Visit 14/15 July

50 mills in the gauge since last visit. Cloudy when I arrived and cold but the sun appeared in the early afternoon and perfect winter conditions prevailed. Cold but sunny next morning. I was lucky with the weather.
Everything looked pretty good for this time of the year. Many daffodils had appeared in bloom (the wonderful Magnifiques), the hellebores had really come on and the wallflowers provided their usual winter colour. The blue winter iris continues to look very healthy in several locations, as did the orange kniphofias (unspectacular) and the more interesting red and yellow one.  I was a little concerned that the Medlars tree seemed to have stalled in its progress so I relocated it from the south to north side of the house, a much more sunny spot. I planted a Hawthorn daylily (yellow and brown) and a maroon aster . The rhubarbs need rejuvenating after several years in the same spots so I dug one up and transferred it to near the shed after loading the soil up with a bucket of horse manure. I'll do the same with more rhubarb over coming visits. The last of the Flanders poppy seeds were sown in a new strip on the Daylesford side. Yellow (I think) kniphofias were lifted and divided. One was replanted, the others will be potted up and made available for sale. The same with the pink watsonias and another campanula. It was terrific to see that some of the poppy and cornflower seeds sown a month ago had appeared. The cornflower ones will be particularly interesting as Genevieve sent them from England.
I started on the rose pruning, a terrible job, with the beautifully scented red rose on the north side. The cuttings I stuck in the vegetable plot. Some might strike, which would make the pruning more worthwhile. The blue and white penstemon was chopped right back, almost to the ground and I potted up several cuttings.
I've decided to attack the spreading laurel in the paddock as it is getting out of hand and would be hiding at least 20 golf balls which it seems to attract like a magnet. Each visit I now devote 30 minutes on hacking part of it back. A byproduct is the wood which hopefully will be warming the house after drying out. At a conservative guess, I reckon there would be 10 tonne overall.