Just pottering

Well-shaded bonsai against the fence. Peppers and chilis in the foreground.

How's the summer going for you? I haven't been up to much, but thought I'd post anyhow – if I'm going to improve my blogging, I'm going to have to write something.

To be honest, it's been too hot to do much. I have not been a fan of the heatwaves, and that's putting it mildly. Can't sleep, so I'm tired and grumpy, and my ankles puff up alarmingly. I've been reluctant to leave the house at all. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the garden, and ways to make it less heat-affected in future. Certain things in the garden really don't like the weather; we ended up buying extra parasols to make sure Mr Robot's bonsai didn't bake in the sun, though the cats seem to appreciate the additional shade too.

One idea is to grow more heat-loving things. I grow tomatoes every year, but I'm getting good peppers this year too, and hopefully the chilis will come on. I think next year I'll have a really good stab at it and add things like aubergines to the mix. The tomatoes ramble a bit, but all the others make nice compact plants and I'm thinking of just shoving them into the flowerbeds alongside decorative plants. We've already got lots of herbs in the green-and-white area, and they work well. It's be quite nice to ramble out at dusk and pick a few aubergines and peppers.

We're also getting a pergola put in over the green-and-white garden. It gets full sun most of the day, and this is the second year running when it's got crispy. We're hoping to grow jasmine over the pergola – the scent of Seville to us – so in the winter the light can penetrate the bare branches, but in summer the sun will only come in round the sides, with the top being protected by sun-loving jasmine, and everything growing on the ground will have some shade in the hottest part of the day.  

The pergola is being constructed by the man who built our new fence. He did a really good job – first the heavy-duty posts went in, then the horizonal supports, then individual planks were attached vertically. It's all pressure-treated wood, and should be a lot more durable than the flimsy readymade panels we'd had previously. Every time we get a storm (and we seem to be getting more and more) I would worry about the fence blowing over again. This new one is going nowhere.

Mr Robot ordered a posh pie from Fortnums. This 'picnic' was our reward for painting the fence.

We painted the fence around the patio yesterday. Blue, as before. ("Why did you do it blue again?" my mother asked. "Because we like blue," I pointed out.) The fence further up the garden behind the flowerbeds will be green, as that recedes behind the plants and makes the garden feel bigger. It sounds like a lot of colours in a relatively small space, but it really does work. 

Anyway, that and watching old horror movies taped from Talking Pictures TV has been about my lot over the past few weeks when I haven't been working. 

If you see any rainclouds, feel free to send them my way!