Good chum Lesley bought us this sweet little hellebore. Thank you, Lesley!
Gardens
Fallen Apples At The Allotment ~ Black & White Sunday
Come Hail, Gale, Snow, Frost, Rain And…
…the hesperantha in the garden is STILL flowering – albeit translucently and only at her stem tips. She has been buried under a foot of snow for nearly a week, frozen and defrosted, and refrozen. Then we’ve had downpours and mighty windstorms. I don’t really know what to make of her, other than to give her a big round of applause. She’s been flowering continuously since August.
Jolly Good Year At The Allotment
Winter At The Allotment
It looks pretty dreary on the plots, and these days the only person I see at the allotment is an elderly man who likes to walk his dog around the perimeter path. But there’s still stuff to harvest – parsnips, carrots, leeks, kale, perpetual spinach, Swiss chard, purple sprouting, and in the polytunnel lettuce and various Chinese mustards. There are also 8 compost heaps to turn or add to, and now is the season for collecting leaves to make leaf mould. I’ve filled three new bins with leaves from the wood, and last autumn’s caches are beginning to rot down nicely; I’m hoping they’ll be ready for spring sowing. So despite these gloomy looks – all is filled with new possibilities.
The Changing Seasons ~ November
We’ve had frost. Yippee! Some more please, dear weather gods. We gardeners need to have this year’s slug population explosion well and truly blasted, or nipped in the bud, or whatever you need to do to stop the critters chomping and reproducing. And yes, I know they are useful in the compost heap, and I’m sure other slugs love them, but enough is enough. They are roosting everywhere, including in the polytunnel. No vegetable is safe.
Of course more frost will mean an end to the late flowering flowers – the campanula and geranium Rozanne still on the go, the hesperanthus (above) which simply refused to give in to the frost; the Russian rudbeckia that, astonishingly, is currently contemplating the making of fresh, fat russet buds. (It must have been bred in deepest Siberia). The annual pot marigolds are still busy too.
But heavens to Murgatroyd, much as we like to keep seeing them, surely it is time all good plants were asleep in their beds, gathering themselves for next summer’s flowering. In the meantime, though, here are scenes of the garden’s last hurrah – taken today and over the last week.
The Changing Seasons Please visit Max to see his wonderfully atmospheric shots of night-time Oslo.
Frosted Flowers ~ Hesperanthus
All was glittering in the garden this morning – the first real frost of November. There was bright sunshine too, so I went around the flower beds snapping these fragile Hesperanthus. They have been flowering so bravely, though perhaps not for much longer. Then I stood in the sun at the top of the garden by the field and did some qi gong. It always feels best done outside, and there’s nothing like a bit of cloud hands waving and dancing with rainbows to spark up the spirits. Happy Friday!
Munchkin Squashes ~ Too Sweet To Eat
copyright 2017 Tish Farrell
Six Word Saturday ~ Please visit Debbie at Travel With Intent for more six-worder photo posts.
Monday Magic ~ Today In My Wenlock Garden
Good heavens! This morning we woke to frost. The windscreens of the cars parked across the road were definitely glinting whitely. But there was bright sunshine too, lighting up the last of the leaves on the lime trees. They looked like great golden flares.
And since the temperature was much keener today than yesterday, sun notwithstanding, my cooking thoughts turned to making Greek lentil soup. While it was it was cooking I went out in the garden to snap whatever was blooming.
Extraordinary, isn’t it. We’ve had vicious gales, heavy rain and yet on the 30th day of October we still have sweet peas on the back fence. There are also masses of buds on the Morning Glories, though when they do open, it’s a half-hearted show of the decidedly shivery. I’m not sure why they waited till October to get going.
The real stars are geranium Rozanne, now in its second or third flowering, and the little border of coral and shell pink Hesperantha; pull off the lilies’ spent stems and more burst forth.
So welcome to my autumn garden and all that’s still flourishing there. Frost, what frost?
Copyright 2017 Tish Farrell
Still Blooming Up At The Allotment
N.B. There will be a brief break in transmission at Writer On The Edge, so I won’t be talking to you for a while. Will be back soon though.
Six Word Saturday In the meantime, please visit Debbie. She has a cracker of a photo for today’s 6WS.
