Flowering at Last!

After a cold and wet June (and March, April, May!), July has finally seen the arrival of summer.  We are enjoying days in the thirties and then thunderstorms and downpours in the late afternoon.  Perfect weather for these dwarf and climbing belle du jour.

In theory climbing up the pergola pole, but the slugs have other ideas!

Back in May I talked about the vagaries of growing  Globe Artichokes  from seed.  One of the Violet de Provence was so spiky I decided to leave it to flower, quite impressive, but definately, not an eater!

The foliage is starting to look very tatty, not enjoying the poor clay soil

I'll take an off set-from one of the better plants and replace this one.  If I can, I'll try and relocate it to another part of the garden later in the year and treat it as an ornamental.  The tiny black bees love it!

I've just about given up sowing nasturtium seeds as so many self seed around the place, probably because I don't keep a tidy garden.  Healthy plants just get relocated if they are in an inconvenient place or left to do their thing right where they are.

Scrambling through the parsnips.

And the flowers are edible too, of course. 

Surely the prettiest climbing haricot bean -cosse violette.  The pods are purple, but we've only had one so far and that was scoffed walking back from taking the following photos!

We are still about a month behind last year in terms of harvesting - yet to have a courgette or cucumber.  Fingers crossed for an Indian summer and no frosts before December.