and the odd bit of weeding.

Otherwise,  I’ve allowed myself to sit back and enjoy it while I get on with my Kindle journey through Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time  (À la recherche du temps perdu) – I’m now half way through the punultimate volume and I too have lost track of the time.

I should have been doing my summer pruning now that my David Austin roses have finished their fist flush but it is all done with amazing speed and efficiency and now presents a fine hedge awaiting next months second batch of flowers.

This is all thanks to my danger-seeking neighbour, Harvey, who has bought himself some ferocious-looking electronic cutting gear including a hedge-strimmer which did my job in seconds. I decided that I would experiemtn with this method after reading that even David Austin says we can do it. It certainly cuts down on the several hours I usually spend cutting stem by stem with my secateurs. It was not a good idea anyway to prune the roses while I’m on anti-coagulant Warfarin tablets because my roses, love them as I do, are unforgiving with their thorns and, these days, my scratches turn into real flows of blood.

So my thanks to Harvey and I can return to my Proust – nothing like the peace and tranquility of n English garden on a hot summer afternoon.

Then, of course, well after so many weeks of sunshine and high temperatures, the inevitable happened. Thunder, lightning and torrential rain. Then again, that can be fun too.

I shan’t be sitting out here again today, I suspect.

Watering the garden might be unnecessary too.

Warm rain on a summer morning is pleasant enough but that lighning has to be watched.

I made a hasty retreat indoors but then it was time I went back to my computer to get on with my own writing.

I’m sure the sunshine will be back and then I shall try to resume my work alfresco.

The post Out in my Lewes garden – rain or shine. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I suppose it’s sad when a camellia bloom falls from the tree but when it lies there like that on a sunny afternoon, I think it has a special beauty. After-all, there are plenty more up there for me not to miss this poor fallen one.

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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 My fallen Camellia appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Sorry to bore you all but I couldn’t resist posting some more photographs from my Spring garden. the sun is shining and the plants are responding accordingly. Taking it easy, as I’m told to do by the doctor, is a lot more pleasant and days like today. I’m sorry that I’m not clever enough to let you smell the cherry blossom – its the aroma of new life. Enjoy imagining it.

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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 Taking it easy is, well, easy, on a day like today here in my Lewes garden. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

So far I have spent most of this year, so far,  confined indoors with a respiratory condition not even being allowed out into my small town centre garden that is quietly reverting to the condition of an urban jungle. There is the chance of a short cold “snap” before the week ends but generally it has been wet and mild this winter here in Lewes, UK. My snowdrops might even be morphing into raindrops out there as they watch their damp reflections in the puddles.

My heliotropes, grown here as annuals, have, so far, toughed out the winter and are fighting for space amongst the thrusting new leaves of my returning bulbs. If I hadn’t been ill, I might well have pulled them up before Christmas.

The garden is still pretty enough, I suppose, especially if you don’t know what jobs have been missed and what really needs to have been done by now. Don’t even say the word “weeds,” just admire the primroses.

Well, no weeding for me yet, I might just watch the rain from the window and listen to the lovely but intensely melancholy third Piano Trio by Antonin Dvorak (1841 – 1904), written in my current year of study, 1883. Here is the Melbourne Piano Trio playing the slow movement which catches the mood of my garden precisely.

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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.

The post There’s a damp but beautiful melancholy out there in my Lewes garden. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

There’s a rather sad-looking terracotta pot outside my back door. It was supposed to have been filled with the dramatic reds and yellows of my tulip bulbs, Flaming Parrot. It was the slugs that did it. Last year was slug year and, much to my disappointment, they devoured the entire crop.

This was the same pot last Spring. If it hadn’t been for those wonderful fritillaries, this corner of my garden would have looked pretty dull over the last month. Luckily my other tulips, Ballerina, were magnificent this year so it was’t all bad news for my favourite flowers.

I usually replace the tulip bulbs in my terracotta pots annually but last year I decided I would see if the  bulbs would come back. As you can see, they didn’t.

It’s impossible to predict the future, I know, but I’m trying very hard to avoid a similar problem next Spring and, this week, I’ve ordered next year’s tulips to be delivered and planted this Autumn. It will come as no surprize if I tell you I’m going for those Flaming Parrots again and some more Ballerinas. The tulip season is over in my garden now but, gardeners are optimists and I’m already looking forward to next year. I shall be keeping a vigilant eye open for slugs and snails too. Until then all I have are memories of this year’s tulips and, well yes, a well-known song played on a Dutch accordion:

The post Whatever Happened To My Flaming Parrots? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Fritillaria meleagris, the snake’s head fritillary, is, most people claim, indigenous to the United Kingdom and was abundant in the days before we ploughed up most of our meadowland. I have always tried to grow them as, well, they’re wonderfully exotic for an English plant. These grow in an old trough that I’ve taken with me from various homes and, either them or their ancestors have been with me for a long time now.

They look like Victorian lantern shades  when they come in their traditional chequered pattern but they can also be pure white as if they decided that the contrast was aesthetically pleasing. They are right. As my daffodils are now over and the tulips are still in bud, these classy little flowers are among my favourites in my garden this weekend.

The post Fritillaries bring a touch of the exotic to my Spring Lewes garden. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I spent some time in the Sussex country village of Lindfield this weekend a short car’s journey away from my home town of Lewes, the country town for East Sussex. This beautiful village with its Lime Tree lined High Street, with its Eleventh Century church and many Medieval and Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century houses was looking perfect in the late July sunshine.

There were ducks swimming nonchalantly in the afternoon heat….

…obviously happy in this natural pond which has been fed by a local stream for millenia.

There was cricket on the green…Lindfield Common….where the game has been played regularly since 1747.

At nearby Chailly Common, a stretch of heathland between the chalk downlands to the South and the the Ashdown Forrest to the North, English wild flowers are having the high season.

That harbinger of summer, the colourful Rosebay Willowherb is now out in profusion swaying neurotically in the slightest breeze…..

The blackberries are in blossom, their prickly brambles winding their way through the unraveling bracken…….

…next to their equally prickly thistle neighbours which are every bit as much of an English heritage as their much lauded Scottish relations.

In the jungle of wild flowers there is also a bed of what I have always called Queen Anne’ lace which others call Cowparsnip and others confuse with Giant Hogweed…..I never knew which is which even though one is a harmless relative of our domesticated root vegetables, others are poisonous and another one has a deadly sting.

Whichever this is, its white umbels look fine against the drifting clouds as does the Large Bindweed or Convolvulus, England’s largest wild flower, a pest in the garden but magnificent in its natural setting.

Far away from its original home but now an honorary long term resident here in England is the Oxford Ragwort, or Senecio squalides, which, at Chailly, is growing around the car park and off along the footpaths indicating it preferred method of travel.

It was introduced as an elegant and exotic rarety into the Oxford Botanic Garden some time between 1700 and 1719 and is said to have demonstrated relatively quickly that is was no shrinking violet. Its seeds flew over the wall and travelled down the roads of England until the invention of the railway which then aided its spread across the nation. It is very welcome here with its optimistic golden petals announcing the dog days of the English summer.

There was time, after all that idling, to stop off at Lindfield’s very own The White Horse inn for an excellent and welcome pint of Lewes’ own beer, Harvey’s, of course.

Then home to the seclusion of my garden in the shade of the umbrella…..

where it is perfect to enjoy the sun without the sun enjoying me.

July here means that my roses are beginning the mid-season break and making room for….

the cooler blues, purples, magenta and mauves of my different varieties of clematis which have now scrambled to prominence in this small, typical Lewes-sized town garden.

These small star shaped flowers send out their fragrant and refreshing aniseed perfume which attract just enough bees and damsel flies to keep a lazy sense of motion on this perfect Summer’s day.

Wake me up if I am dreaming but it might just be possible that England really is having a glorious Summer after all. Even my vegetables are hinting that harvest time is not going to be as disappointing as I expected and that it may not be that far away either.

I hope the weekend was as good for the rest of you wherever you live.

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