LAST OF THE SUMMER?

It was a beautiful sunny day on Saturday so I thought that, as I've finished the Holiday blog, I'd get back to what I usually blog about - in this case, the garden.

The catmint is still flowering well, crammed between a cornus and a bracken which help to hold it upright.

 

Kathleen Wheeler clematis is still flowering, resting on the stalks of Jacob's Ladder for stability. I know just how it feels!

How out of season is this? Almost October and yet there are a couple of buds on the delphinium...

 Everlasting sweetpeas, which I tried to make ex-everlasting many years ago but since they're in among the stems of a New Dawn rose that's why they survive.

 A fuchsia magellenica bought for me many years ago by a now-deceased friend which has been quite late is starting this year but is now going well. The green 'stalks' on the r. hand side are the cut down remains of fennel, as far as I could reach at the time.

 This hydrangea is really a white one but is gradually turning pink. It's grown so much this year! In the spring there are daffs poking through the first new growth.

A sad specimen of foxglove, the last in the garden this year, but I hope there will be plenty of them next year.

 Leycesteria formosa with the hanging 'earrings' of flowers which turn into berries which blackbirds like to eat. William Leycester was the Chief Justice in Bengal during the early 19th century, according to my A-Z of Plant Names.

 Some water mint, also coming to its end. Literally, as I am going to dismantle the pond. Since I now have an electric fence round the edges which is 3' tall to stop the cat next door 'fishing', it also means I can't get to the water level to clear out weed, pick out dead leaves or try and scrape up as much duckweed as I can, so - it'll have to go. I'm just waiting for Stuart to get a home sorted out for the goldfish and I'll try to get them caught, bagged up and transported the half mile or so to the stables and their new home. Then I can try to get the plants out, start scooping out the water and catching what's left of the fish, probably all the black ones which are so difficult to see! I should say 'we' rather than 'I' as I shall rely on Gillian to help.

 How silly is this? Poppies in bud! These are usually out in June. Below is one already in flower though today, as it's raining, it probably won't be much good by the morning.

 A visit from my friend last night but I do wish it'd leave the grass alone. Not much point in tidying up the grass as it has been so dry the roots have no purchase in the ground. This is just outside the patio doors

 and this is my old compost heap, well scratched over. Doesn't look so bad in the photo but it makes walking a bit dangerous for me. I'll get the dustpan out and throw it all back again; it's also so dry.

But I feed the badger so can't grumble too much, the holes just make it so uneven on the grass that I'm scared of losing my balance.

 

Ho hum, Bernard!!! 

WAITING FOR THE LIBRARY TO OPEN

Isn't it strange? Sometimes you can't find a topic to blog about and then three come along at once... I was in Princes Risborough this morning, fifteen minutes before the library opened, so once I had parked in a nearby road, my usual 'car park', I walked along looking at the display of flowers on the verges (rather than in the gardens).

I think this bright mauve flower is osteospermum, such a brilliant colour. Just what's good in a quilt to give it a lift.
An odd angle for these fuchsias but that's my shadow on the right and I didn't want it to show too much. I remembered a poem about fuchsias by Thomas Hardy -

Mrs.Master's fuchsias hung

Higher and broader, and brightly swung,

Bell-like, more and more

Over the narrow garden-path

Giving the passer a sprinkle-bath

In the morning.

She put up with their pushful ways,

And made us tenderly lift their sprays,

Going to her door:

But when her funeral had to pass

They cut back all the flowery mass

In the morning.

There are lots of roses along here - the houses have long expanses of brick wall straight onto the pavement and that's where these flowers are growing. This pink rose is on a long stem, about the only one standing upright after yesterday's fierce winds.
What a lovely colour! This gorgeous apricot rose caught my eye - and I'm not a Roses person.
The bud is yellow - I have no idea of the name of this one. Wait until you see what's coming!
This is a rose, honestly! Isn't it unusual? Layers of soft petals; the plant in front shows of the colour, too.
And here's another unusual rose. Striped yellow and orange with the colour paler or stronger depending on the age of the rose.
Here's another flower on the same bush.
An edging of valerian, just for a change from roses.

Here they are again, another pretty colour. The houseowners don't see these flowers, they are under the windows, along the walls. The passersby get the pleasure of the owners' hard work.

These were some feet away and out of the sun, dahlias which have been battered by the recent stormy weather.
The other side of the road has semi-detached somewhat larger houses and this is part of one front garden - I don't like conventional planting but the bright blue made sure I saw these.

That side of the road wasn't anything like as interesting as this side - but what an unusual tree to see these days especially in a town front garden. It's an araucaria, aka as a monkey puzzle tree. It comes from the Andes, on the border of Argentina and Chile . It seems that in 1795 Captain Vancouver's ship the Discovery was visiting Valparaiso and the large seeds of the tree were served as a dessert. The ship's scientist took some back to England and so introduced them to Europe. It got its common name in 1834 after a lawyer, Charles Austin, said it would be 'a puzzle for a monkey to climb'.

That's all folks...

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.

BACK TO THE GARDEN Part 1

I haven't posted for a while because of the hassle with leaving comments on other blogs but I'm still having to sign in every time I open my own blog. How annoying is that!
But I thought I'd walk down the garden this morning and see what flowers are still about, coming or going.

The plant at the top is catmint, Nepeta 6 Hills Giant which I've had for years. Cats love to eat the leaves or roll in it - and it's a spreading plant, taking up a lot of room, which is why it's sort of confined in a wigwam of canes and string. There's a large Dryopteris, the bracken, on the left and a cornus is on the right.

Below these but nearer the front of the bed is this spreading plant called London Pride. This saxifraga has been with me as I've changed houses over the years and probably came from my childhood garden. Unfortunately I can't get any closer to the ground or I'd be able to show it to advantage.

The pond is behind me and the yellow irises, which have been flowering well these last few weeks, are beginning to go over. This clump is where the grass snake likes to rest, body wrapped round the plant and tail in the water. If it's a hot summer I expect it'll be back. It frightenedthe life out of me when I first saw it several years ago. About 2' long, green with a yellow 'collar', I had no idea what it was - but the frog it was swallowing was looking at me as it disappeared down the snake's throat. Last year Ashley was patting something on the patio with a cat's interest in a living creature but not sure whether it would bite or not - it was a baby grass snake curled up but watching intently - it must have been about 7", I think. There's somewhere nearby that the snakes like and the pond is handy for cooling off. Below is the snake on 3 June 2006... Look carefully!

Delphiniums are growing well this year and this, so far, is the tallest of them. It's disappearing into the lilac tree, but not for much longer, hopefully, as it'll be trimmed. (The tree, that is..)
More alliums are in flower,these are allium nigrum. The seed heads are the purple flowers which were out a few weeks ago, now getting ripe to shed their seeds into the path - again...
Allium cristophii has these star-like flowers which catch the light.

Some of the large flowered clematis are out, too, but these aren't as successful as the smaller flowered montanas this year.This has a Japanese name, 'Sho-Un', and the one below is one that hasn't done well for many years but has perked up this year - 'Niobe'.

Further down the garden there's a trellis arch which supports a honeysuckle and another clematis, 'Ville de Lyon', which hasn't flowered yet. There's also a rosa glauca hedge tangled in with the honeysuckle, the tiny bright pink flowers showing at the top. It needs a good prune later in the year or maybe early next year - not by me, though, it's very thorny!

The poppies by the cotoneaster are almost over, the others have finished now. They've done well this year without rain to batter them down.
The cotoneaster Rothschildianus is alive with 'hundreds' of bees so there should be a good crop of yellow berries this winter - it sounds like the 'bee-loud glade', perhaps, in WB Yeats' 'Lake Isle of Innisfree'.
Lysimachia punctata seems to take itself round the garden without me knowing! It's named after King Lysimachos of Thrace (c 360-281 BC) who is said to have pacified a bull with a piece of loosestrife. I wouldn't like to try that, would you???

Strange as it may seem, it's the same species as lysimachia nummularia, aka Creeping Jenny, that ground cover plant which begins by being 'nice' then gets to be a pest with its way of, well, creeping where it's not wanted.

I'm not too keen on roses as they seem to need such a lot of attention. But this one, 'New Dawn', is a repeat flowering version of 'Dr. van Fleet' which was grown by a neighbour when I was a child. I've never forgotten the scent as it drifted into our garden or the showers of petals from this once-flowering rose. I don't do anything with it except trim it a bit now and again and tie it up to the scruffy trellis. You can image the petals falling from the going-over flowers which are just touched with pink in comparison to the buds with a much stronger colour. Not my shrub, by the way. The present tenants are definitely not gardeners!

There's only one of these irises which came, I think, from a freebie handout from somewhere like Radio Times or the local paper, I just can't remember. A brilliant colour, especially if you are a painter of flowers.

I like tall herbaceous plants like the delphiniums and here's another which self seeds round the garden into the most awkward places, such as the edge of the pond one year and this year this one is just under the bird feeder...

Oh dear, the Add Image icon has frozen again, I'll have to add these pics either later today or tomorrow. Another bit of technology I can't cope with...
See you later.