September chill

September temperatures had not been too bad, for September, until late last week, when they dipped considerably – single-figure temperatures (Celsius) during the day, with a chilly northerly wind, and down to just above a frost at night.  It lasted only a couple of days and has gradually improved since, but this week’s bright sunshine is set to last only a day or two more.  It will then be back to sunshine and showers, with a fair breeze from the east.

Forewarned is forearmed, and I brought out an old bit of fleece to cover the courgette plants during the cold nights.  I’ve also closed the greenhouse vents, but I’ve left the door open; we’ve had a hedgehog snuffling around in there one night (it left its droppings!) and I’d like to encourage its nocturnal cleaning-up of any slugs it can find in there.

The only temperature-sensitive plants in the greenhouse at the moment are the tomatoes.  They haven’t done well this year, and it’s my fault.  When we went away in late April for ten days the plants were still very small; rather than ask a neighbour to care for them, I left them in the greenhouse under a propagator lid, which I reckoned would keep them both damp enough and warm enough.  It did, but the plants looked very unhappy when I got back; the damp warmth seemed to have steamed them.  They recovered with careful nursing, but are very late; the first fruit only turned red this week.  I’ve cut off all the flower trusses that haven’t yet set fruit as I doubt if they will produce anything, and I hope that will speed up ripening of the other trusses.

First ripe tomatoes

In the last post I mentioned the figs; we’ve now had six really good fruits, with a few smaller ones still to come.

The combination of dropping temperatures and ripening nuts and berries has brought more birds to the gardens round here.  A nuthatch was tapping away in the hazel trees the other day, and a garden warbler was feasting on the berries of next door’s cotoneaster.  There have been blackbirds and robins in our cotoneaster too.  Insect life also appears to be abundant, judging by the behaviour of the insect-feeding birds; at least one willow warbler has been about in the garden for a couple of weeks now, flycatching among the shrubs, flocks of house martins are feeding up over the garden prior to migration, and swallows have been swooping across the field behind the house, presumably with the same intent.  Although the buddleja flowers are now fading, the red admiral butterflies are making the most of what’s left, and a couple of speckled woods have been sunbathing down the bottom of the garden.

Speckled wood

Not everything is rosy.  The partridge shooting season has started, and the groups of very trusting partridges that had been trooping through the garden have gone into hiding; they prefer to hide rather than fly away when threatened.  A couple of weeks ago we had one that came up to the summerhouse while we were there and sat contentedly on the step; it then wandered into the neighbouring garden, where their dog found and killed it.  The village dog-owners all have similar stories; partridges just don’t have much sense around danger.  Another danger, although a rarer one, is a goshawk that has been hanging around the vicinity for a few months; it took and dispatched a pigeon in the garden of friends at the other end of the village the other day.

Partridge on the summerhouse steps

Working down in the veg plot yesterday I looked up at the hazels and spotted catkins forming.  Surely catkins belong to late winter?  Is this normal?

Catkins - is this normal for September?