Quickly now... August!

Still playing catch-up, these are the August photos! The knitters were coming for a barbecue on the 6th, so we had a bit of a tidy up in time for these photos. Certainly compared to July, anyway. 

The lawn's been mown, the plants are no longer flopping quite so much (we invested in some plant spirals - fabulous), it all looks much neater. The purple on the left is a monarda that I bought last year and didn't flower, so this year it seems to have been making up for it. 

These photos were taken later in the day than normal, which is why most of the garden is in sun and the reflections are better. The red in the bed at the back is my Crocosmia Lucifer flowering, and the yellow is the rudbeckia just starting to show. 

The concrete is tidy, but a bit wet. That's what happens when we run the dishwasher or washing machine. It shouldn't be running quite that far - it overflows the bath when the machine empties. I've still not managed to get that working right. The potato foliage is dying back, and the abelia (in one of the pots) suddenly lost most of its leaves. I'm still not quite sure why!

The front garden is entering its lilac phase, mostly led by lavendar but added to by the russian sage and the addition of some verbena. The golden rod at the back has been and nearly gone in between this photo and last month's. 

The path view is looking lovely. I spend (probably far too much) time staring out at that. 

The veg bed is by now totally out of control. Somewhere in there are shallots that need harvesting, potatoes, beetroot... But they are all being swamped by marigolds and the odd self-seeded poppy! I need to be more vigilant next year. That is too much. Even if the marigolds do look lovely, I think they should be restricted more to the top slope and leave my veggies alone! I've not even found the time to make marigold cupcakes this year to justify them. 

The terraces have had their explosion of parsley seedheads. I propped up the curry plant too, just to try and help out the blackberry and the rudbeckia that it was swamping. It's at the stage where it gets hard to use the steps, mostly because of all the spiders that build webs across. I like supporting the wildlife and all, but I still need to get through occasionally! 

So, a kind of good/bad, beautiful but unruly month. There's so much more growth than last year!