We have had a week of temperatures up to 24C, it is cooler today with overcast and drizzle but not really cold.
Most of the deciduous plants are budding, I had to hurry and finish pruning the roses before the rain. Now all I need is a nice frost in the last week of August to knock off the buds.
Tell me why is it that people who like roses want you to grow them but never volunteer to prune them? I consented to planting six (not a lot I know) a couple of years ago. According to the vendor information they were nice restrained cultivars that grow to 1.5m. Lies, all lies! The bloody things grow 3m high or more and the trimmings from each one fill a small wheelbarrow. I do so hate getting caught up and impaled by rose thorns.
I still have tangelos, lemons and cumquats on the trees. The broad beans are flowering well and covered in bees but no fruit set yet. I am trying a spring planting of peas this year to try to avoid the too-cold-to-flower-and-fruit blues.
I will be sowing my seed trays for all the transplantable summer crops this week. We went to the local nursery to pick up a couple of packets of seeds that I was missing and found they had no okra. Bless his little cotton socks the owner dipped into his personal stash of saved seeds and gave me some. Who said the days of customer service were over.
For those who care there are quite a few new shots of the garden, floods, frosts and animals in our imitation winter.