Although the weather has not been quite what we would want for July, the flowers in my backyard are flowering well, especially the sweet peas. Naturally, flowering plants like plenty of sunshine, but not necessarily tropical temperatures and this is certainly true of sweet peas.
Good daylight is essential and I have planted mine against a southwest facing fence. However, to flower well they prefer cooler temperatures, moist soils and a feed once a week with tomato food or similar. It’s been a good season so far for them.
Of course, the heavier rain showers ruined the delicate pink roses and also battered the big old hydrangea. The larger, soaking wet mopheads weighed down some of the sappier stems as the whole bush became a drooping mass of pink mopheads. I nipped out and cut back some of the stems where the flowers were hitting the ground. The plant’s loss was my gain and I filled a vase with them together with a few white lilies that have also done well this year.
One flower that can be cut for the house, but is too much of a faff for me, is the daylily. I prefer to leave them doing their thing in the garden. At least their blooms speckled with rain made a vibrant, almost zingy photograph.
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Agnes Ashe 
Oh wonderful! What a delightful show, both inside and out. You’ve done so well with your garden.
Thank you. The garden has recently burst into flower. I tried to take some photos, but haven’t managed to successfully capture the much smaller space yet. Also, I feel somewhat inhibited about being observed photographing my yard as my next door neighbour is a professional photographer. She works for the local newspaper and, pre-Covid, had plenty of work in London and abroad. I am very much the amateur and she is very much the professional. She ran up our street videoing the clap for carers for the local news, luckily she didn’t spot me hanging out of an upstairs window.
Your flowers are such stimulating colours and I can almost smell the sweet peas as I look at them. Well done you.
Having a lot of sweet pea plants is more work than I remember and I certainly don’t have time for them at the moment, so they are going to go a bit wild I think. Definitely won’t be germinating as many seeds next year!