You were pretty rubbish, to tell the truth!

We still seem to be in a cycle of cold winter, followed by dry and sunny spring, and then a relatively wet July and August. Even September was poor this year. Normally we can count on sunny days as soon as the kids go back to school, but it's been mostly cool and damp with lots of windy days. Luckily we can make the most of a good day when it arrives and easily go to the beach or for a walk in the hills. But I've felt sorry for some of our guests -- especially our French visitors, as they've had a rotten summer too by all accounts. Lets hope for a better summer next year. It must surely be our turn.

Meadow flowers were rather late to appear this year, through a combination of the dry, very cold winter followed by a dry spring, which was rather disappointing. But a side effect seems to have been to allow other plants to thrive, especially rose bay willow herb which appeared in large stands in many places, even where the ground is normally thickly covered with bracken.

Another prolific grower this year was something we eventually identified as policeman's helmet, which nearly choked several of the local footpaths. It's an attractive plant with orchid-like flowers, but not one to introduce into your garden if you want anything else to grow there.

Late summer also produced terrific displays of yellow and purple heather on the commons and hillsides. I wonder if last years burnings helped stimulate growth? And we currently have quite a few sloe berries in the lane which I must pick before the birds have them. A drop of sloe gin always helps in the dark days of winter.

The other beneficiary seems to have been ragwort, which is everywhere. For a poisonous plant supposedly covered by legislation, there's little sign that councils are making any efforts to control it. No doubt this is yet another victim of the cuts in funding. Anyway, spurred on by my (horse-owning) neighbour I got out my nitrile rubber gardening gloves and pulled three bags of the stuff out of the paddock. (We don't own a horse; it's just not quite neat enough to call a garden.) When I got to the tip I had to put the bags into the crusher rather than the garden waste skip, so at least someone is taking the problem seriously. For more information on ragwort you can click here.

Perhaps we can count on a good October, although it looks like we've just missed out on the indian summer that people have been enjoying down south in the past week. As usual we have mostly been on the border between the sunny south and the wet north, but we did at least have three or four sunny days, even if the strong breeze generally made it too cool for sunbathing. So this has been yet another season where I've not managed more than a paddle in the sea. That's mainly through lack of effort on my part to be honest: next year, definitely next year...

Now, where are my snow shoes?