Lack of progress in the garden

 I've had another year where I haven't had much time for gardening. Fortunately, a lot of my back garden is now self-seeding, so although I haven't made much progress with the vegetables, the garden still looks pretty and is attractive to pollinators, sparrows and robins - and less fortunately to slugs and snails.

I have plenty of foxgloves, aquilegias and cornflowers. I also had a lot of a new weed (or at least I've been assuming it's a weed), and it got into my irises. I went through pulling it up, but that or one of the many other myriad factors that can upset irises, has left the plants sulking, and it looks like they're only prepared to give me one flower this year.

I've also had difficulty with my seedlings. They are growing exceptionally slowly. I'm torn between blaming the cheap Aldi compost we bought and the more expensive mycorrhizal fungi I added to the seeds in the hope of improving their growth. My seedlings have, without exception, remained tiny and the leaves of the squashes have gone a worrying yellow colour.

My rhubarb has also become unhappy:

I think that may be a combination of the heat and a lack of water. I'm going to try and get out and water it more often in case that helps.

My strawberries, however, are very happy. Given my general failures this year, I'm trying to boost their chances with liquid seaweed feed.

I've just put in some runner beans as well. I have the suspicion I'm going to lose them to slugs, but I live in hope. I decided not to pull up the majestic, pink aquilegia in the middle of them and instead just to chop it down to the ground when it finishes flowering. I think, from next year, I may rejig my crop rotation and leave that shadier part of the garden entirely to flowers. In that case, though, I will need some flowers in there that bloom later in the year than my current May/June display of foxgloves and aquilegias. I may even go so far as to buy a shrub!

Our red climbing rose is also doing well and smells divine. Flowers are just so much easier than veg, providing you pick the slug-proof ones.