NOVEMBERING ON

The last leaves are falling, gathering in drifts by the door and on the paths.

I have cleared under the magnolia and must top dress with manure and compost. Three requests have been potted up - well one request of three plants - erigeron, white Japanese anemone and a tall white Michaelmas daisy - for L and G and their new garden.

On the banking the three hen pheasants traipse by, the two cock pheasants facing off and scrapping, full of male hormones no doubt. One cock parading back and forth in front of the pond. These birds are so exotic, not at all British - well they are now after being introduced - just so they can be shot, not here.

To the story of the Sarah Raven sweet peas, duly sown and not germinated - well two have. I took a pot and searched for the seeds and found nothing so - ?mice, ?duds. R says I should email them with a pic of the flop. Perhaps I will. 

 

Just when I thought we had escaped a mole invasion this appeared on the top banking. Just one - the soil is a bit thin up there. I will wait and see how this develops before calling in the catcher. I feel guilty about catching them but when there are several long lines of molehills across the grass . . . 

 

We are well strimmed now - and the upper woodland edge looks much better -

 

as does the stream. The gardener wondered about doing the Royal fern but I like its autumn colours so it stays for now.

One consequence of all this activity is that the primrose leaves have been revealed and when the daffodils and snowdrops come they will not be swamped by undergrowth.
 
It is November and dark and wet and pretty miserable. In the spring when we had "lockup" the weather was glorious - not so now - days not to get out of bed for. Anyway my little Sony camera has gone on the blink so may need to go away for service and repairs.

This year one of the last things to lose its leaves in the garden is the hazel - booth in the bottom hedge and where they have self sown on the bankings.

We still have fruit, well one - a lonely pear.

 

And if one looks carefully there are yet a few delights - the white honesty seedheads backlit.

 

A wimp day - walk Bouth Woods then home. After lunch - "I will go out in the garden" - open door, starts raining, shut door.

And I still have a box of white camassias to put in somewhere.

So I spend all of two minutes checking the houseplants for water etc - except the dried heads of the hydrangea of course.

GOLDEN DAYS

If only we had more sunshine. I have to nip out into the garden when we have a short burst of sunlight to capture autumn colours.

There is still plenty of water in the garden flooding down from the back field and springs all over the place. If you look hard enough there are small things of delight - a colourful raspberry leaf or even the first daffodil shoots appearing under the leaf litter - I know, it is just the beginning of November.

 

Other hidden gems include the black hypericum fruit and  backlit honesty seedheads. R has cut back the helianthus stems and I have pruned the hydrangea Annabelle taking ten cuttings and putting them in the cutting bed.

I had hoped the garden camera might have caught something interesting but only one pheasant and many grey squirrels (or one squirrel over and over again.)

So I have moved the camera down by the pond hoping to capture video of the moorhen and anything else that might want to drink or swim. There are flowers in the garden - roses, fuchsia (planted by the gate to remind me of hedges near Glencolumbkille) and pink hydrangea.

The greys are also doing well especially when backlit - euphorbia and pittosporum.

I have collected the last of the Bramley apples but the central branch is just too high - perhaps it will need to be removed? Late winter perhaps best when the tree is dormant. Other success are out giant cauliflower - that is the whole thing next to the parsnip creature from the deep. (Educake pen for scale.)

It is Saturday evening, a sunset, Joe Biden is President-elect over the pond (or thereabouts), room on the news to mention Brexit and coronavirus again. So exciting 💤💤.

 

 

Wonderful sunny Saturday but now it is Sunday and grey and mizzling and damp.

In the end it comes back to the end of the best autumn colour with the Great White Willow.

Must go and wind up all the clocks.

WET WEEK

Not doing a lot in the garden.

It is evening, not yet dark, and the earlier rain has stopped. The sky is still leaden with ash branches reaching up like pleading arms to the sky - please some sunshine.

A cock pheasant croaks out a challenge from by the pond. There is a winding down even if no one has told the nasturtiums. I have placed the video camera opposite to where I think the rabbits have their burrow - now we wait and see.

R has been making scones and tonight is toad-in-the-hole from M&S, something to warm us. I am nearly at the end of Dara McNulty's book and wonder how a fifteen year old can generate such wonderful prose.

In the end I stop thinking about it and plod out my usual stuff.

Saturday and RAIN!! 

Sunday a bit of sun and a walk by Broughton Beck.

Monday wild and wet, rainbows - the chives are looking very bedraggled - not long now before they have had it I think. Then, just for a moment the sun shines through on the wet garden.

Tuesday and rained all day till 4 pm then the light went an hour later. Garden waterlogged but moorhen are back on the pond for the winter.

Now, the gales have played havoc with the autumn colours but - there are still some leaves on the lilac and cherry  but not, I think for much longer.

Usually I have a moan about the colours of sycamore leaves but this year for some reason they are better.

The last of the azalea by the wood still has its reds.

The lily leaves are almost all submerged into the pond and have gone their dark hue.

Last time the gardener was here I asked him to strim the sides of the stream where it falls from the upper wood and, with all the rain, it is looking good. The colourful fern on the left of the pic on the right is Osmunda regalis, The Royal Fern. The water will disappear in the summer as it is essentially a drain from the back field but, at present it looks good. There are also some cantankerous shrubs, I mean here we are almost winter and the Fatsia always decided is is time to flower. 

And the alstroemerias just go on and on.

Elsewhere the erigeron never stops and we still have roses, mostly red roses but also this white one.

S the gardener has also strimmed at the back sparing the feeble fig, still it does look tidier. 

I have cleared under the magnolia, trimmed some lavender that should have been done a long time ago and begun the autumn tidy.

Surprise, surprise, the sweet peas have not germinated 😞.

Just had a torrential weekend so stay off the lawns! 40mm rain yesterday! Wild and windy weather. I know - sentences with no verbs!

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.