Dahlia

The garden is looking quite colourful at the moment. It's not much of a garden, I admit: fairly small and gravelly and shaded more than is good for it; but it is all I have, so I feel it is worth making a fuss over it sometimes just to boost its self-confidence and help avoid emotional problems in later life. When I first got the garden there was a sad lack of colour (other than a lot of green and brown, which begin to wear after a while), so over the years I have assembled various pots and containers and tried to cultivate whatever flowering plants have taken my fancy. There has been no great overarching plan to this; nor, I confess, much in the way of taste.

This year the flowers seem particularly luxuriant: positive swathes of vibrant colour. This is probably a combination of frequent watering (actually, frequent rain) and liberal use of decent potting compost enriched with whatever nutrients plants are particularly keen about. And it seems to have worked. Watering is not something I'm normally very good at remembering to do; although I have heard it said that under-watering plants is helpful to encourage root growth, I fear I have tended to take this to extremes in the past, with unhappy consequences. So although the last few months of near-constant rain have generally made people feel frustrated and miserable and ruined their summer, my flowers are looking quite chirpy. Which must be good.