You can compare with last year.

I dug up an area of lawn to extend the back border. There is not a lot of new space as I have a path to retain easy access to back of the border.

It was very dry and so most of the digging was done with a mattock to break through the clay. The top soil in this part is not very deep, I dug down into the solid clay beneath a few inches. The turf was placed at the bottom, then the clay and soil were mixed and mixed everything together. I chopped the lumps up as much as possible, which produces a lot of fine dust which I sieved out into tubs and kept it for the surface. I mixed in some compost too.

Pictures

I quite like this combination of Lysimachia punctata 'Alexander' with self seeded Malva moschata(I …

This is an unnamed Astilbe which I've had since the first year here.

I think this is probably Ligularia × yoshizoeana 'Palmatiloba'. It was sold as Ligularia wilsoniana but that has tall spikes of flowers and not large daisy like flowers.

It is very impressive when in full flower as it is here

I've had a Primula vialii for a few years now and it has seeded to give two new plants. The original hasn't done too well this year, perhaps because it was so dry in the early part of the year.

Here is a flower from one of the young plants

Around the Christmas before last I had an Amaryllis indoors and when it had finished flowering and after the frosts were past, I put it outside. After a while I planted it in the ground, intending to dig it up in autumn after the leaves died down.

However as soon as it was in the ground the leaves were eaten right down and so I forgot about it.

Over the winter the Aquilegia completely covered this area and when they had finished flowering I pulled them up as part of tidying the back border.

I was very surprised to see that the bulb had sprouted some leaves and even more surprised to see that a bud was forming.

Now it is flowering!

This wasn't that impressive last year, but suprisingly it survived the winter out in the ground and it bigger with a lot more flowers this year.

You can compare with last year.

Weather

The average temperature was 14.1C with a minimum of 3.2C and maximum of 30.1C. There was 89mm of rain, so a reasonable amount, but not as much as last year at 137mm.

Pictures

Orchid

This is the one by the back door. The flowerhead was exceptionally tall last year, and seems to be shorter this year.

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Geranium × magnificum

This is my favorite Geranium, shame it flowers for such a short period though.

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Geum 'Totally tangerine'

This was a mass of flowers this year, recovering from last year where I reduced it to about a quarter of the size it had reached.

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Knautia macedonica 'Melton Pastels'

The Goldfinches have been eating the seeds of this plant, although not visible in this photo, I did see one actually eating them and there were many empty seed heads.

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Knautia macedonica self seeded

I …

Blogs everywhere on Midsummer day proclaim that from then on the evenings will be getting shorter - not true!

The evenings continue getting a little longer for several days afterwards, and conversely the earliest morning occurs a few days before midsummer's day.

In Newcastle it doesn't quite get dark at this time of year, nautical twilight does not end. Nautical twilight corresponds to when there is still enough light to see the horizon even when there is no moon so that mariners could still reliably navigate by the stars.