Time for change

We enjoyed a week of glorious Indian summer during our break in Lincolnshire.

Rolling wolds and flat fen country were green and brown from crops and tilled soil, the skies were huge and azure with a light mist hanging on the horizon. We watched buzzards taunting a colony of rooks and jumped out of the path of tractors towing trailer loads of sugar beet.

At Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve black sheep eyed us suspiciously, keeping their distance, and on the beach wind-blown dead crabs waved harmless pincers.

As we drove back and came further south the trees started to show the colours of decline. 

We have come home to autumn.

There has been a very early frost while we were away and the allotment is a sorry sight. Runner beans, courgettes, dahlias - all finished. Just shrivelled black leaves and withered fruits.

We might be able to salvage a few squash but they may not store well now.

The nice side to the start of autumn is the garden tidy.

Clearing away the summer finery - now looking very dilapidated - is always therapeutic and gives me that buzz of excitement from anticipating changes.

I can dig out that boring photinia 'Red Robin' and move the witch hazel, find places to plant all my latest treasures and especially make room for cercis 'Forest Pansy' - a little beauty that I hope likes my garden as much as I like it.

Dark thoughts

Perhaps it's the weather. All those overcast skies and leaden clouds make the dark-leafed plants come to life.

When the sun shines the sombre foliage disappears into a black hole, but when the storm clouds roll in and that strange half-light fills the garden it takes on a melodramatic glow. Just right for the late summer slide into autumn.

The cannas have been slow to get going because of the cold season but now they are relishing all the rain and producing late, vibrant flowers. The stripey maroon, orange and olive leaves of canna 'Durban' look like old fashioned school blazers and contrast strikingly with the honey-bush melianthus.

Purple-leafed vine 'Teinturier' was hidden last month by a violet clematis, but now it is beginning to show some autumn colour. The occasional scarlet leaf is like an exotic flower from a distance and the neat little bunches of blue-black grapes look tempting even if tongue- curlingly inedible.

The shiny holly 'Blue Angel' has adorned itself with crimson berries in a pre-festive season display. I know by Christmas the blackbirds will have gorged themselves and left nothing for my indoor decorations [but wire on a few beads and who's to know?]

And the 'Zwartkopf' aeoniums are so black-shiny and turgid with rain they look as though they will pop.

Uninvited guest.

      

                                       

 There was a visitor in the garden today. A dark-eyed rogue perched on the bird table nibbling in a charming manner.

Great table etiquette - a little of this, not too much of that, all eaten in a very tidy way.

He saw me approaching and at first ignored me, but eventually leapt into the cherry tree from where I thought he would scoot across the other gardens and disappear.

After a few seconds a bushy tail appeared around the tree trunk and shook vigorously in my direction. 

Having failed to frighten me away, a small face peeped around, decided I was no threat and returned to his feast.

While I was charmed by the novelty of having a squirrel in the garden, my partner was not and ran up the path clapping his hands and shooing it away.

He's right of course.

It's a rat with a tail and will only steal the eggs and nestlings from any bird nests in the spring.

But for the moment I don't mind if he makes an occasional return and shares the bird seed with the starlings and sparrows....as long as he doesn't tell his friends.

 

It's the little things that count.

 The garden is full of colour.

 

Dahlias, pelargoniums, petunias and begonias are all strutting their stuff and flaunting their gorgeousness.

 

Cannas are at their finest with striped and gaudy foliage and frilly petalled blooms glowing at the tips of the stems.

But the flower that stopped me in my tracks this morning is very small, inconspicuous and soberly coloured.

I discovered it while watering the pots in my conservatory - a tiny purpley-mauve earthstar at the base of a 'Milky Way' aspidistra.I've never seen one before and it was one of those rare gardening moments where all you can say is 'Oh!'

August Bloomers

Scarecrow

This is the guardian of the veg constucted by a fellow allotmenteer.

Note the piercing eyes, embracing arms and fetching attire.

I don't know about the crows but it scares the **** out of me.

Disappearing act

   Occasionally in the evening I like playing hidden object games. A bit like jigsaws or crosswords, totally pointless but satisfying. And a good reason for not doing something more virtuous - housework for example or sorting out the gas bill.

   In the garden, however, playing hidden object games is a different matter.

   Where is that trowel?

   I know I have at least six and possibly more. I'm always buying them from boot sales and two came free with magazines. But the only one I can find is the plastic one that hurts your hand and won't make a decent hole in the ground.

   Where is my new garden fork?

    It's a lightweight one that was a bargain in the sales and was definitely put back in the shed last time I used it. It has been replaced by the heavy fork with the broken tine that I was going to throw away eventually...

   And just where is that extra large pot that was going to be a home for the hosta this year?

   Oh yes - found it. At the back of my pot store filled with 3 inch pots. By the time it's been emptied and another space found for the hundred small pots I'm hot and cross and my time for relaxing and garden pottering has gone.

   One day I'll clear out the clutter and have one of those sheds where everything has a labelled, outlined position, garden tools are put away after being wiped with an oily rag and there are no mysterious disappearing acts going on as soon as I shut the door.

   Until then I'm stuck with garden hide and seek.

   

Invasion

The tiny cricket that was evicted from my son's room yesterday was not the end of the story.

Today Big Mummy appeared in the spare room.

Looking for revenge...

Salad days

At last the sun shines and the temperature rises bringing the first crops of tomatoes and cucumbers. I forget just how good they will taste.

The cucumbers sweet and crunchy and the tomatoes juicy and tangy - a little salt and summer heaven has arrived.

The best tomato croppers are the cherry types and baby plums. Their flavour improves as the summer goes on especially if kept on the dry side. Two new varieties I'm trying this year are Rosada - a cherry, and Harbinger - a traditional type. They are competing against favourites Sungold, Sweet 100 and Chiquito. I also have Golden Santa, Roma and an unknown variety which appeared in a pot with some flower seedlings and I didn't have the heart to discard.

Sadly my favourite Marmande - a lovely beefsteak tomato which is delicious grilled till soft and squidgy and liberally sprinkled with black pepper - will not be enjoyed this year. Last year 

my lovely healthy plants succumbed overnight to blight and disintegrated into a sorry mess of blackened foliage and fruit so I didn't sow any this spring. [ As expected - no blight this year, as yet....]

Cucumbers are Cucino and Boothby's Blonde. They are both small types and I'm trying them in the greenhouse and outside. You can never have too many in our house and they make a fantastic accompaniment to a spicy curry chopped into chunky pieces and mixed with yoghurt.

A surprise success in the garden was from one tiny potato tuber left over from the main planting at the allotment. 

Put into a large flowerpot with some multi-purpose compost and watered when remembered it has yielded enough spuds for two meals.

Best from the allotment at the moment are the sugar snap peas - Zuccola, Romanesco calabrese and  Purple Teepee dwarf  beans. The calabrese should really be grown as a late summer cropper but I tried it early as an experiment to avoid the cabbage white butterfly. So far so good.

July Medley

Rain stops play

We were warned of drought, we were promised drought. Dire prophesies of brown, dust-dry gardens, death to all plants requiring even a modicum of moisture, hosepipe bans and helicopters snooping for the telltale green lawn.

Gardeners were encouraged to rip up the grass, lay gravel over membrane and plant all those sun-loving mediterranean plants everyone loved from their sunny holidays.

We were all going to bask in un-English semi-tropical summers and pluck grapes from our arbours.

But it rains.

For the last two years records have been broken again and again for above average precipitation. Flood has followed deluge and blight has followed mould. Sandals and sunglasses have been replaced by wellies and umbrellas.

Those mediterranean lovelies languished and stretched with all that wet and succumbed to winter rot.

The happiest people are the weather forecasters who have a wild glint in the eye and sound of rising glee in the voice as they announce, 'Yet more unseasonal weather'. The rare sunny day is followed by two or more wet.

White skies, drizzle, no ripe tomatoes, an autumnal feeling in July...

Summer? Bah Humbug!

July

Front Row

We're lucky in our road. The front gardens are too small to park cars so I have the pleasure each morning of perusing the garden personality of each house I pass on my walk to work. There are the 'gravel chips and potted box' enclosures, the 'let's brighten the place up with a bit of busy lizzie' plots and the 'hiding behind my hedge' gardens. Then there are the 'we're doing the house up first', the 'as long as it's tidy', and the 'landscaped ready for sale' gardens.

  Favourites are the all-in-a-jumble areas full of wind-blown poppies and evening primrose which seem to care for themselves, and the garden with a small flowered climbing red rose, red-berried cotoneaster and red geraniums on the window sills which exactly match the crimson of the front door. How clever, how restrained.

My garden comes into the 'too full for its own good' category because I can't stop acquiring plants and cramming them into containers. Result- watering nightmare and vine weevil heaven. 

Something stinks...

A strange phenomenon affected some of our allotments. It appeared about June and took the form of fern shaped potato leaves. Initially this was treated with mild curiosity and a suggestion that the weather was to blame, but it soon became obvious that there was a more serious cause. Allotmenteers looked at their neighbours with suspicion - was some digressor using weed killer on a breezy day?

But no - through the media grape vine, RHS website and eventually Gardeners' Question Time the truth did out. Yet again another new and probably uneccesary agri-chemical has been developed. A hormone weedkiller which binds itself to the structure of the grass grown for livestock feed and is capable of passing through the animal and remaining active in the manure.

All the organic growers who believe in keeping their soil in good heart by feeding it with honest muck have poisoned the earth with contaminated manure and have been advised not to eat their produce, to leave the ground fallow for a year and regularly rotavate.

And if we are being advised not to eat the veg what about the livestock that were fed the grass? Is anyone testing the meat and milk? I doubt it.