Is it really week 7 in the garden?

We are too busy to stop and write much BUT at 2 Coombe cottages we have been:

(glorious buzz-buzz-buzzing of bees on the cat mint)

1. Planting out the final marrows and squashes in the old forget-me-not raised bed, and Cosmos in all the little gaps we can find.

(Rose at the front of the house)

2. Doing some final sowings of pak choi, carrots, spring onions and beetroot in big tubs (emulating S's orchard) 

(The allotment - potatoes in the foreground)

3. Eating potatoes, sugar snaps, cut and come again lettuce and spinach.

(The cutting patch - you can see the stocks have come up!)

4. Filling the house with the scent of sweet peas, stocks and feverfew.

We are excited by the sunflowers and dahlias and even the late planted Persian buttercups look like they might flower this year, and the toads are establishing well in the allottment triangle, cleverly making homes underneath planks and pots. 

(E has a view of this from her window!)

And the best flower of the week has to be the Rose 'tree'. This was a cutting from Mickeys garden in Suffolk and planted in ?1995 when we forts came to the house. It was planted to grow up I a dying ornamental prunus -  the prunus is now happy and the Rose dominates the garden for two wonderful weeks in June/July.

Interesting fact of the week: In China, they see the "TOAD," not the "man" in the moon. The toad is also considered "one of the five poisons of yin." They say that eclipses happen when the "toad in the moon" tries to swallow the moon itself!

And why gardeners love toads:

• Common Toads produce a toxin from a pair of glands on their back which makes them distasteful to would-be predators.
•  They may remain in one area for long periods over the summer months, hunting for slugs, spiders and insects at night.
• Toadlets and adults spend the winter buried down in mud, under compost heaps or amongst dead wood.