Work to be done

 

Nerine bowdenii

The hiatus since the last post is partly due to a holiday (in the UK), partly due to time spent doing other things (cooking and freezing the tomato glut, among other jobs) and partly due to inactivity on my part.  I haven’t been very busy in the garden this year; must do better over the winter.  The successes, such as the excellent show of nerines, which have been keeping us in cut flowers over recent weeks, don’t feel well deserved.

Actually not much has been happening on the plot over the past few weeks apart from autumn closing in.  The weather has been mostly mild (apart from a couple of frosty nights), with some lovely pleasant, sunny days and some wet ones – nothing too dramatic.  Despite the heat earlier in the year, there has been no Indian summer.  The autumn colours are turning nicely and leaves are starting to fall; the autumn sedums and the winter-flowering viburnums are blooming and there are a few cyclamen under the holly tree, whose berries are colouring up well.  It’s only a matter of time before the fieldfares and redwings fly in from northern parts and start feeding on them and the apples.

It's time to get the autumn jobs done but, as always, I’m behind with those.  The overwintering broad bean seeds only arrived in the post today, likewise the sweet pea seeds, but I already have garlic cloves saved from this year’s crop and seed of winter lettuces left over, and they could have been sown (but haven’t been).  Part of the reason is that this summer’s crop needs to be cleared away first; but the frost hasn’t yet polished off the courgette plants and summer beans, and I’m loath to cut them down prematurely.  There are lettuce and radicchio still going great guns.  And my lax gardening regime this year has resulted in quite a few weeds that need to be removed so that the beds can be mulched ready for the new crop.  Much space in the greenhouse is taken up with the tomato plants, most of which only have a few green fruits still on them, but the ‘Gardener’s Delight’ still has huge trusses of unripe fruits and isn’t ready to be pulled out.

Tomato 'Gardener's Delight' 

On the subject of fruit, the apples are still ripening on the cordons but we’ve started picking the earlier varieties to store them away from insect and bird attack.  (Finding somewhere to store them safe from mouse attack is another problem.)  The crop is enormous, as are some of the individual apples; ‘Blenheim Orange’ has produced some of the biggest eating apples we’ve seen.

Giant 'Blenheim Orange' apples

Earlier in the month we took advantage of a few dry and windy days to get the lawnmower out and tackle the grass that had been left to grow long this year.  We don’t usually cut it after September but it really needed taking in hand.  Despite the weather it was still quite damp so it only got a rough and fairly high cut, to a height that should keep it manageable over the winter.  Having taken quite a relaxed attitude to it this summer, we didn’t feel the need to attempt to produce the ‘perfect English lawn’ effect (not that our lawn ever comes even remotely close to that ideal).

In a recent post I mentioned that it has been a good year for hummingbird hawkmoths.  It’s not long since they were thought not to breed in the UK, but warmer summers have encouraged them to stay, and only a couple of weeks ago I saw one in a garden deep in the Lake District, well beyond its previous range.  Very welcome foreign visitors.

Home-grown

Figs

After our neighbour’s lovely dish of figs, we’ve managed a couple of our own; not as big or as beautiful, but not at all bad (and they tasted good).  I was quite pleased with them.  We continue to have large quantities of tomatoes and courgettes (pasta sauce, anyone?), lovely lettuces and a few beans; the climbers are very late, having been munched when small by the rabbit and only slowly sprouting from the base again.  And of course there is a huge crop of apples.  Not at all bad for a season when I’ve done so little.

Autumn flowers are starting to show as well.  There’s one big Dahlia ‘Café au lait’ flower, some rudbeckia blooms and a nice little pot of fuchsia, and the antirrhinums are throwing up a second flush of colourful flowers.  And I’ve obviously done something right this year with the nerines; after a few rather lean years they have produced over a dozen flower stems.

Dahlia 'Cafe au lait'

fuchsia (unknown variety)

The birds are sorting themselves out for the winter.  The robins are claiming their territories, tick-ticking at each other and occasionally singing sweetly across the lawn.  While humans regard fences and hedges as the boundaries of our territory, for birds it’s open spaces that divide up the land, and lawns are disputed areas; the robins may come down briefly to pick up a tasty morsel from the grass, but they don’t stay long.  There are a pair of warblers about at the moment, and a greenfinch was down today, but otherwise it’s the smaller birds and the pigeons/doves that are coming to the garden right now.  The blackbirds, when they show themselves, are still moulting; and anyway, there’s plenty of fruit in the hedgerows, so why would they come to the garden?

Sliding into autumn

 

August blackberries in the hedge

The long, hot, dry summer lasted well into and beyond mid-August, bringing early blackberries – a huge crop in the hedgerow opposite the house – and a second spell of unusual heat, slightly more moderate in its temperatures this time (only hitting mid-thirties C) but lasting for a week or so.  Since then we’ve had more pleasant weather with some intermittent rain, ranging from light showers to a few real downpours and a couple of noisy thunderstorms, all of which coincided with the announcement of an official drought and hosepipe ban; it will take more than a few autumn rains to replenish the water supplies after such a hot, dry period.  The rain brought an autumnal feel lurking behind the late summer warmth, with evenings drawing in and cooling off and mornings sometimes on the chilly side until the sun gets going. 

The garden is looking dishevelled, and not particularly colourful, but is greening up again with the rain.  Apart from one or two of my smaller pots, I don’t think anything has actually died of the lack of water, although interestingly much of the ground elder has frizzled away; I suppose it’s too much to hope for that it has actually died, but you never know.  It has been a very good year for fruit, and not just the blackberries; the apples are some of the best we’ve grown, and plentiful.  The tomatoes, too, have done well, producing a big crop of cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse, but the two ‘Harzfeuer’ plants in pots on the patio have also been very successful; I don’t think it’s an F1 variety, so I’m intending to try saving seed for next year.  The tomatoes and apples did very well at the local Show!

My still-small fig plant has produced a few moderately-sized fruits, but they went from rock-hard to overripe very quickly.  I’m encouraged, though, especially as its parent plant, elsewhere in the village, has produced a large crop of big, juicy figs, a few of which were donated to us!

Not mine!

We usually see a hummingbird hawkmoth on the buddleia in August, but this year I counted three at one time, and there are reports elsewhere of them doing well this year.  I was struck this summer by how the winter savory seemed to attract lots of bees, and of different species, so I’ll look to take some cuttings to spread it around the garden.  Can't have too many pollinators!

Winter savory - with one of its bees

Wildlife night and day

Wildlife continues to come to visit the garden, night and day.

We don't tend to see the night-time visitors, for obvious reasons, but the plum tree has been a big attraction for them,   We had feared that the crop this year would be small, but in fact it has been less than usual but not too bad; it looks as though a grass frost may have reduced the flowering low down on the tree, but the higher branches fruited quite well.  As always, however, a good number of plums have fallen into the grass below.  The grass is still long this year (we haven’t cut the area while we’re waiting for the orchids to set seed), and shows clearly where the wildlife has crushed the grass while foraging for fallen fruit.  We know that foxes like plums, which would explain the dog-noises heard one night and the sizeable well-trodden areas under the tree; but they’re not the only nocturnal foragers.

After the recent heatwave, we’ve had warm but occasionally showery weather; sometimes no more than a faint mizzle, but it slightly revived the browner parts of the garden.  Returning to the house one evening after supper in the summerhouse, with traces of dampness in the air, we mused that the wet was 'good for the garden', and would enable the hedgehogs to find slugs to eat.  On reaching the back door, we found that the hedgehogs were enjoying a more varied diet than just slugs.  On the doorstep, in the darkness, was a black hedgehoggy shape, chomping at a handful of plums that D had left by the doormat.  After a pause for thought, he trotted off into the night.  You can’t be angry with a hedgehog; he’s welcome to a few plums, and we’ve taken to leaving a few overripe ones beside a dish of water overnight.  On one occasion the plums vanished completely, stones and all, which was probably a fox’s doing.  There are at least two hedgehogs snuffling round the garden in the evenings; a larger one has also been seen.  Our nocturnal visitors also include a frog, found one evening near the back door; the weather has turned warm and very dry again, so we’ve taken to ensuring that he has a nice damp spot behind the sweet pea pots to hide in.  The things we do for our wild creatures!

The evidence, morning after the feast!

By day, the birdlife has been joined by the summer butterflies.  The buddleja is in full flower, and it’s the season for the larger butterfly species to have their summer hatching.  Quite a good showing this year.  The large and small whites will be disappointed by the lack of brassicas in the veg plot for them to lay their eggs in (there are a few seedlings in the cold frame, but well protected from the butterflies), but there are plenty of the adults; and there are good numbers of brimstones, meadow browns and gatekeepers about.  We’ve had a few peacocks (only three, though there’s still time for more to come), about the same for tortoiseshells, one or two red admirals, two commas and a painted lady.  I was pleased to spot a silver-washed fritillary, a largish butterfly not unlike a comma in its colour and markings but with a more classic butterfly shape; it was around one day, not seen since.  

Silver-washed fritillary on the buddleja

One big difference this year is the number of blue butterflies.  I’ve had quick sightings of blues in the past, and have assumed that they were holly blues; from their behaviour, I’m inclined to think that at least some of them may well have been, but this year the blues are more numerous, lower-flying and quite definitely common blues.  They like basking in the long grass of the cowslip patch (also still uncut), as well as joining the large numbers of bees on the oregano.  It looks like an unexpected benefit of our partial ‘no-mow’ regime; confirmation of the evidence that long grass attracts insect life, and something definitely to be repeated next year!

Common blue (underside) on oregano

Male common blue

Female common blue

Sorry about the size of the blues in the photos; they're only very little butterflies, but their colour makes them quite eye-catching.

As for the weather, the temperatures are up again, with low 30s centigrade (about 90F) forecast for the next few days (and back to the 20s, low 70s fahrenheit, next week, with some very welcome showers).

Too darn hot

We Brits love complaining about the weather, but it’s not often that the complaint is about heat. 

Around the middle of the month, it started to warm up, and for a couple of days we had record-breaking temperatures; 41C (104F) in certain parts of the east of the country, two degrees above the previous record, and 35C here. It’s not likely to impress readers in some countries, but we’re not geared up for that sort of heat; the trains stopped running, for example. Here, we just closed the curtains and stayed indoors, drinking plenty of water. Since then things have cooled down to the low twenties C, which is a lot more manageable. 

Still, the garden is very dry and there is talk of the dreaded hosepipe ban (not that it will be dreaded by us, as we don’t use a hosepipe); there has been a little rain today, some of it quite heavy, but it’s not likely to make much impression on already parched earth. We have taken to walking down the garden by a different route so as not to wear away the usual path to the summerhouse. My over-large collection of pots has been moved into the shade by the back door and I’m collecting waste water in the kitchen to use on the tomatoes (which are doing quite nicely in the greenhouse, and even the two ‘Harzfeuer’ plants in pots on the patio are fruiting well). 

The parched path to the summerhouse

Some plants in the garden are suffering; the violets and Lysimachia clethroides are wilting, but the sedum ‘Herbstfreude’ behind, being a succulent, is still doing fine. I expect the violets will recover (they are spreading too much anyway), and the lysimachia is a bit of a thug and drought is one of the things that keeps it under control; it usually grows back. 

Wilting violets and lysimachia, but upright sedums behind

We’ve been ensuring that there is water available on the patio so that the wildlife can drink and bathe. A squirrel has been coming for an occasional drink and to try to dig up allium bulbs from my pots (without success); it came to the windows to look inside, even though it could see me watching, almost as though it was asking for more food, please! It should be able to tackle the hazelnuts soon; the nuthatches are helping themselves to them, so even though they’re still unripe they ought to be edible. 

Hello there!

Allium bulbs, yum yum

On the subject of edibles: although the veg garden doesn’t have much to offer, we do have lettuces, broad beans, the first French beans and courgettes; and the shallots and garlic have been dug up for storing. The raspberries are nearly all over, but the plums are ripening fast in the warmth – more than we can keep up with so I think jam will be in order!

Alas, poor Peter

Sadly, Peter Rabbit is no more.  He had been a most entertaining fixture in the garden for a few weeks, hanging out around the veg plot and occasionally venturing out onto the lawn (and into next-door’s garden, to the annoyance of their dog, who wasn’t allowed out to chase him).  He nibbled some of the veg plants, which had to be protected, but seemed happy with clover and grasses on the lawn; and from time to time he would chase the pigeons, apparently just for fun (the pigeons mostly ignored him).  Then, on Sunday morning he was found stretched out on one of the veg plot paths near the rhubarb, quite dead; there was no sign of him having been attacked in any way, and we assume that he had just died.

The difficulty of finding a suitable spot to bury deceased wildlife in this garden has already been mentioned.  A place under one of the osmanthuses was selected, where the vegetation needed clearing in any case; a lot of the Buddleja alternifolia had to be cut out (and about time too), and a quick decision taken on the self-sown hypericum (dig out!).  A suitably deep-ish hole was dug and Peter was laid to rest, with a Geranium nodosum (little pale pink flowers, likes shade) on top.  We had got used to looking out for him and now miss him.

Meanwhile, the garden marches on.  June had a couple of warm spells – the usual ‘two hot days and a thunderstorm’ – but overall was rather chilly and windy, with some showery rain; July is shaping up to be quite a lot warmer.  We’ve just had a few days of heat, followed by a drizzly day today, with more heat from tomorrow.  Real rain has been in short supply, and it is once more an uphill battle to keep all the little pots watered; I shall have to bed the plants out temporarily into one of the empty veg beds, though I know only too well how easy it is to leave them there and let them become fixtures that are not easily removed!  The bottom end of the veg plot has already morphed into a sort of ‘cutting garden’, with antirrhinums, foxgloves and sweet William making a bright corner in sweet-shop colours and providing vasefuls of flowers.  Should I leave them there?  Might not be a bad idea!

A colourful corner

The unmown area under the plum tree is full of orchids (pyramidal orchids); I reckon there are over 60.  The photo gives a poor impression and only shows a few of them, as the shade and the long grass makes it difficult to get a good view, but it’s a splendid show. 

Orchids under the plum tree

The roses are a little past their peak, but still blooming freely.  I always forget to celebrate Rosa dupontii up the side of the house; it has little scent, but it’s a lovely flower (and the bees think so too, nb one in the photo!).  The sweet peas have also provided a few posies for the house: red, white and blue (pity they weren’t in bloom for the Jubilee!).

Red, white and blue sweet peas

Rosa dupontii

I have done one job that has been put off for too long: repotting the azalea  (A. ‘Rosebud’) in fresh compost.  It might be too late, as the top growth is quite sparse, but it’s an old plant (from our last garden, so over 30 years old) and it has done well.  I hope to do the camellias as well, once they’re past their flowering time.

Fine double rainbow this evening - pot of gold down in the field ....

Peter Rabbit

We have a baby rabbit in the garden.

Peter Rabbit

It's not the first time: a good many years ago, during a couple of summers we had one appearing, staying for a week or two and then vanishing.  I believe that rabbits can breed from six weeks old, and I’m guessing that they reached maturity and went off in search of company of the opposite sex.  But that was a long time ago, before this blog started, and there has only been one very brief sighting of a rabbit here since then.

Then a few evenings ago, baby Peter Rabbit turned up on the drive, checking out the woodpile by the garage.  It’s mostly covered by a rather tatty tarpaulin which doesn’t reach the ground but is weighted down by the upturned wheelbarrow, and there are plenty of places where Peter could get in to hide among the logs or under the wheelbarrow (wheelburrow?).  He sat there, like an adult rabbit outside its burrow, until it became too dark to see what he was doing.  Since then he has moved down into the veg patch, probably hiding in the long grass and garden debris that is behind the greenhouse (old pots, pallets, builders’ sacks, etc) and that would provide plenty of burrow-like hiding places.  The last few days have been very warm and sunny (after what seems like weeks of chilly and windy weather), and he doesn’t seem to care much for the heat as he lies low during the warmest part of the day.  He doesn’t seem much bothered by my being around, nor does he do much damage to plants.  He had a nibble of one of my young borlotti bean plants, and yesterday he did a little light pruning of a couple of kale plants until I gently made my displeasure known and he bounced off towards the apple cordons, which seem to be his daytime safe place.  But unlike his Beatrix Potter namesake, he hasn’t touched the lettuces or carrots.  I hope he stays for a little as he’s quite endearing.

Last night we also had a visit from Mrs Tiggywinkle (or perhaps Mr T, as he was quite a large hedgehog), who came to the patio for a drink and then trundled off again.  He or she is probably a regular here, as we see plenty of droppings but this was the first actual sighting this year.

Plant protection against nibbling and pecking (the kale plants also look as though the pigeons have been at them) is under way.  The kale is too big for bottle cloches, but the French beans, which have also been attacked, are now under cover.  I think some wire netting might do the trick with the kale.  The climbing beans seem ok.  I’ve constructed a rather rickety-looking frame for them to climb up, which I’m hoping won’t fall over as last year’s did!  It looks like my home-made dogwood supports for the sedums and achillea are doing the job; at least the achillea isn’t sprawling outwards just yet.

A bit rickety?

Achillea, upright for the moment

The flowers in the veg patch are keeping me going nicely in cut flowers: sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) and antirrhinums have filled vases, and there are foxgloves as well.  The dogwood bed by the patio is looking very colourful in a rustic, romantic sort of way: mostly sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis), largely blue and purple aquilegias and Allium christophii.  The sweet rocket and aquilegias aren’t too good in vases as both are prone to dropping lots of spent flowerheads all over the place.  However that bed is now starting to fade, with the peonies and roses just starting to come into bloom in their place.

Sweet rocket, blue aquilegia and Allium christophii

Antirrhinums

Sweet William 

The first fledgeling sparrows are coming to the patio, there are young tits around, a baby robin down by the summerhouse and two young blackbirds who seem to get everywhere.  Something small was in the greenhouse yesterday, fluttering about and taking refuge in the mess of old pots, seedtrays and other detritus at the far end when I popped in.  I couldn’t see what it was.  Baby blackbirds usually panic and flap about at the glass, but this one seemed to freeze and stay completely still, and I couldn't spot it.  I was in a hurry and had to leave it, having assured myself that there wasn’t anything that it could get tangled up in, and it seemed to have gone when I got back.  Possibly a wren, like my little visitor last year?