WHEN IS A

 Garden not a garden, when it is a quagmire. 

Big decisions made. We can no longer manage all this two acre garden so - not really rewilding areas but just letting it go (unless, when it is done, we change our minds.)

And we are not the only thing that is getting older, the shrubs threaten to be trees, and perennials insist on spreading, need dividing etc, bulbs get congested - snowdrops on the surface.

I must cut back the buddleia outside the kitchen window early again to let in more of the weak wintry light.

There are cries of too hot for October in the south east, it is 40C in Spain and here it is warm too but only 16C and RAINING. I have suggestion for the government - a sun tax for the south and a rain rebate on tax for the rainy areas - sort of levelling up?

Dug up some potatoes I had forgotten. They had sprouted in the kitchen cupboard and been shoved in an empty corner of the veg beds. 

Sunday brings a drier morning and a huge wedge of geese flying north, so evocative. I cut back the buddleia and light floods into the kitchen. Wasps are about but not as many as ladybirds. The latter are seeking somewhere to overwinter.

There are also butterflies on the fruit, here a comma and a red admiral.

And suddenly it is Saturday again and colder, only 10C, but sunny (when it is not pouring down).

We still have flowers in the garden, the michaelmas daisies falling over the paving.

Then there are marigolds, okay, calendulas outside the kitchen.

R has been away at a school reunion (Glad Hearts Adventuring) so I have been doing odds and so on. Potted up the Sarah Raven tulips and alliums, bought some yellow crocus which have been put near the kitchen window and replaced the battery in the oil tank sensor.

Suddenly there is sun and went up to the wood despairing at the long wet grass. The contrast between the leaves on the magnolia and the old ash was great and branches of that ash hang down over the woodland path. Pray the dieback stays away.

The beans are done, the sweet peas dead, but lichen can light up a dull corner. 

Then I come upon this and smile.

FRUITS AND FLOWERS

Well, not quite autumn yet but plenty of fruits to harvest, some just to enjoy like the guelder rose.

Elsewhere we have plums and pears, apples and damsons, and one big marrow. Now, I know marrow is a Marmite thing - you love it or hate it. For me it brings back memories of childhood on the farm with, once a year, a big marrow stuffed with lamb mince (probably mutton) and baked.

There are hips on the rosa rugosa and the rosa rubrifolia, the latter originally from Wormleighton Manor in Warwickshire.

The insect life continues to thrive, butterflies, dragonflies and bees.

So you know when you are getting older when your 15 year old grandson comes to visit and you have to reach up to hug him - and I am 5ft 10in.

Autumn definitely here - we have now picked 10 pounds of blackberries from the lane side. 

I have raked and seeded the flower meadow today, then lightly watered it. Part has been done a la Prince Charles as good friends brought me some seed from Highgrove. So I have carefully used that on a separate area and we will see if his seed mix or mine is best.

Talking of insects - well I am now, this is a Robin's pincushion on a wild rose. It is a type of gall. Also called the Bedeguar Gall it is caused by Diploepsis rosae, a small gall wasp. 

I have been pruning the first of the Brachyglottis (Senecio bush) and in the depths found this old nest. Only another five bushes to go. Hope they are easier as this one was full of stinging nettles and, no, I did not spot them in time. On the way back from the bonfire I was accosted by Mr Pheasant who waited as I gave him half a plum and some sunflower seed. One dramatic display in the garden at the moment is the white willowherb in full seed.

Flowers still - sweet peas, white Japanese anemones and dahlias. There are some barer areas so we went to the garden centre but there was nothing worth buying but a convolvulus cneorum  and that was £38!!

 

Damsons nearly ripe but we still have some from last year (and damson gin). Perhaps give some away.

I  thought there was nothing on this garden video - then . . .

Some of the leaves are turning and not yet September 😟😞.

GARDENING ON (BIT OF A LONG BLOG)

Thursday, overcast, worried about our paeonies as the buds seem not to want to develop. Given seaweed feed and water. Picked 8 different roses for a vase, we have about 12 varieties if you include climbers and ramblers. (Also wild roses).
 

The Golden Showers on the left is now full of blooms and the Rambling Rector is just getting going. We have two of both. One of the latter sprawls through a clump of flowering currant, the other twenty feet (6 metres) up the old ash tree I can see from my computer chair. There will be more photos of this rose as it explodes in white up the tree. 

Friday morning and R is doing Zoom yoga on the kitchen floor whilst I am doing the crossword in the extension. The heavens open and it hails. Two cock pheasants fly in heading for shelter in the shrubbery. Then the sun comes out and the garden sparkles in the washed air. I dash out with the camera before the rain comes and drives me in. Just a shower but welcome to a dry garden. The weather has always been a talking point in England but it seems to have lost the plot recently - washed out and flooded in February, record rainfall, and now the driest spring/hottest May on record. I heard today that the average temperature in Siberia has been 10C above average. At this rate we need not worry about any virus as the weather will get us anyway. 

With the rain, lack of contrails in the sky and pollution from vehicles the light is so sharp even some of the leaves, wet and back-lit are stunning. I have picked up the larger stones from the track to the house and barrowed them away. The plants I put in Monday are OK but we have lost one cosmos - neatly chewed to a stem. I have been to the shed and only about six of the parsnip seeds have germinated so far. One would expect more to so do. The sweet peas are the same. When you pay through the nose for the seeds you would expect a better percentage success. And yes I soaked and nicked the sweet pea seeds.

One lot of plants that are good value are the perennial geraniums. We have five or six different ones including these two. After flowering shear them back and you can get a second flush later in the year. 

Saturday, rained in night. I am getting fed up with all the restrictions, they do not announce the many thousands that die of cancer or heart disease every day - we live with that and get on with things. We are going to have to get used to this bug as well. 

Enough - lots of flowers out, Gladiolus Byzantinus, a white veronica, good old chives, red hot poker (Kniphofia) and Allium christophii. The white rosebay is coming out on the banking and swamping our poor old fig. I have cut down the 1.5 metre tall chard as it is going to seed. Shed roof repair time and D is coming today or tomorrow or Tuesday or sometime. The house martins are in the nest and making it bigger. Have not seen the ducks for a few days.
R dragged me out for the three mile walk at back of Penny Bridge - Smithy Green, High Farm, Scathwaite, Bowstead Gates, Ashplants and Toppin Rays. Saw first swifts, now need a rest (again).

And so to Sunday but not as overcast most of day - mowed lawns ducking under the branches of the Victoria plum heavy with fruit, wondered how the field maple Sue gave us has got so big, thought I would show you the last of the aquilegias as R is dead heading them (and chopping back the flowering chives).

Monday, gardener S is here, finishing the spring drain but found another spring nearby! Everything has grown so much since the rain - especially the weeds and long grass. He is now putting small chippings on the paths. 

In afternoon tidied the rose bed then trimmed the knotted willow - and fell over into a hole with my feet above my head. Could I get up - only with difficulty after working out how. 

In the wood are the remains of an old engine and S said he might come and take it for the scrap man. The harden used to be a small-holding and there is a place in the brambles where the previous owner dumped stuff - bottles, old tyres and the remains of an engine.
  
Tuesday and dry (for now). D is replacing the shed roof, the shingles were rotten. Now the shed roof, the old one, is burned. 
This is the rather chaotic half of the cutting bed I have not yet got to. Sweet Williams in front (Stunkin' Wullies in Scotland)(Duke of Cumberland) and red alstroemerias behind (that R does not like much).
There are also some struggling gladioli, white phlox and other things, somewhere.
It needs digging up and de-weeding, then replanting.
    

Just finishing in the garden when I found our resident wasps nest in my garden trunk! They are going in by the padlock (and out). And one of them found me - amazing how fast an old arthritic man can run!  Winegar for wasps please!
 
Wednesday and rain.

Thursday, grey day, windy, can't be bothered to garden so publish blog.

A WINDING DOWN WORLD

I have to own up - just returned from the Emerald Isle. Came home early to avoid crossing St George's Channel as storm Ali arrived.
Went to the Giant's Causeway at 8 a.m. to avoid the coach loads of tourists. Came away a bit underwhelmed. The rocks on Staffa and at Shiskine golf course on Arran more impressive?

The sky is full of rags, rooks fighting the gale. The grass is long and very wet, beetroot are full of holes from munching slugs as are the remaining potatoes. I picked enough damsons to make a litre of damson gin. Did not crush the fruit just pricked them with a silver fork, bunged in the sugar (how much depends on how sweet you want) and gin and put away in a cool dark place (the back porch) for a few months.
One thing I found was that damsons eaten of the tree when ripe are sweet and juicy, not at all bitter like sloes.

The courgettes marrows are doing well but no flowers on the sweet peas, no butternut squashes, ate our first bit of purple sprouting broccoli.

The small wasp Diplolepis rosae lays its eggs in Dog Rose buds and forces them to develop into a large red-tinged moss-like galls from which the young wasps eventually emerge. Known locally as Robin's pincushions.

Having talked of success and failure in the garden I have only to walk up the lane to find fruit everywhere - 

Blackberries or brambles and sloes,

 rose hips and haws

crab apples in the road fallen from a hedge side tree.

 Of course not all the wild fruit are harmless - the gloriously red berries on the right are from the wild honeysuckle and are moderately poisonous. Other bright red berries - colour a warning sign - include Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum} and the various nightshades. (Woody on the left)(Not the Deadly nightshade, that has black berries.)


To move on, a tale of two tree trunks. The one on the left was covered in ivy so I attacked it and thought I had been successful until I saw green shoots emerging.

On the right the rugged bark that can only be an oak. That is what I call texture.

A note about marrow (overgrown courgette (zucchini)) gluts - planted far too many, made gallons of soup with roasted garlic, was disgusting and had to put it down the toilet!
Why do I grow so many? Probably because it is one of the things that grow well and relatively trouble free.

It is cold! Usually we do not get frost yet but just about zero last night.

Finally, as some of you know, I have a habit of coming home from places with a pebble or two in my pocket. Unfortunately these stones were a bit big no matter how deep my pockets.