Things are looking up in the gardens, the grass is not growing quite as fast and all the newly planted borders have rooted well and no longer need irrigation. I try to keep on top of the weeding but at this time of year hoeing does little good so I just have to get on my knees again and do it by hand. It looks so much tidier this way, I actually hate seeing weed debris left lying about on the soil surface. The new water gardens which have been leaking badly all summer have now been repaired so I am at last able to seriously cultivate around their margins. A great many aquatic plants perished during their exposure to heat and sun and so these will have to be counted, replaced and the bill given to the contractors.

My new nursery garden is nearing completion although the extensive deer and rabbit fencing will not be up and running for several weeks. I have started moving tender plants into one section of glass and have been potting up, pruning and cosseting my poor babies which have been living outside in shallow trays in a hot windy passage for the last three months. I can't believe anything has survived and yet the indian azaleas have never looked so good, their foliage is healthy and green and some are in fact about to flower...........strange. I have purchased a quantity of soil warming cables which will go in my raised brick propagation beds and I have bought several sheets of rigid clear plastic to use as lids for the said beds. The head electrician revealed last week that there was nowhere near enough power in the supply to run two electric greenhouse heaters and boil a kettle at the same time and if I thought I was going to be able to use lightbulbs instead of (ghastly) fluorescent I was sadly mistaken. The greenhouse heaters would also go off should the security lighting switch on in the night which will be very amusing during a frosty weekend when the place is deserted. I think this farce is going to run and run.

My employers will be moving into the house in a month or two and they have a charming young spaniel. Daisy, my jack russell, can't make up her mind how to react and either flirts madly or tries to bite his head off. Basically she is livid that there is another pretty dog on her patch, she had better make the best of it or spend the rest of her working life incarcerated in the nursery garden at the top of the hill with the howling wind and croaking ravens for company.

Next week the last of the lawns will be seeded or laid. Thirty large limes and oaks will be planted as specimens or in an avenue. The portacabins are diminishing and piles of soil and sand are almost a memory. The last scaffolding was carted away only to-day and what was the contractor's car park has been cleared and turned back into parkland. There is still masses to do but I am hopeful that by Christmas Daisy and I will be left quietly and happily alone.