The gardens are starting to produce at long last. But its still resembles a building site.

Some glorious Aquilegias have eventually popped up in our front bed. Initially the flowers were quite stunted, but know we have some fantastic blooms. One in particular is this gloriously big bloom in white. One little gem amongst many standard crimson coloured blooms.

We have quite a few others that are beautiful, various colours, styles and sizes.

Double blue being held by grubby gardeners fingers.

Even the wild foxglove have started coming into flower throughout the woodland garden.

Still doing the hard landscaping. After a weekend of 50 + mph winds, torrential rain that turned the clay into gloopy mud, the sun has returned.

The winds nearly blew the new fence over, even though they were buried in the ground a metre and secured in concrete. Had to go out and put temporary supports up.

Once the bad weather had disappeared, found the fence posts had been pushed of vertical by about four inches. Winched them back straight and have now tied them into the pergola. Hopefully, that will resolve the problem. Or until we have the odd 80mph winds.

Haven’t done anything extra to the Japanese garden, been too involved with the fencing. Hopefully, if the weather keeps fine, will be able to move back onto the pleasurable parts of construction.

 

We keep finding broken eggs on the beach area of our pond. I am now fairly positive that its the crows that are praying on the birds nests in the vicinity.

Yesterday we found what looks like a couple of blue black bird eggs and a large white wood pigeon egg.

Nearer the house we are finding small crab shells in the bird bath, presumably from seabirds, although this could also be the crows, stealing off the seabirds.

One good piece of news is the sighting of pheasant chicks. Lets hope that they survive, what with pine martens, cats and the preying birds.

 We are now preparing for the arrival of some climbing roses from David Austin. Busy fencing under the lower deck, which in turn will allow us to prepare beds at their base to accept them. 

We have already managed to source a selection of Jasmine and Clematis which will also hide the underside of the house.

Plenty seems to be happening, around the gardens and in the Clyde estuary. Shrimp boats out, submarines in and out on exercises, along with deer and pheasants glibly munching through the forest greenery.

No matter how much we bury our heads into the gardening this horrible pandemic still takes its terrible toll, with the world reaching six million corona virus cases.

In the UK they have started releasing the lock down with a phased approach. For many its too soon, with 275000 cases, 1900 new cases and nearly 40,000 deaths.

Many public health officials and scientists believe that the lock down is coming too soon, warning that it may lead to a new spike. After seeing pictures on the TV showing crowds of people on beaches and at beauty spots not self distancing l could quite agree with them. Unfortunately there are many singly minded people who are oblivious to the effect of their actions on other people.

Today, Monday 1st June Car showrooms, outdoor markets and some schools will reopen and many shielded people will be allowed to go out for the first time since lockdown in March.

In America they have more to deal with after protests erupted in over 75 major cities, demonstrating against the killing of a black American,George Floyd was pinned to the ground by white police officers in Minneapolis. With a knee cutting off his air supply.

I would imagine that the rising death toll is also fuelling the unrest, with over 100,000 people now dead due to the pandemic.

Videos are now showing how demonstrators are being treated, with some officers using batons, tear gas, pepper sprays and rubber bullets indiscriminately. 

The Videos shows scenes from across the worst effected states:

In Salt Lake City, officers in riot gear shoved a man with a cane to the ground.

In Brooklyn, two police S.U.V.s ploughed into a crowd of protesters.

In Atlanta, police officers enforcing a curfew stopped two college students in a car, fired Tasers on them and dragged them out of the vehicle.

And in Minneapolis, a video appeared to show officers yelling at people on their porches to get inside and then firing paint canisters at them. “Light them up,” one officer said.

What is this world coming to?

We are some of the fortunate, we can bury our heads into the garden and our home.