A rose in the fridge

'Late summer garden'

A rose was in the fridge, and a cut lily in the warmth of the greenhouse in the hope that it would open.  It could only be the run-up to the Garden Society Show.  The rose - the only single bloom in the garden even remotely presentable for a show - made it, just, surviving in good enough state to win first prize (but not lasting very long after I brought it home!).  My rose 'Blush Noisette' supplied a good enough spray for the cluster-flowered class to come second.  The courgettes, having fruited prolifically all summer, threw a sudden sulk last week and I could only come up with three pathetic tiddlers; but the 'Discovery' apple cordon produced enough good fruits to win D an Award of Merit.  I didn't have enough good dahlias to enter them, but some of the 'Bishop of Auckland' blooms featured in my 'Late summer garden' flower arrangement, along with a spray of cotoneaster leaves and berries, some persicaria, parsley flowers and a few supermarket chrysanthemums, and it won 'best in section' to my surprise!

The lily - too late!

Hedychium

The lily, which I had hoped might be one of my Six Garden Flowers, didn't open until two days later (I should have cut it earlier).  It's still in the greenhouse, as it and the hedychium (also now in flower) are providing enough scent to mask the stench of the comfrey tea that I've been using to dose the tomato plants.  The tomatoes aren't a great success; only a very few fruits, of which the first are only now beginning to show signs of turning red.  Sadly the Show doesn't have a class for green tomatoes.  As for the aubergines, there have been a couple of flowers but no sign of fruits; I really need to start them off earlier, I think.

In the veg plot, the courgettes are picking up again (typical!); the yellow ones are more prolific but the fruits are small and very prone to discoloration and rotting off at the flower end, so I may give them a miss next time.  The French beans (planted out very late) are producing a few very small beans, but the runners aren't going to do anything at all.  They are even refusing to climb their supports, which isn't a good sign!  However the leeks have - very belatedly - been bedded out, and I'm giving thought to where to sow the autumn broad beans.  There's also a nice little row of lettuces, protected from the pigeons by a layer of fleece.

Comma - at last

Male brimstone

The butterfly count is improving, with plenty of red admirals and small tortoiseshells, and at last one single comma has appeared.  There has also been a male brimstone and a speckled wood.  A large dragonfly has been about (moving too fast for identification), and I found a grasshopper one day.  There have also been a lot of craneflies, which apparently are abundant this year.  Something has been attracting the swallows and housemartins, which have been feeding over the garden a lot lately.  The garden birds are becoming slightly less interested in food put out for them; presumably there's a lot of natural food available at the moment.  The sparrows have been eating the elderberries (from a self-sown tree by the house that really isn't meant to be there; I need to get it out!) and the robins seem to be finding minibeasts on the lawn.  The willow warbler and juvenile bullfinch have both been here again, and the nuthatch has been tapping away in the trees.

The weather has been up and down, with some warm and sunny weather over the past two days making up for a couple of quite depressingly wet days on the last two weekends.  Overall it has been very humid, just the thing to bring on an attack of mildew ....