WET WET WET

 I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes - well wearing wellies, so much rain it runs from the back field across the garden in sheets and streams.

It is wetter than I can remember and the heap of twigs I call a bonfire is never going to light for November 5th even with loads of fuel and paper. 

I have cut back the shrubs hanging over the path to the upper garden and trimmed the dying paeonies. It seems pointless blowing leaves off paths etc when the forecast includes gales - just blow the leaves back let alone those to come off the trees. 

It is becoming quite clear looking at the weather forecast for the next two weeks that staying off much of the garden is the only option. Today is Friday and gales and rain sweep in.

On Saturday I manage to rake out the stream and the spring in the field. Also I fork over the compost heaps - not really breaking down as I would want. R does a great job clearing back plants that are past it.

The groove in the far grass designed to help dry the way to the far end is full of water but the turf below it is still waterlogged.

I have pulled the last rhubarb stems - inedible now - and they will go on the compost.

The tangle over the old well is now impenetrable especially as the Rambling Rector rose is so vicious.

So time for a breather. Sunday and sunny, walk at Kirkby and a coffee at Pam's wonderful cafe.

Here are some sunny autumn pictures (at last) mainly of the euonymus elata and the acer sango-kaku my sister gave us when we moved in.

They are both tucked near out notable sycamore (Woodland Trust) but the latter is producing so much seed it carpets the tarmac.

I suppose I ought to mention produce but the Bramleys in the kitchen are fed up waiting to be cooked. We still have some wrapped up elsewhere form later in the season.

So here is to A sunny day - though it seems to be clouding over again.

THE CATKINS ARE COMING

Yo-ho, yo-ho. 

I have been rumbled, so R says. I love gardens and plants and design but not gardening! She said this as she tidied the biggest flower bed though I had been weeding, well hoeing, the asparagus bed. 

All is not helped by an attack of vertigo, bad back and general desire to be asleep rather than  digging and shifting compost.

R is disappointed that the fallen tree up the garden has partial hidden the sweep of snowdrops into the wood.

And we have our first catkins on the hazel despite the attempts to eat the shrubs by the roe deer.

We are plagued by tiny gnats that have come from the compost of some of the house plants. Have put gravel on the top of the compost and sticky yellow cards above. Still plagued despite catching hundreds.

We bought a hellebore at a garden centre in Shropshire a while back - a lovely white one - here it is! A bit disappointing though lovely in its own right. Elsewhere we have kale and the rhubarb is starting to come into leaf.

There are other signs of spring - birds calling, buzzards circling, the heron searching for emergent frogs - but no lambs in the back field yet.

Elsewhere quince and viburnums flower - yes I know I included a pic of Viburnum bodnantense Dawn in the last blog but it looks so good. Actually only wrote the last sentence after I realised I had - not the same photo but very like it.

I am not allowed down the garden at the moment if R is out in case I topple over. Mind you a cup of tea and a nap is more the thing.

Must do my exercises for the vertigo but now have a bad back - excuses, excuses.

So I nipped out to get a rose or roses for St Valentine's Day from the garden centre - 'Sorry, we don't have any." So had to be a deep purple cyclamen. 

Jemima and friend are back on the pond. As the lower banking is not cut I wonder if she will nest in there again?

Went out today, R to tidy the back bed, me to tidy the compost heaps and try to light the bonfire - far too wet of course. And then it started raining.

Time for a cup of tea, the crossword and some rest.

IT'S A QUAGMIRE

 Nothing but a quagmire,

And nothing but a heartache . . 

One of the wettest Octobers I can remember and every morning seems to start grey and dark, rain spattering the windows - not much encouragement to get in the garden . . .

But I do a little, cut back some Michaelmas daisies and rue, pull up the cosmos now over, bring compost to the dahlias. 

So far our dahlias have over wintered in the ground with a good hefty much of compost to protect them.

However I have had to change the access to the heaps as the grass is sodden - used a trick from the golf course using alkathene piping. That will remind me to go a less slippery way - with less chance of falling (which I do).

Yet, if we get a short burst of sunlight the Acer is there to cheer me up. 

It is next to the transplanted Euonymus which should have turned bright red by now - but has not. This was it last year.

So, off we went for a few days to our daughter in Herefordshire and left home to the mercy of torrential rain.

When we got back, what a change - the dahlias were all but over, the leaves were almost all off the acer shown above, the cherries had begun to turn and the cercidiphyllum had coloured well.

The rain is driving, the gale is blowing and it is colder. The big trees are mostly stripped of leaves and I must rescue tender plants before it is too late. What do I cover with mulch, what do I pot up and place somewhere safe?

Not today, anyway, today we cross the bay for a funeral of an old friend who has left us - lots of memories today, Stephen went ten years ago and now it is farewell to Jan.

GOINGS AND COMINGS

Let me begin with a flop - or not - sugar solution put out to attract butterflies and here come the black ants!

One planting companionship that works is alachemilla and nepeta (catmint). This border is at a garden in Scotland but at home the alchemilla can seed itself and flop over edges to soften the straight lines.

White is suddenly coming to the fore again whether the thyme (or Doc's hat), elderflowers, white rosebay willow-herb or our two Rambling Rector roses of which below is one.

Mind you, not all is a roaring success. You go away to Scotland for a couple of days and the chard explodes. I think the term is run to seed? R and I have been weeding, deadheading and tidying up today. The aquilegias are almost over so they are being cut back, we are still pulling out goosegrass by the handful and there is still a long way to go. Whilst we were gone S the gardener strimmed the streamside not that there is any water in it. We have had one day with some rain but that is gone and none is forecast for the next two weeks. He has also moved the old compost and begun the removal of the old compost heaps which clever old me made out of willow. So they rooted and do not want to go.

When in Scotland we visited three gardens - the National Trust one at Threave, the almost lost gardens at Arbigland and Elizabeth Macgregor's wonderful walled garden in Kirkcudbright. Her white wisteria was in full flower.

The candelabra primulas at Threave were stunning.

We have a few by our pond and the primula veris plus the usual self sown mimulus guttatus (monkey flower.)

Roses out, peonies about to flower, jungle to clear, grass to cut - I think I shall go away again. Oh! to garden in a window box? A bit small to sit out in though. 

A TRUNDLE IN THE GARDEN

. . . on a dull day.

We come back from a holiday in the Outer Hebrides and the grass needs mowing, the beds need weeding etc etc. 

S the gardener has been and cut back the sallows using the trunks to edge the paths.

I see house martins. A bird flies out of an old nest above the extension window - it is a sparrow.

I put in both sorts of broccoli and a few extra sweet peas. The other tender plants in the shed - ammi, cosmos etc will have to wait. It is still cold. A friend E M who has been keeping records for over 40 years says that April was by far the coldest on record so I am wary.

R wants the pond plants thinning out. The rhododendrons by the top fence are too big. Anyway, I think they may be ponticum and so must be well trimmed back or go.

I have never seen so much flower on the redcurrants. We will have fat blackbirds and thrushes later in the year.

The rhubarb is in fine fettle but the asparagus is disappointing so far - possible the cold spring?

Time for the trundle - out from the house and down under the cherry tree with the bird feeders where the forget-me-nots have self seeded again splendidly. There is still blossom on the pear and greengage, the crab apple and, my favourite of all, the Bramley apple.

Passing the old compost heap where the white honesty is self sown (and goosegrass - so everywhere I have spread the compost the weed is growing) I head for the wood and rhododendrons and azaleas, and scent.

 

And so up to the bluebells. 

I find yet another horse chestnut seedling spawned from the big tree next door that hangs over the top clearing. One of these seedlings (conkerlings?) is now twelve feet high.

Coming back I pass the longer grass on the upper banking, was daffodils, now camassias and cowslips.

There are less of the former today as several lambs wriggled under the field fence and helped themselves. I have put a plank down to close the gap.

Back at the house I see the first welsh poppies, well the orange version rather than the wild yellow, another plant that is allowed to self sow.

The violas in the pots by the back door are thriving and the magnolia stellata just flowers on and on.

R has been weeding, my excellent co-gardener. I try to please her - the convolvulus cneorum is ok but next to it I have failed with the lavateria - looks like it is dead. Perhaps I should wear shorts more like Ben Fogle who was sitting at the next table on our holiday in Tarbert, Isle of Harris.

And I still have to decide what to do with all the box plants in pots . .