An annual task at the music school- cutting the Yew hedges (approx. 70m in various locations). Yew is tough and springy, not as amenable to topiary as a Privet hedge. Nonetheless can be trimmed in the classic squarish section softened with rounded edges.

 It is sometimes said that it is illegal to cut a hedge in the UK between 1st. March and 31st. August. Not so but it is a criminal offence to disturb nesting birds during that period; a hedge is very likely contain a nest or two.

 There is no contradiction between the law and good horticultural practice. Early autumn is the ideal time to trim a hedge: growth is becoming dormant and fresh cuts will not be exposed to frost.

 

Sedums are stalwarts of herbaceous borders in late summer/early autumn.

 So, farewell the Mulberry Tree. When I arrived at the music school this morning I noticed it was half standing/half fallen leaning on one of its limbs. Presumably a consequence of the great storm on Thursday. I plucked some delicious berries from it only a few weeks ago.

 Mulberries grow to be ancient trees, this one was probably planted by William Ransom himself in the nineteenth century. He was a great planter of trees around his country house which is now the music school. NB that's the modernist extension in the background.

 In a wild garden this tree could keep on living for a few years yet albeit on the skew. In a car park adjacent to a slip road I imagine the decision will be to fell it. Fortunately there is another one nearby, also a relic of Ransom. 

 

 Here comes the rain again. An unusual sight travelling into London on Thursday morning: the landscape in misty precipitation. The rains returned with a vengeance, in Hitchin at least. Nothing to speak of in London but when I returned that evening I admired a particularly dramatic cloudscape and sunset as the train approached Hitchin. 

 As I walked from the station I noted a good deal of surface water on the streets and a fine layer of silt everywhere. Must have rained heavily I thought. In fact there had been an astonishing deluge in the middle of the afternoon lasting about thirty minutes- flash flooding all over town and the River Hiz burst its banks in several places. (not to mention my father's kitchen floor becoming a puddle when the outside drain overflowed)

 A friend described sitting in her garden; it began to rain so she went inside. Then torrents came down with a roll of thunder that didn't stop, just kept rolling for the duration of the deluge. She said she had never heard that before.

 Looking at the aftermath my sense is that rain fell with a greater intensity than any other rainstorm in Hitchin in my lifetime. And this after the hottest, driest summer since records began... 

Getting that change in the weather, last days of summer elegiac feeling.

 

 Enjoying some mellow sunshine at the music school. A more usual temperature for late August after the heatwaves (though still no rain to speak of).

 Benslow was originally a country house commissioned by the botanical pharmacist William Ransom in 1859, later the home of the Seebohm family. Bequeathed to the Rural Music Schools Assoication by Esther Seebohm in 1952. 

 My father was a very active board member in the 70s/80s/90s, indeed one of a group of supporters who prevented the property being sold to developers in the 1970s. My old friend Jif became the gardener there in the late 90s and did amazing work developing the garden as it exists now. 

 

 Even marshy habitats are dry. I have always known this shallow natural pond on Oughtonhead Common to be full (as seen above in March). But not now...

 What a difference: on June 12th. I cut the long grass in this meadow at the music school. I remember thinking I would need to cut it again in a few weeks. Two months later that hasn't been necessary...

 

 

A cool, cloudy day! The lawns at the music school are straw coloured like everywhere. 

 It's incredible- this summer southern England has been hotter and drier than any other period since records began. Perhaps it was as hot and dry as this sometime in the Middle Ages or a thousand years ago but in the past few lifetimes no. 

 

 Tonal eclipse of the sun - as seen at Knocking Hoe - projected through a kitchen colander onto a sheet of white card. I didn't want to buy a pair of special glasses (or go blind) so this simple variation on a pinhole camera did the job. In fact we frequently get brief glimpses of sun without going blind (not to mention admiring sunrises and sunsets). Nonetheless looking straight at the sun high in the sky for seconds or longer is clearly a no-no.

 My old buddy Gordon suggested we take a trip out to the Hoe. Good call- the primal humps of the Hoe speak to my inner pagan. We picked a spot looking over the patchwork fields of Bedfordshire. The landscape was golden brown, sky blue, electric heat.

 As the eclipse began to happen an eerie twilight spread across the land, the air became cool, the rays of the sun ceased to burn the skin. A different twilight to sunset, the shadows didn't lengthen as when the sun goes down.

 I have to report we didn't see the sun go dark with a bright corona. Throughout it seemed to remain a luminous circle despite the dimming of the ambient light. That is intriguing because every news report shows the image of a dark sun. Perhaps it's fake news like those stories we landed on the moon and the earth is round...  (just kidding)

 Then again it was a partial eclipse when seen from England; possibly sufficient rays were illuminating the haze that the sun still looked full? Anyway the merest of squints, the colander and the lens of the camera saw a shining sun. Maybe it would have looked different through those special glasses?

 Actually my particular purpose for this quest was to experience the change of light and atmosphere here on planet Earth and the effect was indeed uncanny. 

 

 Three drought/heatwave summers in the past five years bears out the contention that the Mediterranean climate will move northwards to the south of England. The epithet 'hardy' is traditionally applied to plants that can survive freezing temperatures as low as minus ten or twenty. Such winters were part of my childhood but rarely a consideration since then. Drought hardy becomes equally important these days 

 Certainly I will only be planting species noted for their drought tolerance be they native or naturalised. That doesn't mean we need to be growing cactuses in the Home Counties (yet?!) but there's no point assuming we can rely on summer rain or even have enough water to avoid hosepipe bans. Nonetheless they will need to be plants that can cope with cold and damp because that will still happen.  

 The parched grasslands of southern England are largely bereft of wildflowers in flower. For the most part they flowered early and faded early. So it is in the damper locales we get some greenery and a splash of vivd colour. Case in point Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) is plant of marshy margins, ditches and riversides. 

This is England: blue sky, green trees, straw-coloured grass.

 

 England's green and pleasant land has turned brown.

 

 There is no water shortage. What we have in this country is a storage shortage, probably because we never imagined we would run out of rain.  

  Water butts are a good idea -to a limited extent. This one holds up to 100 litres and is fed by the downpipe from a pitched roof approximately 6.5m long by 5m wide which is 35.75 square metres. Given the average rainfall in the region that roof will receive over 23,000 litres of water per annum! [the formula is 1 litre of water per square metre per mm of rain x average annual rainfall in mm]

 In fact I didn't rig this one up for storage; rather it collects the water from the roof to distribute round the garden. The tap with hose is always on so the water goes straight onto the garden (better that than down the drain into the sewer system). In an intense rainstorm it sometimes fills up faster than it empties so there is also an overflow hose at the top.

 100 litres is only 10-20 watering cans, a drop in the ocean so to speak. If we want to (or have to) get serious about water storage 1000 litres is probably the bare minimum. Even then a hosepipe would drain a full tank in an hour or so. That's ok if the tank is being topped up by regular rain but won't last long through a drought summer like this one.

 

Even the wildflowers are wilting but not this impressive display of Umbellifers. 

 

Fluffy.

 

 Southern England is parched. This patch of baked earth is usually a pond with ducks. Beyond, the wheat has been harvested early. Officially we are in a period of "prolonged dry weather" with the accompanying hosepipe bans. The next legislative measure will be to declare drought which is what it is.

 March/April/May were warm, sunny and dry, barely a third of average rainfall in the South. We had flaming June in May, the first heatwave. Early June was cooler with some rain followed by successive heatwaves and no rain at all.

 What I have noticed in gardens and the countryside is that many plants have flowered several weeks earlier than 'normal' and for shorter periods than 'usual'. For example the borders at the music school look like it's late August rather than the end of July.

 I have always taken the view that plants native and naturalised in the UK will have seen a lot of weather: scorching, freezing, drought and deluge. And will cope with it. That is still the case but I observe that some species are now at the margins of their survival zone heat-wise. The definition of "hardy" used to have as much to do with winter cold which is not really a consideration anymore.

 I am bound to say the past five years reflect the predictions made concerning global warming a couple of decades ago. Saharan temperatures will shift northwards across the Mediterranean and Northern Europe will experience heat more like the Med.

Postscript Later today I read that the Environment Agency has indeed declared drought in much of central and southern England. A couple of areas in Wales already have drought status. Wales in drought??   

 

 

Butterflies seem to be flourishing in this long, hot summer.

 

 Runner Beans ramping- these are the old variety 'Scarlet Emperor'.

 

 A day trip to the North Kent coast. Walking from Chestfield and Swalecliffe to Whitstable I was pleased to see lots of Hog Fennel (Peucedanum officinale) which is only found in a few locations in the UK in Kent and Essex. Tankerton Slopes as seen above is said to be the largest colony and it seems to be particularly abundant this year. 

Six-Spot Burnet on Field Scabious.

 

The south is parched -particularly on chalk- but the wildflowers persist.

 The Globe Thistles and the Sea Hollies look like they might be related...

...but they belong to different genera: Echinops and Eryngium.

 Both are much visited by bees.

 

 The Jersey Tiger is no longer confined to the southernmost parts of England. It's range is extending northwards; I see quite regularly in London and Hertfordshire. The striped forewing is striking; the orange underwing is spectacular when it unfurls in flight.

 

 A mixed herbaceous border is manna for pollinators.

 

 A few months ago I planted three small pots of Fennel in the herb garden I made at the music school. Now they're rampant! Fennel will tough it out on poor, parched ground but here it grows in a rich loamy compost that's watered regularly. The difference is plain to see.

 

Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus). Prolific self-seeder in sunny spots at the music school.  

 

 I think this is a Green-veined White though it only has a tinge of green and they are usually found in damp habitats feeding on the wild Crucifers not Lavender.

  Seeing a good many Gatekeepers in the grounds of the music school at the moment. The time of their emergence is generally round about now. The woodland walk with brambles is ideal habitat for them resembling as it does a woodland ride. The Marjoram in the borders is one of their favoured sources of nectar.

 

Comma

 Brimstone

 One side of this meadow area at the music school is grassy with flowers, the other is flowery with grasses. I treat the grassy side like the hay meadows of old and cut it at some point after midsummer. The flowery side is mass of Knapweeds at the moment which I will leave till they go to seed.

 I would like to say I got the scythe out but I used the brush cutter, then the strimmer, then the lawnmower...

 

 The white form of Rosebay Willowherb. Never seen in the wild, at least not by me but I do see it planted in gardens from time to time. The pink is definitely invasive, the white less so (it is said).   

 

Rosebay Willowherb (Chamerion angustifolium), a common sight by railway lines.