Last week I was relating the tale of the frog and the cat.

This week I was taking a stroll around the garden as the light was fading and watching the bats soaring and swooping. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, disappearing into the border. I shouted for someone to bring a torch and when I looked it was a rather large toad. It kept very still and if I had not seen that movement, I cannot blame it as if it had not moved I would have stepped on it, I certainly would not have seen it. They blend in so well to the surrounding soil.

The wait for the Californian Poppies to flower has been very worthwhile. More have now started to flower and the colours are beautiful.

Apart from the poppies the undoubted stars of the garden at the moment are the Dahlias and the Crocosmia, I remember them as Montbretia when I started gardening. Lucifer tend to be the variety that get a lot of mention but the large flowered orange varieties that I have are absolutely stunning at the moment.

This week has been very windy, so windy in fact that Saturday morning I awoke to find that three branches had blown off one of my Hawthorne trees.

We were very lucky the way they fell, causing no damage but if they had fallen the other way I dread to think what the resulting damage would have been. While I had my greenwood saw out I cut down another couple of branches that I was not too happy with.

This Hawthorne looked a very old tree when we moved here and we thought we might have to remove it. Twenty years later it looks much the same but it flowers profusely each spring and it throws up new growth so I do not have the heart to cut it down.

It is a good job that I photographed my hanging baskets and containers last week, the wind has given them a right battering.

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