Goodbye summer

Well, apart from a chilly August, summer hasn’t been too bad.  September was dry and, although showers started to creep in early in October, the first week of this month was mostly quite pleasant with a couple of outdoor lunches.  But this week has been wet, cool and miserable, with low cloud all day – November come early.  The leaves have started falling from the ash trees (the plum tree has been bare for a week or two now).

It has been a good year for fruit in general, with lots of hips, haws and elderberries as well as cultivated fruit.  But why can’t I see any ash keys in the trees?  Is this ash dieback taking hold?

The weather is gradually toppling the cosmos, and the salpiglossis, asters and larkspur are pretty much finished.  The zinnias produced about four flowers between them and I’m not sure I was sufficiently impressed to want to bother next year; the didiscus was also something of a non-event although I might give them another try and pinch them out earlier.  The sweet peas have been sown in pots, and I have lots of sweet william, forget-me-nots and bellis to be planted out, as well as red wallflowers. 

The front garden has been almost entirely ripped up and re-gravelled; I’ve started replanting the borders under the front wall (Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, narcissus ‘Jenny’ and crocus ‘Blue Pearl’, with a seedling hellebore) but there’s still plenty of space for new ideas, as well as some weeds still to be removed under the ‘Blush Noisette’ rose, which has remained in place.  The space over by the holly tree and along the hedge, which was always intended to be an open area, has also been dug out and now needs some weed-suppressant on it (once the rain stops …).  The borders between that and the house will need reworking and there should be some scope for better planting!

Down in the vegetable garden, the runner beans are finally running out of steam (the freezer is full of them) and the courgettes are also slowing down.  I’ve sown some late Chinese salad greens and prepared a trench for autumn-sown broad beans.

Ginger lily in flower

In the greenhouse, the ginger lily duly flowered impressively and is now throwing up a second leaf spike (will it flower too?).  The last tomatoes are gradually turning red, but I’m still waiting for the aubergines to ripen; there are three, one big, one medium and one tiny, and all are rock-hard.  I’ve taken cuttings of the two osteospermums (the one from the front garden was rescued before the digger went in) and the two argyranthemums, the lavender, euonymus and ‘Bowles Mauve’ erysimum.  Also there is a 3-inch avocado tree, the result of an avocado stone that was sprouting when I cut the fruit open; I’m interested to see what will happen!

The birds are sorting themselves out for the winter.  We have a lot of robins; one, the last to get its adult plumage, has taken over the patio, while there are several others in different parts of the garden, all singing to each other over territory.  The sparrows are still plentiful, and the occasional blackbird and great tit turn up, as does a wren.  I’ve seen hardly any finches for some time, probably because we’ve had an outbreak of trichomonosis in the village (pigeons, which carry the disease, are still very much around, nesting in the holly tree and producing large and demanding young).   There has been a flock of long-tailed tits around, also a couple of nuthatches, and two red kites have been seen overhead.  The pheasants are gradually turning up in the garden, although the shooting hasn’t begun yet; one day we had a whole parade of them through the garden but usually it’s the odd one or two, sometimes with a partridge in tow.  The wet weather has probably seen off the last of the butterflies, or forced those that hibernate into their winter quarters; there was a red admiral around the other day and a couple of dragonflies last week but there has been less and less obvious (desirable) insect life recently.