The last blog post of July was meant to be styling the table for suppers in the orchard. How to deploy bud vases to their best advantage. How to drape linens over rough hewn oak trestle tables for bucolic bliss. I imagined long summer evenings, lazily wondering whether to open another bottle of wine, or offering to make it best of five on the dice instead of best of three because I am losing.

But the weather is so changeable, that I have taken to hedging my bets and setting the table inside. We had such a glorious May and June, and now this latter half of July is something of a washout. If you believe Charles Dowding’s predictions (and I do), his newsletter this week says this cold and wet is here to stay. I would be better off writing about sourcing the best woollen jumpers, whether slippers in the daytime is the sign of moral decline, and warming soup recipes. I can’t bring myself to write about snails. This weather is optimal for them.

But courage, ma brave. We might be staring August in the face, but we need to make the most of these cold and rainy wet days.

Bring the outdoors in

Neither you nor I need much persuading on this front, I can’t imagine. However, I do find when the weather is dreadful, I tend to rush my morning forays, and there are some gems that it is so easy to miss. The first dahlia has been joined by a second (Crème de cassis), and almost a third (Labyrinth).

My top tips for easy table styling

• Lots of bottles or pots. So much easier than those table centres.

• Mix and match textures. Grasses add sparkle. Roses and dahlias add colour and glamour. The odd airy gesture (think sanguisorbas) add movement.

• Mix and match heights, aim for undulations, not regimentation. The general principle is that the bigger flowers sit on shorter stems, and the finer, wafty bits are taller. This is the same in most gardens, the solid, grounding plants sit close to the earth; the airy elements reach towards the sky. If you don’t believe me, just put a dahlia on a long stem in the middle of your tea table. It will look wrong, and you will spend your entire social event trying to avoid knocking it over.

  
  

  This is why I cannot get on with sunflowers in a garden. Big things shouldn’t be that tall unless they are trees.

Raindrops on roses

I have never, to my knowledge, actually seen the Sound of Music, but even I can sing the first verse.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things

I loathe kittens, but truly, everything else comes in my top ten.  Maybe tweed on the mittens. But I could create a whole new genre of photography called ‘wet flowers’.

In between showers, take your camera out and see what beautiful droplets and sparkles you can capture. Bronze fennel also comes into its own for this. Double points if you have a macro lens. Triple if you find a bee sheltering from the rain under a teasel.

(just a little reminder to say that I am working on my floral photography guide for release on 5 August 2023.)

 Little projects

Days in the garden, or weekends, can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming with all of the jobs that you need to keep on top of at this time of year. Every so often, I find it incredibly soothing to get stuck into one very specific thing. During some of the upcoming rainy days, it will be to make some wire cloches. I thought it was the weather that was checking growth in the kitchen garden, until I saw two very fat pigeons eating my very last red Russian kale plant.

I bought the wire last year but never got round to it, so an afternoon with some wire clippers and this tutorial, and I will feel like I have achieved great things.

The rugged version here.

The ornamental version here.

Work out where to put a water butt

I am uncomfortably aware that we have damp at the front of the cottage. We live with it and we let the moisture wick through the brick floor, but I do have to work around it a bit. I can’t put a dog bed there for example, it just gets soggy.

The problem is there is a dip in the ground on the other side, which means the rain just sits in a puddle and seeps through the soil, into the fabric of the cottage. To adjust the drainage is a huge job so my (characteristically bodging) solution is to study the rain through the window, find the place where the rain pours off the hips and gulleys in the thatch, and catch it.

The short-term solution is likely to be a big dustbin. Long term, I am thinking a big rusty trough, full of plants. Adam Frost does an amazing line in these and calls them ‘dipping tanks’. I have gone off the agricultural galvanised tin troughs, but his corten steel does look rather wonderful. Especially filled with glorious water plants. You can learn about them here. (I don’t seem to be able to navigate inside this window, not sure if there is something about the film or me.)

Whatever your thoughts about climate change, harvesting rainwater for the garden is essential. Go out in some waterproofs on a rainy day, look where you can catch it, where it is puddling, and the last bits of the garden to drain. Bung a few Ranunculus acris 'Citrinus' plants in if you have marshy bits.

Eat

I eat when I am sad and when I am celebrating. I eat when I am bored and l when I am tired. Mostly, I eat when I am in need of a little lift. Rainy days, even in summer, are made for wholesome, filling food. I am lucky enough to have kale coming out of my ears (now I have seen off the pigeons anyway), but I am also harvesting the stone fruit from the orchard. There are plums in the hedges, and one huge cherry plum in the garden of No. 3. It is shaping up to be a bumper year for hazelnuts, and I spend much of these long and dreary days dreaming of Ottolenghi-style oversized meringues with nuts and chocolate.

Until then, something more savoury. Anna Jones is an absolutely dead cert on the traybake stakes.

What not to do:

Under no circumstances must you clip any box in this damp weather….