No so much going on with the house or garden at the moment.

A few weeks ago we picked up some more plants for the flower garden, but apart from that there hasn’t been much to do, just clean up a few things and watch the grass bake in the sun.

The summer has been extremely dry and hot. The official rainfall figure for July was 3mm, but really we haven’t had anything significant since late June till now. During the whole time it has rained enough to wet the ground about three times that I can remember. The daily temperature this period has been at least the low 20’s, but for most of July it was regularly much hotter in our yard.

The lawn dried up several weeks ago and the ground is baked solid. Mostly all that is growing now are the weeds. I have only had to cut the grass twice this summer and that was just to keep the weeds down. The vege garden needs constant watering to keep going, but we have already lost our radishes. The carrots look a bit small still, so they are probably affected by the lack of water too. The fruit trees also need to be watered every few days and it seems that the pear sapling is suffering quite a lot.

The garden has generally survived though and the pumpkins and courgettes are growing wildly as are the gherkins. The carrots and parsnips we will have to wait and see.