One last rose

One last rose, or probably the last, on Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’; there’s also a bud that may or may not come to anything, and a few fading flowers on the R. ‘Blush Noisette’ in the front garden, but this looks like the year’s last presentable rose bloom.  (Although the blackspot on the leaves is definitely not presentable.)

The first proper cold snap of the winter is forecast for this week; although the ever-excitable media have been chattering about an Arctic blast, this far south we should get away with a few days of frosty nights and maybe a short burst of sleet, and then back to more normal November temperatures.  The past week has been mostly dry and often sunny, and there might be a little more of that to come.  But the coming frost is likely to hit the remaining autumn flowers in the garden.

The remains of the window box display

There are only a few of those autumn flowers left anyway, apart from the roses.  There’s the window box, looking rather sad now but still with a very few fuchsia, lobelia and salvia blooms; it will soon be time to replant this for the winter, with the small euonymus and rosemary plants and the Tete-a-tete daffodils, padded out with some ivy and anything else evergreen that I can find.  Perhaps some snowdrops, of which I have plenty in the garden?

Fuchsia 'Hawkshead'

The Fuchsia ‘Hawkshead’ is holding up, but the cold will make the flowers drop.  The nerines are pretty much over in any case (only nine flower stems this year, must feed them more carefully).  There are a few final rudbeckia flowers and two or three penstemon blooms; and a single red chrysanthemum flower.  I repotted the chrysanthemum this year and had hoped for a better show; perhaps it’s one of those flowers that is more successful from new cuttings?  Not that there’s much chance of taking cuttings from such a small plant.  Still, the original was a garden centre rescue job that I nursed back to life, and it wasn’t expensive; maybe time to replace it.

A little red chrysanthemum

One of my Welsh poppy plants (Meconopsis cambrica) is doing well, however.  I originally sowed these using seed from pods picked in the Lake District and they spread themselves around the garden with gay abandon, not always in desirable places; this plant is really in the wrong place, but it’s making a welcome statement as the garden winds down towards winter, so let’s not complain.

Meconopsis cambrica

Other flowers at the moment are the winter stalwarts, gearing up for the colder months: the winter jasmine, Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and Viburnum tinus ‘Gwenllian’, and most of all Mahonia ‘Winter Beauty’, which lives up to its name every year.  Nothing on the winter honeysuckle so far; I’ve probably hacked it around too much. 

Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum)

Viburnum 'Gwenllian'

Welcome home

 

Village bonfire event

Back home after a couple of weeks away.  It’s definitely November; the Halloween / Bonfire weekend stayed dry, but this week the weather is mild, foggy and damp.  Anyone who had planned to set off their fireworks on the traditional 5^th wouldn’t have been able to see much.

Whether it’s the weather or just the winter closing in, the birdlife in the garden is noticeably more active and more diverse than when we left.  Some, like us, have come home for the winter: the Scandi-avians – fieldfares and redwings – have arrived, of course, and the number of blackbirds around makes me suspect that several of them are migrants too.  The woodpigeons seem to be flocking rather than fighting for territory as they were doing during the autumn breeding season, and the finches (including a male greenfinch and male bullfinch) are hanging out together as well.  There are the usual sparrows, dunnocks, robins and tits, and a goldcrest was checking out the patio area today; and less desirably, there are magpies, starlings and woodpeckers (great-spots, although a green woodpecker had been in the garden before we left).  We didn’t manage to pick all the eating apples before we went away, and the blackbirds have been feasting on the remains, as well as on the cooking apples left on the table under the dining room window.  There are very few holly berries left on the tree, and I suspect that the redwings have been having a party.

In the vegetable garden, the summer broccoli has done well but has now flowered; I need to protect the purple sprouting plants from the pigeons for the winter, as they’ve grown tall and pushed away the netting that had been covering them.  My ploy of coating the broad bean seeds in chilli to deter the rodents seems to have worked, as it looks as though at least some have germinated, but of course the chilli didn’t protect the new shoots, which have been broken off (by mice or birds, I’m not sure).  No signs of life from the peas, and I haven’t checked the garlic yet.

In the greenhouse, most of the tomatoes have belatedly ripened or are on the way to ripening, and the big ‘Alicante’ tomatoes, which I picked before we left and put in the kitchen to ripen, are mostly looking good.  No green tomato chutney after all.