The heatwave continues and the garden is parched. The lawn is turning brown and is strewn with yellow and brown leaves shed by the gasping hedges. Blackbirds, having stripped the soft fruit are attacking red-skinned apples to get moisture – though I do have a bird bath for them, and the garden is looking very autumnal. It will be at least a week before we get any rain, according to the forecast.

The polytunnel is unbearably hot but the tomatoes are ripening well. And the peaches are as rufous as an Irish (or English) tourist in Torremolinos! They are still hard though. It is a tricky job to pick them at just the right stage. If allowed to ripen so they can be eaten immediately they are impossible to pick without bruising them badly, something that is worse with white-fleshed peaches (which these are) than yellow-fleshed peaches. But we have eaten a few that are soft, and they are, as always, delicious.

Out in the ‘bee bed’ my pink and pastel plan went horribly wrong. Slugs ate the first batch of seedlings and I filled in with odds and sods. I wanted to grow cladanthus again and had some spare seedlings so they went in, their golden daisies clashing with everything. And then up popped lots of nasturtiums, from seed produced from last year’s ‘raspberry sundae’ mix, non of which deserved the name. But they are a lovely mix of peachy colours and I am pleased to have them filling in gaps and coping well with the heat and lack of water.

Definitely more deliberate, the first flowers are opening on some of the new brugmansias. Though the plants are not all very tall and the flowers are a bit out of proportion with the plants, I am pleased to see them and, of course, they are very fragrant. This is ‘Angels Honeymoon’, a rich pink, hose-in-hose flower. The label is wrong so maybe I got them mixed when I unpacked them.

I admire the colouring but it is a bit like a raw burger and I much prefer ‘Angels Summer Kiss’ with a more elegant flower and softer colouration. It has the same hose-in-hose flower form and is wonderfully fragrant as the sun goes down.

Elsewhere, the formal bed is struggling to get going. Originally planned to be purple heliotrope and petunias with contrasting cannas it recently had orange abutilons added when no one wanted to buy them at the stand at the gate. I have been delighted that the bumblebees appreciate the abutilons and, of course, the heliotrope is popular with all bees and butterflies. The cannas are settling in and are sending up flowering stems so maybe in a month it will be looking as planned – if we finally get some rain!

brugmansia angels honeymoon, brugmansia angels summer kiss, peaches