A British summer and a Fundi

Oh dear, it has been raining for days.  The garden has exploded with growth and plants are falling over everywhere, what with gale force winds and the water building up on flower heads.  I got soaked walking round the grassy path because the now-tall grasses either side have bowed down with the rain.

  I think I took the picture below last weekend - a few warm and sunny hours which enabled a lawn-mowing.

The plants in front of the wall are all self seeded.  I used to weed everything out; it looked much tidier, but not nearly so pretty.  In the foreground is a bronze fennel (that will have to come out, but I have it other places), then there is white Feverfew and that little orange flower that I call Hawkweed, they look lovely together.  The delphiniums (which I am very proud of, having grown them from seed collected from my sister's garden) are in tubs and are protected from slug damage by copper tape which works very well.  I am certain now, having experimented, that delphiniums will grow unprotected in the open garden if only the basal clumps are big enough when they are first planted out.  So I am growing these bigger, and then they will withstand the early slug attacks and outgrow them.  I already have two plants that are coping in this way.

Two days ago we had a gale force gust of wind which threw our outside table, complete with the garden umbrella, against the wall, breaking two spokes and damaging the fabric cover.  It was new last year so I was very sorry about it.  Anyway Paul took it off to the workshop and removed the spokes which he wood glued and cramped up overnight.  He found some metal channel, perfect size, which he has screwed alongside the breaks to strengthen them. I got the old Singer sewing machine
out and patched the cover, and all is now good again.  We have always tried to 'make do and mend'; it's very satisfying!  A friend of ours who has lived in Africa calls Paul a 'fundi' - someone who can repair anything!