MELLOW FRUITFULNESS

Normally we can see thirty miles across Morecambe Bay from our kitchen but today is a day known to the Scots as dreich. 

It rained all night and we are submerged in cloud and mizzle - a mixture of drizzle and mist

I can just see the trees beyond the big eucalyptus where two pigeons sit and regularly shake the water from their feathers.

It is not really cold, about 12C, and it takes until early afternoon for the cloud to lift with a light breeze.

Nevertheless it still rains.

The garden is full of fruit and seeds. The damsons pears and apples are at an end and the last bowl has been collected, the damsons with my father's old shepherd's crook to pull down the higher branches. Elsewhere there are many types of fruit. 

Haws and hips and barberries.

And then there are seeds - and grasses, figwort, woundwort and opium poppy heads.

One of the most fascinating seed heads is that if the yellow flag iris.

The seeds are packed together rather like stacked coins and are brown flattened discs.

Elsewhere we have germination of grass seed where the old compost heaps were sited. I have now to decide when to remove the protective netting and let the wildlife invade.

Some things are doing well - I cut back the overgrown petunias in the pot outside the kitchen not expecting much but they have regrown. 

The Michaelmas daisies near the front door (the door at the back) are a waterfall over the paving. I had decided to dig them up and move them but now am not so sure. For much of the year they are a rather untidy mess but, at a time when so much is winding down they light up a dark part of the garden.

I watched Gardeners' World and M Don says to not water the succulents through the winter so I will do so but keep a close eye on them, particularly the aeonium. Mind you our specimen cannot compete with his whoppers.

And then the sun comes out, leaves have not all fallen yet and, as long as I keep off the bottom grass there is work to do.

OCTOBERING ON

 R has cut back the cardoons as they were looking decidedly sad. Sometimes I keep them for their winter shape but the recent rain has messed them up. She has also pulled off the last of the rhubarb stems and leaves.

I have cleared the sweet peas and dug over the bed, then tined some areas of the soggy lawn with a fork. There are still roses down by the pond, what we call Hilary's rose and ripe elderberries.

Also dug over most of the "cutting bed" which revealed potatoes! The rue has been cut back - with care - as the sap can cause nasty blistering of the skin.

The leaves turn - including the cercidiphyllum on the right - but as yet cannot smell the toffee scent the old leaves of that tree emits - need some sun? The Acer Sango-kaku simply glows in the sunshine.

Though autumn progresses there are still flowers to light up the garden like the dahlia above and some roses and black-eyed Susan (rudbeckia).

Then the sunshine is threatened by a black cloud highlighting the last leaves on the grey poplar.

We have also the signs of the end of the year, fungi in the lawn grass and, as I mentioned before, the failing ash.

But there is good news - anyone want a big marrow? Too much for just the two of us. Perhaps someone without a pumpkin for Halloween could turn it into a ... ?

For the first time this year I have been blowing leaves off the paths.

More pears have been picked, wrapped in newspaper and put in the shed and there are still a few damsons left if I get out my father's crook and pull down the branches.

I have trimmed backside of the Rambling Rector rose, a thorny business, and continued to pick the last of the fruit, (see next blog.)

We still have flowers but then I saw this - a camellia on the bush by the mower shed!

We have cosmos and dahlias and a few belated white campanulas. (You said dahlias before - so I did.)

We had a gusty day yesterday and I decided to bring our Aeonium inside for the winter. It is happily ensconced on the living room windowsill for now.

Enough, the sun is out, no excuses so wellies on and off I go .

ASH R.I.P.

So it has arrived at last. One of our big ash trees is showing signs of dieback - let alone smaller ones nearby. Willington Wood near Ulverston looks a disaster area with most young ash affected. There are tree skeletons everywhere.

 The only creatures that seem to appreciate it are the local rooks that congregate every day in the bare tops from where they have a good look out unhampered by leaves.

We have quite a lot of mature ash trees in our small wooded area including one venerable one and it will be sad (and expensive) if they go.

With all the rain the sensible thing has been to keep off the garden as much as possible. Plants that are over have been cut back but lawns are a no go area. 

Tulips are potted up and the sweet peas sown early are showing not the slightest inclination to germinate.

However there are still flowers in the garden - 

The hydrangeas continue to thrive though Annabelle has been flattened by the rain. This one, more sturdy, is now turning pink as it ages.

The top path is almost blocked by the miscanthus and after rain I end up with wet legs as I push past.

Whereas many flowers like the dahlias are in your face blasts of colour and form others are delicate like this Hesperantha or Kaffir lily. It used to be called Schizostylis but the powers that be love to change the names when on is not looking.

The garden is so wet at the far end the grass is like a skating rink. Needless to say, going to the compost heap I fell flat on my backside, covered in mud!

We are still enjoying the sweetness of carrots straight out of the soil and I took a large bag of Conference pears to coffee on Thursday and handed them out - instructions as to ripening given - brown paper bag, pears and a ripe banana, leave 3 to 4 days to ripen.

Recipe for pickled pears -

Put pared zest 1 lemon and juice in pan with 10 cloves, 2 teaspoons crushed black pepper, 1 teaspoon crushed allspice, 5 cm sliced root ginger, 1 litre cider, 2 cinnamon sticks and 1 kg sugar into a pan and stir over gentle heat until sugar dissolved.

Peel, core and halve or quarter pears, add to pan, simmer 15 minutes until pears tender. Remove pears and boil till liquid reduced by a third.

Put pears into warm jars, pour over syrup and seal.

It is always surprise when people say that they read this blog but a pleasant one. I know as I get older and friends and relatives suffer from age and disease (wear out) it keeps me going. Just to say I think of you all.

RAAAIIIN!

 

From drought to sog in a few days and the rain just keeps falling. The stream burbles, plants fall over weighed down with water. 

The garden is full of noise - nearly 100 rooks have decided our trees is a good place to congregate. A couple of loud claps disperses them but they soon return.

NO PATTERN

There's no pattern to it,

Rain on the window,

No logic.

Each drop is driven randomly

Onto the glass,

Hesitates, stops.

Some collect other rain,

Wriggle with gravity

Always down.

Each, a lens, refracts,

Captures and bends light,

Spatters it into the room

Into my eye.

There's no pattern in it.

Of course some clever mathematician

Will write an algorithm

To encapsulate it,

(So what!)

Turn raindrops to symbols,

To numbers,

To signs and letters.

I prefer a mystery,

A belief that

It needs no explanation,

That, no matter how hard one tries,

There's no pattern about it.

It makes me wonder what it would be like to be a deer in the cold rain but I suppose they do not think anything of it.

R made me a marrow last night stuffed with lamb mince - memories of those days when food was seasonal not all the year round.

I should be up the damson trees, crook in hand, collecting the fruit but we have already got enough and are giving them away. I have put the biggest pears in a brown paper bag with a black banana to try and ripen them. The banana gives off ethylene to help - we will see.

And we do have the odd bit of veg apart from marrows - curly kale and carrots, well at least one. Actually it tasted very sweet and surprisingly good despite ending up eating it as a side dish for a curry.

The last of the sweet peas are picked and the Virginia creeper just gets better and better but its leaves will soon be gone.

The seeded area where the old compost heaps were is covered in netting and we wait for grass growth. The heap of soil on the left will be moved - one day.

Now is the time of dark corners in the garden and the use of white flowering plants can light these up - cosmos, phlox and Japanese anemones.

And where there is no white there can be golden yellow.

So now it is Saturday and, surprise, it is raining again - cold wet and windy. Shall I go out and garden - what do you think 💦😕.