What, no rain?

The weather forecast predicts three days without rain. After six weeks of constant downpour this feels like heaven. Apparently we have had three times the normal amount of rain for August, in fact the heaviest rainfall since 1984. Part of the main road to Glasgow washed away yesterday but now, at last, the clouds are lifting. It's time to start assessing the damage and deciding who's a garden hero and who's a fainthearted pushover.

“Pushover", is just the word for my white lavateras. Such a disappointment, at the first hint of rain and wind in July, they took a dive like a team of premier league footballers, and lay there wailing for the rest of the Summer. Oh they bloomed alright, but what's the point of being covered in flowers if you're whimpering on the ground and the insects are ignoring you? There will be no annual mallows present on any of the tiers next year.

I still, however, have half a packet of seeds and am gardening on a budget so can't afford to waste things. I may plant them in large containers at the front of the house in spring. This is concrete wasteland at present, where nothing grows and nobody goes, so their lack of attraction for insects won't matter. There are sheltered places I can put tubs and they may soften the house's rather austere first impression.

I said, "nothing grows", out the front, that is not strictly true. The pots of fuschias, pelargoniums and surfinias did eventually put on a show but it was a pretty poor effort. I did like the blend of lilacs, lime greens and yellows but the number of flowers was not worth the effort, so next year there will be no more tender bedding plants.

Instead I am going to try collecting seed from my bidens. These have worked so hard. Through every dreary day of rain they have been a band of gleaming yellow on the second tier, promising sunshine to come. I think I will plant them up with the blue pansies (if I can get them to set seed, not a certainty in this climate) and lobelia.

I mentioned this little self seeded lobelia before. It has lapped up the rain and put on a show of flowers when everything else was lying stunned on the ground. I will try to collect seed from this but also still have some old packets of bush and trailing lobelia from my Tilly days. I stopped growing these because I was always away during the sunniest periods and they dried out too rapidly, turning into miniature haystacks which never recovered their bloom. That is not going to be a problem at Midge Farm, so I will try the old seeds in spring and hope they germinate.