Seems like a long time since the last post, but I notice that the Victoria Louise poppies are still in bloom, so it can’t be that long, can it?

Today hubby drove us both to Leicester to return extremely expensive Blu Ray DVD player to shop, who will send it back to manufacturers, who will hopefully simply replace it. Bah! it kept ejecting discs.

While we were there, we met my niece Clare for lunch. Love her To Bits, she’s just great. Went to John Lewis and had a lovely time. We don’t see her often enough, as she lives a long way from us – and an hour from Leicester too, so that’s some commute she’s doing each day.

Yesterday I did some gardening – lifted a sedum and potted it up ready for the bed I’m redoing next spring, and planted two red perennial lobelias instead. Also a buddleia, and some pots – two geraniums, a dahlia (Bishop of Llandaff) and a hardy fuchsia. There are still three hardy fuchsias to plant but they’re so tiny they need to grow a bit first.

I do like fuchsias, they look like little ballerinas, according to YD, and contrast nicely with the bright yellow rudbeckias in the autumn, as well as going well with the sedums (spectabile).  Also have a smoke bush (cotinus coggyria), a dark purple one, and I just love dark purple leaves, particularly set against bright or light green leaves, like the winged spindle (euonymus alatus) behind it. And both go bright red in the autumn. Lovely.

I do have some photos of the garden, but they’ll have to wait till the next blog I think as the phone is charging.

Slept after getting back from Leicester, then washed out both wheelie bins which were smelly. Thank goodness for the hose, say I, as both bins are nearly as big as I am. But the hose has a fancy gun-type top, so you only have to squeeze the trigger, as it were, to make water actually come out of it, and there are several configurations (configurations??) – droopy spray, flat fan-shaped spray, fast hard stream, oh blah blah . . . anyway, what with that and the Jeyes fluid, the bins and I both got a thorough blast and they smell great. I smell foul of course, Jeyes is not what you’d call a pleasant aroma. Then I used a broom with an old towel from the shed to dry them and Bob’s your uncle!