The last chance....

...one week to go before the clocks turn back....

....and summer is officially over....

Fire and ice - the glorious Dogwood

This coming week is always a pivotal week for me in the garden.  Next weekend the clocks change, we lose daylight early in the afternoon ...time for gardening long hours is almost over.

AND THERE IS STILL SO MUCH THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE!

To be planted this weekend.

I have been lulled into some sort of complacency by the beautiful weather and the wonderful rich colours in the garden.    Now the shock I needed to jolt me into action has happened, the realisation that when the days are shorter I won't have the time to wander round the garden lazily admiring autumn and lingering over the last of the summer wine...nooo!   Now I will really have to get on with putting in those bulbs, tidying up the annuals and old vegetables, splitting and sorting out the perennials.  Checking and securing the greenhouse...and filling it with the tender stuff that won't
survive without shelter - AND MUCH MORE.

A murderous thought.

The Naughty One

There are times when I could happily kill my dog.  No, not really, of course not, but she has managed to kill my passiflora.   This is the second one she's fatally maimed.   What is it she has against these beautiful climbers?    I am very cross with her and very sad.   Will I never be able to get something to climb over the arch?  Surely it can't be that hard?

And she digs too.

Most of the time she is pretty good in the garden but every now and then she lets loose with some pure naughtiness.

Yes, she will grow out of it...I know.

Meantime she will have to put up with me being really grumpy with her whenever she kills stuff or digs it up.....

Maybe I will get one more passiflora...third time lucky?   Or maybe I will give in and get a clematis.  But I'd rather have the passiflora.

Busy, busy, busy.

I ordered - and received - some seeds from the annual Chiltern seed sale ready to plant early next year.  Two sorts of tomatoes, Gardener's Delight and Green Zebra.  Both of these were good this year till the blight got them.   I am hoping next year I have a trick to beat the blight.    I also bought some winter salad seeds.   Maybe I will have more success with the salads this year too.  I am still eating the everlasting spinach which is good as a salad or as a cooked green.  I ate the last of the courgettes this week, so I bought more seeds for next year in the sale too.

Spring bulbs are underplanted and the winter pansies on top.

I have planted up my salvaged and up-cycled wheelbarrow for the front of the garden. The barrow was one the builders threw out when they were working at G & Ds some weeks ago.  I had to extract it from the skip.   It was buried beneath lots of heavy stuff, including a plank of wood, which I had to saw in half to get at the barrow.  Luckily there was an old saw discarded in the tip too...those builders must thing I am a crazy woman. I have also planted out an euphorbia which had self-seeded.   I had been nurturing it along - it is ready to go in the spot by the gate now.   I hope it survives.   If it does it will be lovely there - acid yellow in early spring.  I've trimmed the hebes and the winter flowering currants there so they thicken up into more of a hedge.

The other job I have done is strip off the pruned mallow and buddleja branches and salvaged the ones suitable to use as plant props next year.  This will save me lots of money as I use a lot of props for floppy perennials. I thinned the bamboo and stored the canes for use in the garden.  This is what I like about gardening, things can, and should, be recycled, used, made into compost and leaf mould.   It is really satisfying.  Little Jonah was a big help with the sticks and leaf mould jobs.  He likes to help and feel important...he IS important.

I have Agapantha seeds I will plant in tiny pots this week, if they grow I can give some to Sarah.  There are loads of different Pelagoniums  too that I will bring in before the first frost.   I am sure there will be some for Sarah and Chris,  if they want them.   As S & R are planning a visit over Bonfire Weekend I want to have a couple of pots of bulbs planted up for Sarah and Chris by then so they can go back with them to Dorset.

I see that Woodcraft in Pyle has some lovely grasses for sale.   Not many places sell grasses so I am delighted and determined to eke out my housekeeping next week to afford some.   There are some beautiful Deschampsia, Festuca, Helictotrichon and Stipa which come into growth late-winter and flower mid summer then their foliage is best for autumn...MUST HAVE.   In this garden, where there is nearly always wind, grass is wonderful for movement.  It dances.

The grass on the dunes, at the moment, is at its best in the low evening light.   It is quite magical, some like golden fountains, some feathery, and others like kaki waves rippling across the dunes.  I'd like a bit of that effect in my garden...now I think I have an idea for the mound....

Silver birch in my garden

Silver birch in Kenfig

The silver birch in my garden and in the dunes this year are just a delight.  I think the wet summer, and now the lovely autumn, has been the treatment they needed to be absolutely the stars of the show.

 There are many things that have really excelled in rich colour in the last few weeks.  The dogwood, the chocolate cosmos, look at these nasturtiums...

Nasturtium

Chocolate Cosmos (perennial) and Pink Begonia

Purple Salvia

The purple salvia and the yellow heleniums have been flowering non-stop for months now.   I have every hope they will be even better next year.  I will cut them back later and give them chance to come back more bushy.

Hopefully those pictures give you some idea of how rich the tapestry of colour is this autumn.

Glorious.

But all this glory and the wonderful weather for walking has slowed down the actual work I should be doing to maintain the garden, to tuck it up for winter and to prepare for spring too.   Never mind, what is a garden if you have no time to enjoy it?  

One of the jobs waiting for me is to bring in the Pelagoniums.   Some I will house in the greenhouse under bubble wrap if it is very cold.  Then hope for the best.   Others I will bring inside.   With the little Streptocarpus - my new babies this year - and with the 'Swedish' Hibiscus which has spent the summer outside.

Streptocarpus Babies.

So now, enough of this chatter - the dogs want to walk - nay, NEED to walk - I shall take a bag and pick up some cow-poo today while we are out walking, all good stuff for the garden and free.

After that ...a lunchtime trip to the tip with this week's garden weeds and offcuts offerings I can't reuse for the recycle gods.  Some seed harvesting and maybe a little more pruning, though I like to leave quite a bit as shelter for the wildlife.  Little things, like ladybirds, will hibernate in dry twigs and foliage.

I'll leave you with a couple more autumnal pictures.

Jonah helping wrap autumn apples.

Asters in full bloom in the garden,
Lovely late food for bees

The Asters are blooming on the dunes in Kenfig too...I think they are escapees from some domestic garden - they can be invasive in gardens.  I keep mine under strict control - but they are lovely food for pollinators at this time of year.

Have a great week ahead!   Happy gardening!

Almost bedtime...

...for my garden...

Virginia Creeper in autumn colour.

 October is here already.  The weather has been summer-like for days now but the colors in the garden tell a tale of autumn.

At this time of year, as if to make up for the dwindling sunlight the colours are deeper, richer, more fiery than all year.

Nasturtium

Purple salvia and yellow heleniums

Virginia Creeper again

Deep blue campanula 

I should have been out there every day for the last 8-10 sunny days but, although I have been out, mostly it has been to walk rather than to garden.  Today was the first full day I spent in the garden for quite some time.

I pruned the black currants, the lavenders and sages all down the garden path so they will bear plentifully next year - and so I can walk down the path without being smacked by a wet plant later when the rain inevitably returns.

The garden is still full of bees and birdsong.

See the bee?

This weekend I have promised myself that I will spend every spare moment out in the last of the sun tidying up and doing as much as I can before next week when the weather turns much windier and wetter.

So, this afternoon, after taking my prunings to the tip as there were too many for my compost, I cleaned a very dilapidated wheelbarrow.

My plan is to paint it and plant it up with bright things for the spring.   It is to be placed in the front garden...which is sorely neglected.   It is shady, windy and unappealing for much of the year in the front.   I need to address this and bring some change to it.  The wheelbarrow planter is a beginning.

Last week I bought a mass of bulbs with my 'loyalty card' savings for our local garden centre.

Selection of bulbs for next spring

None of those in the photo are suitable for the front, they are sun lovers.   I will get some shade loving bulbs next week - I'm thinking of some special daffodils and muscari which I noted had been hybridised for shady conditions.  I don't know what else.   Probably some winter flowering pansies and violas just for the top till things get going.  The red,white and blue bulbs were given me by a young friend who had recently visited Amsterdam, she bought them there!  Thank you so much C.

Daffodils and muscari 

The combination of the yellow daffodils and purple muscari never fails to look lovely - I will need the miniature daffs as the wind is too vicious in that part of the garden for anything too tall.

Vine by kitchen door - leaves turning red.

So although the summer season has been less than exciting this year, the last two or three weeks have certainly made up for it.  The garden has been a sanctuary of peace, colour and yes, sunshine!   Also it has given me more than an apple a day...the little pippin cox is a delightfully tasty apple and has done really well this year.    I've been eating tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, and potatoes too, all from the garden.   And I've even had a couple of teeny-tiny grapes, but they made up in taste what they lacked in size.  Next year they should be bigger.  The salad potatoes are ready now - they are delicious.

Pink fir apple salad potatoes.

Now though, it is time to tidy up for the coming winter and to plant for spring.  

For those of you who might be interested here is a list of jobs to think about doing now.  Do I keep to the advice?   Some of it, yes, I do.   I think I have convinced myself that pruning is absolutely a very good way of getting the best out of so many plants next season.  There is so much advice online how to do it for the different plants - you can't really go too far wrong.

Planting bulbs too.   Honestly they are so cheap and, once in the ground, you are pretty much guaranteed a spring of beautiful colour, so why not spend a couple of hours putting them in?   If you haven't got enough ground then put them in containers, they are just as happy and just as lovely.

So if you do no other jobs those are the two I would suggest you prioritise.   The pruning nd the bulb planting.

Fritillaria imperialis

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention...among the bulbs I bought I bought two Fritillaria imperialis.   That's a very  grand sounding name isn't it?  It should be too.   The bulbs are expensive, these cost me £3.50 each, but I believe they will be worth every bit of it.   I bought yellow ones, as pictured.
  They grow quite tall, about 1 metre, and I think I shall have to be very vigilant in protecting them from slugs - also from sitting in too much wet...a bit of grit in the bottom of their planting space should solve the drainage - slugs...they are another thing all together.

S told me today that young Chris is going to be in the garden this weekend...by his sister's request.   She says the spiders are back...Sarah...what do you mean they are back?   I bet they never left!  Anyway, I believe it is Chris's job to cut back things in the garden to get rid of the spiders.   This is pointless.  And damaging.   The spiders in our British gardens now are the fat little chappies - see picture.

See the fat happy spider in the middle?

These spiders are useful pest deterrents and completely harmless.   I must have had half a dozen of them tangling in my hair and clothes today when I was pruning.   They are social, jolly little creatures and really don't hurt you at all!

Well I think that is all the news for now.   Hopefully by the time the weekend is over the garden will be much more prepared for autumn... and ready for the big bulb planting as soon as the ground is softened by the rains next week.

Have a wonderful gardening weekend everyone.   Don't forget to take in the last of the sunshine and just enjoy being in your garden too..isn't that what it is really all about?