ETOILE VIOLETTE AND GOAT'S RUE

Just a couple more photos from the garden with apologies for the clothes post right in the centre of the picture-there's no way round it! This is a viticella clematis, Etoile Violette, which has flowered well this year. It faces away from the house so this photo was taken in the evening so as to get the sun on it. It's climbing on the oak tree in the background, the rowan on the right and rosemary in the foreground. Some years it's rather feeble but it's amazing what a handful of fertiliser and a prune in the spring can do!

It's a reliable plant and lasts for a long time, but it's still early, like so many other things this year. I hope yours will be OK, Kath.

I've had a vine called Claret Cloak for about 12 years and this year it's more or less given up, one stem/trunk, about as thick as a woman's arm, has died as I found out when I chopped at it with the axe to see what colour the bark was underneath but the other part is OK, well, it's still alive. The small birds like to use this dead tangle as 'scaffolding' to skip down then on to the bird table and there's also another clematis, 'Comtessse de Bouchard', hanging on to a second bundle so the vine is being left for the time being. Another job for the autumn...

I've had this plant for some time, too, the real name is Galega, otherwise known as Goat's Rue. As you can see, it's growing in shade but I have another one with mauve flowers in the open garden but not enough flowers on it yet to take a photo. It's a perennial so I don't have to do anything with it except tidy it up in the autumn. It allegedly got its name from being fed to goats to improve milk flow. A bit on the untidy side, like catmint, but nice to have all the same.