Fruit! ...nearly...and dahlias going in...

The first raspberries are ripening:

and the gooseberries are looking promising, though still very firm:

but coming along!

The ladies were happily pootling about in their newly adjusted enclosure.  Its a good job that I do want that old divider border 'digging over'...they are really enjoying it!  According to my chicken gardens book, they shouldn't eat the roses.  Hopefully not, as I'd like to keep a couple of them in the envisaged 'orchard extension' which I am planning for this coming autumn-winter planting season.

So I dedicated myself this afternoon (between showers) to planting out the first batch of dahlias.  These are the 'unknown variety' ones which I inherited unlabelled from grandma...they certainly look amazing now considering the tubers all looked so mouldy and shrivelled that I wrote on all the labels in March 'Unknown - dead?'

These are going in the spare fruit bed this year so I can try to identify them before unleashing them in my precious flower borders:

Planting underway - half done!

All finished - practically dark by the time the Engineer was summoned to erect the Mistress Raven patented ridiculous dahlia support system...I'll have to finish it in the daylight.

Meanwhile the broad beans finally got trussed up, my paranoia that the wind might snap them all off at the base got the better of me in the end

And I remembered to do the final earthing up of the Charlotte potatoes

More flowers are opening every day around the garden - some I have been waiting anxiously for to see the colour and condition - like the honeysuckle on the southern border of the veg patch:

Alive!  And looking lovely

Also the climbing rose right next to the honeysuckle which doesn't look that beautiful lower down, but then show me a climbing rose that does?

Quite a pretty pale pink, relaxed and natural looking bloom

Interesting scabiousy looking thing in the border to the east of the veg patch - useful as it should be a good bee and insect plant, and will fit nicely in with the hotter coloured theme I was pondering on for this bed...

Further up the same bed is this fab purple toadflax (linaria purpurea) which is a wild plant very common around here, but I love it very much

But I leave you with the crazy frou frou clematis in this same border - what possessed grandma? It looks like it mixed with too much dubious chemical substances at Pilton!  Its so preposterous you just can't help looking at it.  I think it will have to go but it seems unfair somehow...anyone know if clematis mind being dug up and moved, and if so what time of year is best?