MUCK COMETH, AUTUMN IS HERE?

Saturday and the ladies who have the horse paddock (and two horses) next to the house have arranged for two small trucks of well rotted horse manure to be dumped outside the cattle grid on the grass banking.

Hooray!

R has been down the garden and cleared and weeded the asparagus and rhubarb beds - this is a before image on the right, after on the left - now I will need to get a-mulching, so a-mulching I will go - but not today as it is a bit cold and I cannot be bothered.

The garden is full of autumn colours -

 

Yes, leaves, euonymus, Virginia creeper and a livid red Hypericum but also nasturtiums not yet assassinated by a frost.

All in all the place does not look too bad but leaves need to be blown off paths and mown off lawns. Mowing is a very effective way to collect leaves fallen on grass.

I might prattle on about successes but I have to admit to one failure, yet again. These are my flowerless sweet peas same as last year. It has got so bad I have already sown some for next year in deep pots and put them down in the Wendy House. Now all it needs is a lot of prayer and someone up there to take pity on me and tell the peas to get on with it. 

It is pleasing when you find someone has found this endless diatribe of mine - but then I think, 'When do I stop?' I suppose the answer might be when I stop (or become incapable of spouting away like a flock of starlings.) It is not often I go back and read any of it, perhaps I should - why? This is the 823rd blog, maybe I will stop when I get to 1000 (if I get to 1000).

The day is grey, hardly a breath of breeze, cold, well 8C, but colder in a penetrating sort of way. I get out the blower and clear leaves from the paths, then go in and lay the woodturner for later on.

A bird has got into the shed and is trying to escape through the window. I think it is a chaffinch but it drops behind the racks of pots and I cannot find it - so leave the door open and trust it to find its own way out.

Cutting back the geraniums has given a new, albeit smaller, flush of flowers. 

One surprise concerns the garden golden rod which we normally hack back to the ground after flowering. This year R just dead headed them. No second flush of flowers but the autumn colour, especially the red stems, is wonderful.

There is also colour in surprising places - the dying hosta leaves have a special beauty. (I should mention that the spell checker did not like costa and persisted in changing it  to Costa! It is a sad world. In the pots by the back door - the one at the side - the violas are doing well. We changed to these small dainty flowers from winter pansies and these are much preferable. Notes made mentally for next year - violas everywhere?

Sunday evening and a grey cold outlook. We have walked the woods at Conishead admiring the colouring of the maples and trod the shingle by the shore. This is the great Conishead Oak taken in 1985 (apologies to the boys) before it lost a huge limb in a storm. It is the oldest tree in the park there. It makes all one does seem rather temporary.

Monday and rain is due but I manage to mow the lawns at last, not the wood. This clears the leaves from the grass and is an easy way of collecting them before using them as mulch under shrubs and on the compost heap. This is the the rose Golden Showers, one of two we have but now this one looks moribund - do not know why.

A delivery has come from Sarah Raven, lots of orange and purple tulips and some glorious white camassias. The problem now is where to put them. Perhaps if I move the Sweet Cicely from the back bed to the wood the tulips could go there? I will have to think about the camassias. In the end I have a big pot pot with a scraggy senecio in it - no longer - 40 tulips in one big pot waiting for the spring.

Walked part of Levens Hall Park yesterday in excellent company through the magnificent old trees. Acorns, beechnuts and sweet chestnuts falling on our heads, Fallow deer and Bagot goats grazing, a heron by the Kent.

The gardener is here working his wonders, strimming the fall of the stream from the wood, digging up the Aesculus indica from the lawn - it has only grown to 3 feet high in 13 years. He has bagged it up and will take it for someone else. He has fork tined a lot of the soggy patches of grass.

A dismal morning and then the sun came out briefly - the view from the kitchen door.

Finally I have to recommend Dara McAnulty's delightful book Diary of a Young Naturalist. It is so good to see the world so clearly through other eyes, and such wise ones. 

THE GARDEN OUTGROWS US

 It its thirteen and a half years ago we moved into our new built house, up a lane from the town, up a cul-de-sac, up a field. We planted shrubs and trees, planted out beds and now it is all growing too well, too large. So decisions need to be taken, what to prune, what to remove.

The trouble with plants is that they grow and breed and not wanting to throw them away there are clumps of anemones and acanthus in the long grass, aquilegias and forgetmenots sowing themselves in the wood. So do we let areas go wild and do whatever they want to do, do we cull our flora (could do with culling the rabbits and grey squirrels) or let it rampage?

R wants to see the water in the pond, the reflection of the sky, the plants want to take over which is great for newts and other pond life. We have had the water lily dug out - well most of it - and I have raked mounds of plantain onto the bank.

The garden is on a junction between two geological layers - this results in aquifers and springs erupting from the slopes. Water has an insidious way of appearing just where you do not want it. We drained parts of the garden but the drains are blocked - probably roots from trees - this results in boggy areas (where mowers get bogged down) and squelchy lawn.

The veg beds strategically placed to get the best of the sun are now partially overlooked and shaded by the big damson tree. (It was only small when we put it in.) They need to be moved. We have too many currant bushes - it is so tempting to cut a stem and stick it in the ground - voila!, a new bush.

Autumn colours are here - the Acer sango-kaku - given to us by my sister I when we moved here. The sunlight on the golden leaves is spectacular. And up in the wood the Azaleas are also magnificent in their October plumage.

But it is not just leaves that are interesting - seed heads also give a different texture to a shrub.

Sunday, a glorious day with the view across the bay so sharp, Monday and pouring down again, running over the gutters drenching everything.

I have been reading Native by Patrick Laurie about his life in Galloway. It brings back many memories of growing up on a farm between Coniston and Torver in the Lake District (and the rain).

When the sun is shining the garden lights up - the potentilla has been flowering for months. 

Now is the time for Michaelmas daisies and Kaffir lilies

Up in the woodland the small boy reading a book is well wrapped in Moss for the winter cold. With the increasing damp in the garden moss is thriving. The path from the house to the veg beds has a thick coating. This can make it slippery and an old crock like me has to be careful. I think I will have to buy some crampons to walk the muddy slopes and stop me ending up on my backside (again). In fact I am off to an osteopath this week though I am unsure that anything much will help but a body transplant. (Probably could do with a brain transplant too.) The lawns need tining - stick a fork in and waggle to open the turf and help drainage - not a job I love so beware S the gardener. It is almost time for the blower too, to clear the paths of fallen leaves - can do that.

I picked a load of elderberries but R said that she read the stems were toxic etc etc so in the end I bunged them on the lawn with the windfall apples.

The hen pheasants do not find them revolting!

The leaves are falling from the toffee trees (cercidiphyllum) but I do not smell the caramel aroma they are supposed to have.

At least the grass is not growing so fast now the cool and dark approaches. Soon our clocks will change to winter time, go back an hour - so when I wake at 7 it will be 6 - 😒

SUN/RAIN/SUN/RAIN

So here we are, wildflower meadow in waiting. It rained the day after it was sown so hopefully that will wash the seed down to the soil.

Elsewhere the rather hard, despite being ripened on a windowsill, Conference pears at least look the part - perhaps need pickling and the Bramley apples are still not all off the tree. 

There is much colour in the garden despite it being October -

The pots by the door are doing all right - euphorbias and violas. There are various pot around the house - some shabby, some a bit better. The big tubs with the Lilium regale are tucked away now the stems have been cut back, to be box balls (or not to be) are scattered around and the tulip pots are either side of the big window. We could do with a dozen really nice pots but they are expensive so . . .

Elsewhere light does help, when the sun deigns to shine - on the alchemilla leaves spotted with rain and the hydrangea paniculata now turning pink. The Annabelle is showing some signs of being a bit tired, fed up with its heavy heads lying on the ground, some bracts a bit brown. R has cut some stems and they are in a vase in the house.  

                                                  

Yes, raining again, standing water on lawn.

The Gardener has been, sides of stream strimmed, part of wood same, one of the cherry trees cut back as getting too big - 3 side branches removed.

The Euonymus has not been moved, yet - too splendid at the present.

Three rabbits on the banking this morning, need a warrener?

 

Leaves are falling - had to sweep by back door - and autumn is definitely here.

Heard Robert Harris on radio describing our government as a Morris Minor affair when we need a Rolls Royce - too true.

THE WILDFLOWER MEADOW IS SOWN

Friday, cold with a brisk north-easterly but sitting in the extension with friends is is warm in the sun. Bats are flying through the garden hawking for insects and the last of the swallows are heading south over the bay.

Then we have an afterthought of summer for a weekend and the sun is warm. I cut and rake the grass in preparation for the wildflower meadow - and rake and mow and mow but still cannot get enough of the thatch off.

Monday is a day where the weather hesitates, a little rain, but then Tuesday reveals autumn in its full glory with a heavy dew, sun and a long bar of mist in the bay. My friend N has had a snow bunting in his garden, I settle for wrens and blackbirds, sparrows and a singing robin. I would walk the garden but I am waiting for the doctor to ring about my hip. (More OA)

The morning sun draws out the colours in some of the flowers. The air is sharp.

The weather men say there are storms ahead and I have not picked the apples.

 Autumn colours  are here - sunny Tuesday.

 

The Japanese anemones flower and flower - pink and white, no dead heading needed.

 

 

Elsewhere in the garden the path down from the paving is lined with erigeron and nasturtiums, the courgettes and rhubarb thrive on.

Up in the wood we probably need to trim back a bit but the sunlight on the grasses and seedbeds make it a special place.

Wednesday and it is pouring down so a no mow day.

Thursday and the sun shines, the last swallows are heading south and R has been picking apples which I have wrapped in newspaper and put in trays in the shed. There should be plenty to last us till April. I have raked half the lower lawn and removed more thatch, sown my sweet pea seeds, potted up the tulips I saved from last year and done some dead heading. Now I am having a blue Becks.

Friday, today, and I have mown the lawns, at least the bottom ones, and have scattered the seed for the wild flower meadow - now wait and see. 

The windfall still attracting wild things, badger, rabbit, grey squirrel, robin, blackbird and now hen pheasants.