BOG STANDARD

The garden is raucous with cock pheasants. Here are two of this years clutch squawking from the shed roof. 
And buzzards are circling above the trees imitating cats as I wander down the garden to cut the alstroemerias and pick some chard.

I am trying to think what I could do with grass that is always unmovable being too wet. (I know - smoke it - not that sort of grass.) I could create a bog garden but, in a way, it is already that. In many places above the pond there is little turf, just mimulus seedlings and a carpet of golden saxifrage.

I have finally had a very brief window and managed to mow the upper lawns and the wood. The lower grass is a no-no. The wood was cut on mulch. No frost - yet.

I mentioned that the fatsia is was flowering - and now there are flowers on the big magnolia. The seasons are upside down.

I have managed to save some seed and dry it - this is fennel - now in a brown paper envelope in my room. Of course it can be used as a flavouring as it is.

Back to the pheasants - they are now on the shed roof outside my study window, male to then left, female to the right.

One problem I am about to give up on is the purple sedum spectabile. I have tried staking it, the Chelsea chop (cut it back at the time of Chelsea Flower show and it flowers later but sturdier.) None of it has worked so I have settled for floppy sedum.

So now it is Monday, miserable misty drizzly Monday and it has rained all day and I have still not potted up the lilies. Sop I have had time to ponder on where to put the new bed - roses and stuff moved for the upsizing. When it has stopped precipitating on my head I shall stick a fork into the turf by the path to the veg beds and see if it is deeper than  a few millimetres - could do Okay for the new area.

Come Wednesday and the rain has stopped for a while. So out and took the skimmia out of its pot - it was not happy there now - and replanted it near the gate. 

Into the pots planted up with ilium regale I put some aeonium cuttings from the pot in the foreground - better than bare compost.

 There are still flowers in the garden if you look - marigolds, anthems and osteospermum.

And there is still autumn colour in some leaves despite the battering with the gales. This acer is determined not to let go yet.

One side effect of all the rain is the garden has been attacked by moss. Moss in then lawns is bad and so are then paths as shown here.

I do not mind it up in the wood or on the dry-stone walls but especially in the lawn it acts like a sponge and suffocates the grass.

Finally to my Halloween squash - age is having a deleterious effect on its complexion and I am not sure if it will make it. Anyway it is far too small for a candle.

And finally a bit of good news - though I have not won a prize my poem Sand has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize (as has my sister-in-law Kerry) so here is mine whether you want to read it or not.
 

SAND

And I was young and waist deep in the River Kent,

halfway between the Arnside shore and Humphrey Head.

The tide was at its lowest, dragged out to the far sea,

gathering its power, ready for the inward rush,

its bore roaring through the rills, sliding over shoals, 

faster than a man can run, scouring sand and scar.

Here level land is laced with sweeps of mercury,

its shallow gullies carved by moon-pulled pendulums

of liquid light - flood tides that pervade a desert,

wide and wet, where voices come, not go, no one lives,

where winter waders pipe aboard the wanderer

who wades the shimmery haze, walks out west from Hest Bank

through blind quicksands, the quags of watery granules 

that wait the unwary. Where sand and sky collide

long lines of stunted brogs implanted by the guide

designate a safe route through this land rendered fluid 

beneath the ebb and flow of the changeless changing sea. 

And I was young and new and walking Morecambe Bay.