A Day of Two Halves

After last night's torrential downpour, this morning started off nice and warm and the sun shone - T shirt weather, so it was off with the jacket and on with the Jungle Formula.
I couldn't post any photos last week as the 'puter and camera had had a falling out but they seem to have kissed and made up now, so expect a couple or three this week. To start, here is this weeks view of the border from the potting shed.

So, today started with me digging another veg bed , this time to accomodate some Hispi Cabbage, Samantha Cabbage (a Savoy) and some Cheesy Cauliflower (cheesy being the variety name and not a description of the plants!)

The wheelbarrow behind today's bed is full of the roots removed from that one small patch!
The rest of the veg in the west facing border is looking good, with minimal slug damage and no sign of any other beasties as yet but there is still plenty of time yet, so to try and minimise hiding places and other attractions for the pests, I weeded the veg patch. There is one area where I am slightly at a loss - I planted three rows of tatties at the bottom of the veg bed, two are fine but the centre drill which contains Belle De Fontenay is only showing shaws at the top end of the drill - might have a root around next week to investigate.
I also weeded the rosebed as the annual willowherb were getting quite numerous.
As it was still nice and warm and the green stuff was dry, I took the opporchancity to don the knapsack sprayer and spray off the middle section of the garden (the area that the digger cleared ) to try and minimise the weed comeback as much as possible.
The young pear tree by the garden gate has been attacked by Pear Midge and has lost a lot of fruitlets to this pest but there are still a few healthy looking babies on it, so I must remember to spray against these little buggers next year - having checked the older pear trees at the far end of the garden, another two seem to be afflicted with this problem too, though the remainder of the pear trees seem to be free of damage.
The rain didn't stay away all day and the afternoon was hit by some really heavy showers, but hey ho, on with the work - I cut down most of the oriental poppies in the herbaceous border as they were going over and looking really scrappy - the foliage was lying down and was in a few cases beginning to smother some of the newer plants, so away they went - I have to confess this gave me quite a bit of pleasure as I have these in my garden at home and am not a fan - although I will admit that they provide an early burst of colour, to me they are thuggish and get scruffy looking too quickly. I also staked up a few more perennials that had taken a bit of a kicking from the previous night's downpour, and tied up the sweet peas to their bamboo supports to encourage them on thier skyward journey. Finally I watered the toms , peppers etc in the greenhouse
So what is new in the borders - including a couple from last week, and in no particular order we have...