Summer notes: June

What happened in the garden during the month, with video

June: a month of sunny spells, plenty of showers, and cooler than usual temperatures - my kind of weather.

Thanks to the abundant rain, plants grow under my very eye and the garden looks different by the day.

Weeds like this weather too, unfortunately.

Not a day passes without me spotting ferns and bindweed among flowers and vegetables, despite the thick layers of cardboard and wood chips covering the ground. 

But I keep pulling them out, and hopefully at some stage they'll weaken and stop popping up everywhere.

I spend a lot of times deadheading roses - which means having lots of flowers in the house. Blackspot is rampant this year, an unfortunate drawback of all the rain we've had, but I think the roses will soon recover. 

I finish mulching the borders, look after the vegetables, and plant "Penelope Lively", a David Austin rose that I've been coveting since last summer, when it was first released in the UK. 

Even though it's her first year, she gifts me some lovely, heavenly scented blooms, and I look forward to seeing how she performs in the future.

My garden is in its third year, and what started as a hazy vision and some roughly drawn plans is finally beginning to take shape. 

There are still lots of empty spots in the borders, but most plants are growing well and I only had a few losses: a clematis succumbed to wilt, one of the young Himalaya birch trees snapped during a storm, and slugs happily munched on some young seedlings. 

The little pond we created this year, hoping to attract wildlife and provide some relief to insects and small animals during summer, is doing fine. The water plants are growing, the water lily has bloomed several times, and so far we have one tiny frog and one dragonfly, both camera-shy, and plenty of water skimmer insects (gerridae).

The time I spend gardening, walking around the orchard and veggie patch, sitting by the roses, or just looking at trees and flowers from inside the house, does wonders for my mental health and general wellbeing.

Nature is my medicine, and every day I thank the universe for the privilege of having a garden, and for the beautiful countryside that surrounds me. 

Creativity is my medicine too, and since the garden is a living entity that grows through the years and shifts with the seasons, I've been toying with the idea of making videos to chronicle this evolution, and capture all the moments of beauty that steal my breath, ground me, and ultimately keep me sane.

So here's the first, imperfect video of my garden. I enjoyed creating it, and I hope you enjoy watching it.