Hot, hot , hot: who will survive the summer?

It's been over 30 degrees all day, and apparently all day yesterday too. 'Cept yesterday had hot wind as well. Despite being largely absent I knew, because when I got home the oyster plant and the helichrysum that I keep in a hanging basket in an exposed site were limp and crisp respectively. No tragedy, because they're queens of recovery, and that's what they're doing as I type. And anyway, it's their job to tell me what's been going on while I'm stuck in the airless, windowless bunker.

Lots of flowers are fading now, or looking a bit exhausted from their ebullient spring display. But these blue beauties, cornflowers, are just hitting their straps.

Following close behind are some carnations, chocka with buds. I've only started to grow them for fun the last few years. I once grew them the cut-flower way, through horizontal goat-wire, the way that florists love. The technique, that also involves lots of disbudding, produces big straight-stemmed flowers with no scent. Not these. Their stems will be misshapen, and their flowers no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, but I can tell by the early starters that they will be powerfully scented and power through the drought.