Changeover

After the first frost it was time to bring in the dahlias from the pots and replace them with tulip bulbs for next spring.

A window of dry weather – a couple of days – between the rain and another brief spell of frosty nights allowed me to get outside and do just that.  The dahlias – now that the temperatures have risen and thawed out the compost so that I could lift them – had to be taken into the greenhouse with quite a lot of wet compost round their tubers; it’s easier to clean them when they’re dried off, but it means some fairly large bundles sitting on the floor in the meantime.  With temperatures of down to minus 3C forecast, I protected them with some old compost sacks on top; it dropped to just below zero in the greenhouse, and I hope the sacks will have made a little difference.

Most of the remaining compost was then removed from the pots, replaced with fresh and the tulips planted.  I haven’t bought quite so many bulbs this year, so only the two biggest pots and one smaller one have been planted up, leaving the others for whatever planting I can sort out next year.  For my own records – because I will have forgotten by the time they flower – the big pot on the patio contains pale pink ‘Foxtrot’, mid-pink ‘Margarita’ and purple ‘Ronaldo’, and the pot by the summerhouse is a mix of ‘Queen of Night’, ‘Cairo’, ‘Time Out’, ‘Ridgedale’ and ‘Negrita Parrot’ (Sarah Raven’s Ginger Snap Mix).  And there’s a smaller pot containing just my favourite ‘Doll’s Minuet’.  I hope that the ‘pink pot’ isn’t too pink; on reflection it might be rather bland, but we’ll see.

Felicia in the 'Doll's Minuet' pot

Last year I topped the tulip pots with some self-sown forget-me-nots from the veg patch, and (although I had a few reservations about how they worked with the shorter tulips) I’ve replicated that again this time.  If nothing else it discourages the birds from pecking at the compost and throwing it out of the pots.  I also used some pink-flowered felicia in the Ginger Snap pot and with ‘Doll’s Minuet’.  I got this plant (I think it’s Felicia fascicularis) from the village plant sale and was assured that it was hardy; I used it in the window-box, where it didn’t flower but provided some useful foliage.  When I came to clear the window-box and replant it for winter, I found that the trailing stems had rooted in the compost, so that I now have several plants of it.  Hmm, maybe that’s too much of a good thing.  Some of it was also in the big pot at the bottom of the garden, and it had also multiplied itself quite successfully.  We’ll see how it gets on with the tulips; if it turns out to be too enthusiastic a plant, I shall harden my heart and compost it!

The night after I planted up the tulip pots we had a hard frost; the felicia didn’t seem bothered.

Frosted forget-me-nots

The green woodpecker has been visiting quite regularly, digging into one of the ants’ nests in the lawn.  He has made a good-sized hole in the grass (it’s in the cowslip patch so that doesn’t matter too much) and spends long periods of time stabbing away, and presumably hoovering up lunch.

A winterval

We've just had a brief spell of winter.

The frosty nights that were forecast for the later part of last week turned out to be accompanied by an overnight fall of snow; not heavy, but a good covering of the ground, with temperatures barely above freezing by day and a degree or two below by night.  The remains of most of the tender plants, such as the cosmos, and the courgette plants, were sent to the compost bins ahead of this, and I also managed to pull up most of the surplus foxglove plants that had seeded out of what has become the foxglove and antirrhinum patch into the veg plot paths and were taking over.  While I was down there I noticed a few last antirrhinum flowers and, as they weren’t going to last long in the cold, I cut them and brought them inside to make a little posy for the table.

A few last antirrhinums

My main concern is for the dahlias, still in their pots.  You’re supposed to leave them until the frost has blackened the tips of the leaves, but they were frozen into their compost, which won’t be good for them.  I cut off the top growth, or what remained of it, and laid the stems across the tubers for a little protection, with some tattered bits of horticultural fleece on top for good measure.  The smaller pots were taken into the greenhouse, although temperatures in there also dropped to below zero, which isn’t ideal.  I haven’t been out in the rain to see what the damage is; fingers crossed that the tubers won’t be too frosted.  A pot of basil that had also been taken into the greenhouse to recover from an attack of greenfly is looking brown at the edges, so may be on the way out (and I hope that the greenfly are too).

The cold won’t have affected the winter honeysuckle, which is starting to lose its leaves (it’s always the last shrub to drop them) but is producing plenty of little flowers. 

Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii)

The wind has now turned to the west, bringing rain and slightly warmer temperatures; still single figures (centigrade) and with a chilly wind, but clearing all the snow and ice.  The forecast is for it to continue damp (or downright wet) and rather less cold.  The birds will be pleased with that; they’ve been enjoying our crop of cooking apples on the table outside the dining room window.

But despite the coming winter, there are signs of the spring beyond in the garden: catkins on the hazels, and - to my surprise - flower buds on the camellia that has never flowered.  Next year I may at last discover what colour the flowers are!

Hazel catkins

Camellia buds!

Sheltering under cover

Heavy rain and strong winds all day today.  It’s rare that our forecast predicts 100% rain all day, but that’s what we’ve got, so I’m staying warm and dry indoors.

The echeveria - tucked up under cover

The storm was forecast some days ago.  I had just read an article about echeverias, which had reminded me that, while some of them will withstand a little frost, they really don’t like wet.  My blue echeveria usually lives outside up against the patio windows, where it receives a little heat from the building, and is only taken into the greenhouse in the coldest months; with the rain in prospect, however (especially as the roof guttering is prone to overflowing just at that point), I took it in early and tucked it up under the staging.  We haven’t had any real frost yet, but wet is a deadlier enemy even to the hardier echeverias.

The weather has continued mild for the time of year, with a few summer/autumn plants still in bloom (the rudbeckia and little blue salvias, and even the last of the nerines and dahlias), but the cosmos is collapsing in a heap and will be pulled up and composted once gardening resumes.  Of the shrubs, Choisiya ternata is finally giving up, and Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ flowered prolifically but is already fading; the winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii) is still in leaf but is starting to put out its little, powerfully scented, flowers.  Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ is blooming on regardless.  The temperatures are to drop later next week, with some frosty nights forecast, which will tip the garden into early winter.

Salvia 'Blue Monday' - still in flower

Yesterday I tackled the ivy that is growing up through the purple-leaved cherry tree (a survivor from before we arrived here).  The ivy has taken hold to the extent that it’s making a thick canopy at the top of the tree, and I want it out before it pulls the branches down, even if it means leaving some dying (and ultimately, dead) ivy foliage at the top.  The cherry is old and not in good shape, but I don’t want to lose it prematurely.  The ivy stems had all but fused with the cherry’s trunk, but I was able to prize some of it away and pull enough of it off to kill the top growth.  My efforts were watched at close quarters by the robin, who was rewarded with a lot of small insects that had been shelterng between the ivy and cherry trunk; occasional activity in the surrounding shrubs suggested that other birds had spotted this too, but it was the robin that enjoyed the feast.

Still bearing up

November sweet peas - 'Fire and Ice'

November has started mild, for the time of year; not particularly sunny, in fact often rather drizzly and damp, but with light winds from the south and temperatures up to the mid-teens (Centigrade) during the day.  I did bring out the gardening jacket one day, but generally it hasn’t been necessary.  And, though the winter-flowering shrubs are already in bloom, there’s still a sprinkling of autumn flowers about, and even the sweet peas continue to bear up.  There are also a few late antirrhinum flowers in their corner of the veg patch.

Still some antirrhinums

Down in said veg patch, the summer beans have been harvested, the remaining pods either eaten or left to dry in the greenhouse, and the plants composted.  The courgettes have been picked – although I found one overlooked fruit under the leaves; quite large if rather pale.  There are a few tiny fruits still on the plants but I doubt if they will grow to a usable size.  The row of carrots is gradually shortening as I pull them up for the kitchen, but otherwise it’s mostly cabbages, kale, leaf beet and lettuces (of which I now have too many – the plants that I had despaired of during the dry weather came back to life with the rain, and they and the ones sown as replacements will more than fulfil my needs).  There are also a couple of decent pak choi – the first time I’ve got anything out of these, as they usually end up being eaten by the slugs.

A pale courgette

There’s also a bed of leeks, but the plants, instead of being a nice upstanding crop, are flopping on the ground.  At first I thought that the birds had been flattening them, but now I suspect an attack of allium leaf miner, in which case they will be unusable and will need to go to the green waste bin.  Boo.

Flopping leeks

Another unfortunate bit of gardening was my attempt to dig up the white-flowered buddleja seedling in the drive.  I had thought that this would be easy, and I that I would be able to pot it up for planting in a more suitable location.  Not so; in a single season, it had put down a thick and strong root into the soil below the gravel, and immediately what had started out as a Desirable Plant for the garden turned into a Serious Weed needing removal.  It took a saw and some effort to get it up (and there's still some root in the ground, so I hope it doesn't regrow).  There was actually a smaller seedling alongside it, and I managed to get that out with a few small roots attached; it has been potted up and placed in the propagator in the hope that it might recover from the shock.  (But I still don't know where I would plant it!)

Fungi are still appearing in the lawn, and the ash tree stump by the drive is sprouting a splendid crop of them, quite decoratively.

Fungi on the ash stump

The green woodpecker has visited several times; it has located the ants' nest in the cowslip patch and spends much time feeding on them.  A blackcap is still around, enjoying a bath from time to time.  And the pheasants continue to hide in our garden when the shooting starts; we had twelve of them, a mixed party of males and females, the other day.

A pheasant invasion!

Sowing and potting

Cool and rather showery since the last post, and not much has been done in the garden; but yesterday I had a sowing and potting-up day in the greenhouse.

There’s still a sweet pea flower showing in the pot against the back wall, though it’s not particularly photogenic and won’t last long.  This year, after planting out the seedlings that were sown in late winter, I sowed some late seeds into the pot to provide a succession of flowers, and that seemed to work well; there were flowers in there for a long period, even though some of the plants suffered from under-watering over the dry summer.  I’ve now sown seeds for next year into small pots in the cold frame, and will try to remember to keep them watered; I think last winter’s failure was due to the pots drying out.

Sage and euonymus cuttings

I also tackled the several pots of cuttings taken in summer and earlier this autumn.  Some have already been divided up and potted on; the green and purple sages are doing well in their little pots, but I had left the cuttings of the variegated sage ‘Icterina’ until now.  It's a relatively new plant for me.  For a few years I had wondered about it – the yellowish colouring can look rather sickly – but having acquired one at a village plant sale a couple of years ago and having planted it out in the patio bed, I’ve decided that it can provide a nice contrast to green-leaved plants.  And, since there are plans afoot that may mean that that bed will have to be reworked, I had taken cuttings to ensure that I wouldn’t lose it.  The cuttings of the variegated euonymus which had been attacked by a scale insect infestation – taken in case of terminal decline of the parent plant – have also produced roots and have also gone into little pots, as have osteospermums and wallflowers, and two Photinia ‘Red Robin’ cuttings.  They are all set out in front of the greenhouse; I must remember to keep them watered and protected, if necessary, from excessively cold weather.

The euonymus cuttings were interesting; they seem to have produced most of their new roots near the top of the cutting rather than at the bottom.  I've never seen that before.

There are other cuttings about which I’m less certain.  You might think that signs of new growth on a cutting are a sure indication of its having rooted, but no, they seem to be able to keep growing without having produced any roots at all.  How do they do that?  The safe sign is roots poking out of the bottom of the pot.  There are cuttings of winter savory and Dianthus ‘Mrs Sinkins’ that are looking decidedly peaky but have the merest beginnings of growth on them, so I’m leaving them over winter to see if any roots appear!

A party of up to seven male pheasants has taken to strolling around the garden, probably sheltering from the local shoot (they have worked out that they’re safe here).  They particularly like hanging around under the seed and fatball feeders, and scratching about in the grass for dropped food – which is usefully scarifying moss out of the area.  I wonder if I can get them to do the whole lawn?

The bachelor party

Changing seasons

Back after a break in Scotland, to a garden on the change from autumn towards winter.  But the Choisiya ternata (Mexican Orange Blossom) thinks it's spring and is flowering its socks off!  Little does it know that I have plans to cut it back (severely) next spring; it's much too big.

Choisiya ternata - in full flower in late October!

The windowbox, however, was definitely in late autumn mode and in need of replanting for winter.  I had started planning for this a few weeks ago; the narcissi 'Tete-a-tete' had been started off in pots for transplanting, and various self-sown pansies around the garden had been dug up and potted on in preparation for this job.  I already had pots of the early-flowering snowdrop Galanthus elwesii and little rooted cuttings of Rosemary 'Miss Jessopp's Upright' (last year's windowbox plants had dried out irretrievably over the summer), and on a whim I dug up a couple of self-sown pulmonaria plants to fill out the space (we'll see if that works).  The result is a little bare but will do for the time being.  The summer planting has been dealt with; annuals composted and perennials potted up for next year.

Windowbox ready for winter

The birds seem pleased to see us back, with the birdbath refilled (the weather was mostly dry in our absence) and feeders replenished.  Over the summer we've had a pair of chiffchaffs about, and at least one of them seems still to be here; there has been a pair of blackcaps too, but I expect them to head south for the winter.  The fieldfares are here already, and probably the redwings too, so we don't expect to have many hollyberries to save for Christmas; the berries were ripe as early as mid-September and the birds will polish them off soon.

Holly berries in mid-September

The remaining eating apples still on the cordons have been picked and stored; we have plenty, but a great many have been eaten by the wildlife while still on the tree (and the pears too).  Usually it's insects and birds, but most of the damaged ones have teeth marks on them - the squirrel? or a rat (they're a fact of life in the countryside)?

A munched apple core - who's the culprit?

Something has also been rearranging the mushroom compost spread on some of the veg beds, and nibbling my radicchio plants; I had hoped that the latter would be too bitter for the wildlife to eat.  Ah well, if you attract wildlife to the garden, you can't expect it to necessarily play by your rules.

Nibbled radicchio, despite the twiggy protection

There are still a few small courgettes, and the French beans have a last few tiny pods, curled up against the chill, in addition to the old, larger pods left for seed; I need to pick and dry those off soon.  Another job will be to weed out the large number of foxglove seedlings that are colonising the bottom part of the veg plot; some years ago I put a few plants in there and since then their progeny has rather taken over.

Curled-up beans

Too many foxgloves!

In the greenhouse, the tomato plants have been cut down and the last fruits brought indoors to ripen; I've also taken the opportunity to pull up the yellow antirrhinum that has been flowering in there for a couple of years now.  It will have seeded sufficiently to come back next spring, and indeed I may have to do quite a lot of weeding to keep the numbers manageable!

I also have autumn-sown seedlings of annuals for an early showing next year: the blue salvia, marigolds and corncockles.  But the orlaya, also sown at the same time, has done nothing.  That plant really doesn't like me; it's supposed to respond well to autumn sowing, but I've never had anything from it.

Salvia, marigolds and corncockles - but no orlaya!

The lawn has been mown twice this autumn, and is already looking a little long although the weather is probably going to be too wet now to do it again.  There are more toadstools in the grass.  Fungi seem to have had a bumper year everywhere; in Scotland we saw an amazing variety of them.

Three types of Highland fungi ...

... and some more on a fallen log

Pink and orange

Autumn is always thought of as a time of golds and russets.  There's certainly gold (orange and yellow) in my garden at the moment, but the main colour, such as it is, seems to be pink.  Pink and orange is not a colour combination that I favour, though fortunately there are few places where the two appear close together; and in the softer light of autumn, the colour clash doesn't seem quite so garish. 

Nerine bowdenii

The nerines are starting to flower; they're flamboyant blooms, lipstick-pink and parading their finery at a time of year when most plants are winding down or fading away.  Nearby is a pot with a few last orange marigolds, but those are tucked away in a corner and not very visible from most angles.  

Cosmos bipinnatus 'Dazzler'

Another strong pink in the garden is the bed of Cosmos bipinnatus 'Dazzler' which has bloomed strongly for a few months now and is still providing some cut flowers for the house; I've managed to save seed from it to sow again next year.

Dahlia 'Bishop of Canterbury' - I think!

Dahlia 'David Howard'

The dahlias are recovering from their rather dry summer (pots insufficiently watered in the heat!) and are gradually starting to flower again.  The pink one which I think is 'Bishop of Canterbury' - although online searches suggest that 'B of C' is a rather variable variety so it might not be - is dominating the patio along with D. 'David Howard', which is a nicely soft shade of orange.  The two get along not too badly together.

Orange-berried pyracantha

Rudbeckia

As I've said before, this has been a spectacular fruit year, and the firethorn (pyracantha) on the north wall of the house has berried profusely - orange, of course.  And the yellow rudbeckia is also in full splendour.

The 'pink and orange' combo is at its peak in the berries of the spindle tree, Euonymus europaeus 'Red Sentinel'; the seed cases haven't opened yet, and only the pink outer is visible, with the orange berries still tucked up inside.

Spindleberries

Fruit of the season

A combination of wet weather and having other things to do kept me from checking on the garden for a couple of days, but this morning a foray down the veg patch and into the greenhouse produced a good handful of tomatoes and some fair sized courgettes.  The courgette 'British Summertime' hasn't done so well this year; as its name suggests, it is supposedly bred to fruit well in our summer weather, but we haven't had a typical summer this year and perhaps it has been too hot for it!  'Defender' continues to do well, however; I need to buy more seed for next year and 'Defender' will definitely be on my shopping list.

Down by the compost corner, several impressive clumps of toadstools have suddenly appeared in the grass.  I said in a recent post that the little solitary toadstool found in the lawn looked fairy-like; these ones are more for goblins, I think.  Fruit, but definitely not edible, and rather sinister-looking!

I made the most of a couple of dry days to get on with attempting to clip the long hedge into some sort of order.  I haven't cut the top for a couple of years; it involves balancing on the top of the ladder and hacking away with the extending shears, and last year there were too few dry days to do that.  There's still work to be done, but we're getting there.  One of the robins was obviously concerned that I was going to destroy his roosting place; he kept a close eye on what I was doing.  There's plenty of hedge left for him to hide in.

Greening up

It's strange for the garden to be turning greener at this time of year, rather than going brown; but the recent rain, some of it heavy, has encouraged plants to get a second wind.  The courgettes have started producing again, and the lawn is now looking more like itself than it has for a few months.  The rain has occasionally been accompanied by thunder, and together those have kept me indoors at times, but some dry spells in the past few days have allowed me to get outside.  Jobs have included making a start on cutting the long hedge (big leylandii, some too big for me to reach the back) - a layer of cardboard has been put down covering the path alongside the trees, and this is being gradually covered by the clippings as a weed suppressant.  For the time being I've left the ivy that is flowering through the leylandii in parts, to provide nectar for the insect population; a couple of years ago we had a great many red admiral butterflies enjoying it.

Male common blue butterfly

- with wings open

Butterflies have done better this year, and they continue to come to the garden; this week's spot was a male common blue which was around for a couple of days.

Birds are also about, albeit in smaller numbers in the moulting season; a robin has been showing interest in my hedge clipping.  Aside from the wild birds, young pheasants and red-legged partridges, brought in by a local estate for shooting, flock regularly in the field beyond us and occasionally wander in.  One day 20 partridges filed through the garden and stood on the summerhouse veranda for a bit until I gently moved them on (the summerhouse door was open and, although they weren't looking as though they were going to explore inside, I thought it best to discourage them from any such thought). 

One day I found a little toadstool in the lawn; a few hours later it had entirely disappeared.  I can see how they came to be associated with the fairies.

Autumn, suddenly

After a much warmer than usual summer, suddenly it’s autumn.  On the second-last morning of August for the first time this year we had condensation on the outside of the bedroom windows – always a sign of the cooler weather kicking in.  The fourth heatwave was a bit of an anticlimax; one or two warm days, but then a chilly wind from the east cooled things down considerably, and I did briefly consider putting on my winter gardening jacket one afternoon.  A few showery days turned to more persistent rain, and this week is more wet than not.  It’s all good for the garden, which desperately needs any rain it can get.

Apple and plum trees

The leaves of the plum tree are always the first to turn, and it makes a striking contrast with the big apple tree next to it, with its still-green leaves and huge fruit.  The early eating apples are much smaller but also plentiful (sadly, they aren’t good keepers); several houses in the village are giving their fruit away as there is so much.

Autumn and winter veg is starting to appear in the kitchen garden: leeks, winter cabbage, radicchio, pak choi, hardy herbs, in addition to the sprouting broccoli and kale that have been growing for several weeks now.  There are still some French beans, and I planted out a few little lettuce seedlings today, into a surprisingly warm soil, for a late crop.  There’s a row of carrots and some beetroot that need to be dealt with, and the courgettes are still limping along; and in the greenhouse the tomato crop has been good.

We have set up a bird table near the summerhouse, and the robin who lives down there has been enjoying having food put out for him (or her).  But it’s that time of year when birdlife seems to go quiet; perhaps some of the residents are already starting to migrate to warmer parts of the country or they’re moulting and staying in hiding.  A fatball put out a couple of days ago has gone untouched, and there are now only two or three sparrows coming to the patio for food whereas a couple of weeks ago we had nearly 20 at a time.  After two or three months away, Lefty the lame woodpigeon returned the other day to poke around one of the flowerbeds; we hope he’ll stay for the winter.

There are a few butterflies still about; a small copper was resting today on the winter savory.

Small copper butterfly

Feast or famine II

Apart from a showery spell a couple of weeks ago, the weather has continued dry (we’re now in Heatwave 4, although the past few days have been more cloudy and breezy than hot).  The garden is parched, and although little has died prematurely in the veg plot, nothing is actually growing very much.  I have some seedlings (radicchio, cima di rapa, a late cabbage or two) ready to go out, and will have to water assiduously to keep them alive.  There are warnings that vegetable supplies may be impacted, and that, because berries and other wild fruits are appearing early, wildlife may run short of food this autumn and winter.  Although I've been picking blackberries across the lane, I'm happily leaving a good number for the birds and other denizens of the hedgerow.

Pears ,,,

,,, and apples

It has been an excellent fruit year.  The plum crop (now long gone or laid down as preserves, see below) was large, the apples are prolific and we have a few of the best pears our two little trees have ever produced.  Even the fig, in its over-shady position, has done well.  Down at the bottom of the garden, the wild damson trees – probably suckers from the plum tree, which was probably grafted onto a damson rootstock – rarely produce enough fruit for us to bother with; the fruit is small and very sour, and really only fit for use in flavouring liqueurs, in the manner of sloe gin, and you need a fair quantity of them to do that.  This year, though, there’s a good number of them.  We recently unearthed a long-forgotten bottle of home-made damson gin in the cellar, 2011 vintage, which has turned out to be delicious with its 14 years of bottle age.  There’s a bottle of cheap gin in the house, bought so that we could preserve some of the plums, so the rest of it has gone to make more damson gin.  I doubt if we’ll manage to keep it for 14 years though!

Damsons - ready for the gin!

I had carefully netted my cabbages to prevent butterflies from laying their eggs on them.  In the end, it has been the dry weather that has finished off the cabbages rather than the butterflies, helped by the presence of a red ant nest in the soil of that bed.  When I passed by yesterday, there was a frantic fluttering under the netting – a wren had somehow got in there and was trapped.  How did it manage that?  I lifted the netting and let it out, and it flew off with a loud chirp.  The netting was put back in place.  Later on, I passed by again, and – there, under the netting, was the wren.  So I let it out again.  And later still – yes, the wren was back.  I gave up and left the netting half off the bed, but still lying on its supports; the remains of the cabbages are so unappealing that no butterfly is likely to lay eggs on them.  The wren spent several hours in its little tent, fluttering busily around and apparently picking something (flies?) off the underside of the net; this morning, at breakfast time, it was in there again, working hard at finding whatever is attracting it.  Perhaps it’s feeding itself up in anticipation of a hard winter?

Freebies

I admit to being a bit lazy about weeding – but sometimes I deliberately leave a weed seedling to see what develops, and occasionally it’s worth it.

The edge of the gravel drive usually has a good number of ‘unintentional’ plants seeded into it.  A few are desirable – nigella and parsley, from plantings in the adjacent bed – but a lot are not.  There’s a good number of out-and-out weeds, but also a few buddleja plantlets.  My buddleja is a big old thing, with flowers in a reasonably good purple-blue, though there are better modern cultivars and I’m not inclined to propagate this one, even though it seeds itself quite a lot in this garden - I use the old seedheads and prunings in the compost bins and plants germinate from that.  Recently quite a large buddleja plant appeared in the gravel, and I haven’t bothered to pull it up – in the hope that it might flower, and (irrationally) turn out to be a better colour than the existing plant. 

White buddleja

It has indeed flowered – and it’s white!  Probably a seedling of next door’s white buddleja plant.  I’m hoping that it might be transplantable, with a little care; most weeds in the gravel don’t have deep roots, and there’s no obvious reason why this would be any different.  I’ll leave it until the late autumn and try to move it then; with a lot of watering and decent conditions, it might survive.  Then I need to decide where to put it (not many good places for it …)!

Panicum flowerhead

Another ‘unintentional’ plant is in the pot with Hosta ‘Krossa Regal’.  At first it looked rather like the young hosta leaves, and I paid it little attention, but as it developed I realised that it’s a grass.  Not just any grass; it has broad, chunky leaves.  A panicum seedling.  The only panicum that I’ve had in the garden is one of the cultivars with an explosion of little seedheads, rather like a miniature firework, which looks good in flower arrangements, so I left it alone.  The first flower-head went into a little vase with some dahlia flowers and a few sprigs of Dianthus ‘Siberian Blues’ (which is actually pink …), and it looked good on the table for a celebratory weekend!