The catch-up

Autumn colours

After a few weeks away, there's a lot to catch up on in the garden.  We returned to a garden full of fallen leaves; the weather had been fairly normal for October/early November, but there had been some wind and some frost which had taken their toll of the remaining deciduous foliage.  The leafmould bins are full and there are still a lot of leaves to sweep up, and still some to fall; the ash trees have shed everything, but some of the shrubs are still showing good colour.  The frost had blackened the dahlia foliage, a precondition for digging them up.  Most of them have now been lifted and are drying off in the greenhouse but there are still a few in the pots outdoors; they were planted up with other half-hardies such as argyranthemums and osteospermums, which will need to be potted on.  The dahlias mostly seem to have made good-sized tubers, and they look quite healthy too (for the moment; we'll see how they survive the winter!).  Two of the hedychiums had been moved back into the greenhouse before we left, in the hope that their flower buds would open; they seem to have started to open but then the plants apparently thought better of it and stopped (probably too cold - the max-min thermometer showed that the temperature had dropped to 2C at one point).  The third hedychium, which shared a pot with a couple of (tender, and now dead) tithonias and an osteospermum, has now been brought into the greenhouse; it's looking a bit sorry for itself, but I know from experience that this year's stems won't do anything next year in any case, so they can be cut off and I expect the one little new shoot, which seems healthy, will keep the plant going over winter.

The pond, which nearly dried out in the summer, is full again - there has been plenty of rain, with some sunny days too.  And we had a quite spectacular hailstorm one day.

The tulip bulbs are still to be planted, but there's still time for that; the half-hardies have to be cleared out of the pots first.  The sweet pea seeds were sown today, only half of what I normally sow; I always have more than I have (sunny) room for, and it would make more sense to sow some now and some in early spring, to spread the flowering period.  More broad bean seeds have been sown, to plug a few gaps in the bed, and I'll sow some pots of herbs and salad leaves for the greenhouse.  I ought to take some cuttings of the half-hardies too; and at some point I need to bubble-wrap the greenhouse.

I haven't finished trimming the long hedge, either, but this week is going to be a bit on the chilly side for that.  Plenty to get on with!

Nerines and panicum

Predictably there isn't much to cut for the house, but some winter jasmine has provided one vase, and nerines with the last of the Panicum 'Frosted Explosion' another.  The nerines have done better this year; I fed them in the summer and cut back the wisteria to give them more light, and that seems to have done the trick, generating eleven flowerheads (last year there were only four or five).  The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' is in flower, too, so that can also be pressed into service when the nerines fade.


Another change in the garden is the return of the birds.  Before we left, they were mostly showing not much more than polite interest in the food put out for them, and were turning up in very small numbers, but in the last week or so we've had 20-odd species in and around the garden, and all offerings are being gratefully received.  The redwings and fieldfares are here (time to cut some holly for Christmas, before the redwings eat all the berries), along with several blackbirds which may well be migrants; we've had various tits, pheasants, partridges, chaff- and goldfinches and a female bullfinch showed up one day.  And of course the robins are being very territorial - though it's only a few weeks before they will start pairing up again!