Flowers in July

Thank you for your kind comments after my last blog post.  I'm glad to say that the members of our family who were ill are better now.  Our local daughter and the rest of the family have helped us from afar by keeping in regular touch.   Recently our daughter M who lives locally was able to visit us once more and gave us a beautiful bouquet of  roses and lilies.  It was our 58th wedding anniversary last month so I arranged the flowers in a vase and placed them near a favourite photo of Mr P and I relaxing in the garden which had been taken by our granddaughter.

The weather is a lot cooler now in the UK and there have been frequent rain showers, but in other European countries and in the United States I understand that extreme weather conditions have caused problems of drought and wild fires.  It must be very worrying to be living in such conditions.

I took a walk in the park and saw the patches of wild flowers that the park staff  had sown near the library and rose garden earlier in the year.

In our own front garden the row of sunflowers grown by Mr P from seed have all done well.  There have been rain storms and strong winds, but they've survived.......

....... and there are many new flowers in the covered yard and indoors.

The grapes are developing in the greenhouse along with courgettes and other vegetables.  Hopefully we'll get some sunshine soon to ripen the grapes.

Thank you for coming by.  Have a good day!

Wild Flowers in the Park, the Walled Garden

I go to the library in the park quite often not just to take books back that I've read or collect others that I've reserved but because it gives me an opportunity to walk in the park and visit the walled garden when it's open.  There's always something new each season or when new bedding plants are planted by the gardeners.  When I went there on my last visit the wild flowers in two new patches in front of the library were at their best.  It was a windy day with a few storm clouds scudding across the sky so the long stalks were swaying in the breeze but I managed to take some photos and many of them show movement as they were bending in the wind.  The blue cornflowers, the various single-petalled poppies, the yellow daisies had produced a multi-coloured display for visitors to enjoy.

Usually Mr P and I do our food shopping by car at the same time.  The library is too far for me to walk to and then there's the walk back home up the steep hill.  We plan our local trips to save on petrol and go together.  Mr P parks opposite the park so that I can go into the library.  He sits in the car and waits so I don't stay too long either in the library or the park, just long enough to take some photos and enjoy being there.  One day Mr P might come with me to see what the new café in the former stable block is like. 

Here are some more photos taken in the walled garden recently.

There's a new banana plant.  It's interesting to see how the paint on the freshly rendered wall looks a different shade depending on the light and angle of the shot.

The rose garden is looking lovely.

There's a new pom pom dahlia plant and there'll be a wonderful display of a variety of dahlias in a raised bed later on this Summer.  

the herbaceous borders

In the foreground the old yellow paddle boat has been planted up with pelargoniums and in the background the willow tree structure where children like to play is full of green leaves. 

I hope you enjoyed this mid week walk around the park and walled garden.  Thank you for your visit.

Linking with Riitta at  https://floral-passions.blogspot.com for her Friday Bliss blog post

Up in the mountains

Today I'm continuing the walk in the woods near the Charterhouse of Trisulti on the trail that leads up to St. Dominic's hermitage.  It was obvious that some of the rustic railings had been damaged by falling trees so I didn't walk too far up the trail knowing that there would be twists and turns and the path would get steeper.  I took photos of wild flowers and then returned to where my husband was waiting in the car which was in a parking space on the track below. 

wood anemone and cyclamen

Another charity shop find, I used this useful little book to identify some of the wild flowers I saw.

euphorbia (sun spurge) with small grape hyacinth, yellow trefoil, blue sheep's bit scabious, white and pink flower ? (of the nettle family?), white helleborine cephalanthera longifolia (orchid family)

blue cornflower, white campion, pink candy tuft,  yellow rock rose, pink campion

When we pass this old oak tree growing on the edge of the mountain I like to stop and take a look at it. The trunk appears to be dead, but the upper branches are growing and producing new foliage.

Just off the side of the main track is a path that leads to the ruins of the old monastery built long before the Charterhouse was constructed.  This small construction, I'm not sure how old it is, might have been a gatekeeper's hut or a mountain look-out point.

the old monastery ruins

The gardens of the ancient pharmacy in the Charterhouse which we visited earlier in the day.