Summer (what summer?) is over....

I must apologise for His Royal Grumpiness The Bench. He has gone into complete hibernation, because of the weather and the "neglect of his basic bench needs", as he calls it. I should have never told him about the bench in France, although I keep saying that it was not as comfortable as his planks. But he behaves like a drama queen and ignores everything we say. So I have decided to take over this blog for a while.

Well, as most of you will have noticed, summer was short, and happened sometime in May. The damp weather was quite good for a lot of the plants in our garden, apart from the tomatoes, sunflowers and courgettes, oh and the kohlrabi. They all look very unhappy. The whole garden could do with a makeover again, and we have started with the pond. We removed most of the plants that were growing in and around it, as they had become too big and were taking up too much space in the water. They had also got entangled, so that Alistair lifted out one huge lump of roots and leaves.

The fish were so surprised about the sudden amount of space, that they started getting into hyperactive mode, and we sadly lost one which probably jumped out of the water and then was found and carried away by a cat or fox. I found it on our lawn. :(

So at the moment the pond looks a bit bare. A good excuse to find some new plants, which we did at the garden centre. We also bought a few new fish. And I have ordered some more pond plants online. The wooden log mini fence had become rotten, so we have replaced it with a new one now. I still need to find some nice big pebbles for the edge of the pond. But hopefully we can get at least this part of the garden "refurbished" before it gets too cold.

The bunny shed no.1 still needs painting, and I have been hoping for a few dry days in a row this month. No luck so far. At least we seem to have two of the three wasps nests under control now. It seems to be a very good year for wasps, i.e. not so good for us, especially when they decide to build a nest right next to one of the bunny sheds, and another right outside the kitchen door. The third one is close to The Bench, which he isn't happy about, but at least they usually fly off towards the neighbours.

What else is new.....last month we went on a trip to Brittany in France and had a lovely time there. We stayed in two different hotels and then in a holiday cottage, and we visited beautiful old towns, a reptile zoo, a beach with rock pools, some megaliths, several toy shops and about every bakery along the way. The boys survived on mostly baguette and chocolate, and the odd carrot and cucumber slices. The French supermarkets are very well stocked, but also very cold. And the people are very reluctant to speak English, but luckily Alistair is fluent in French.