Season of mists & mellow fruitfulness…

…but it’s not supposed to be autumn yet! However it’s pretty cool and there’s quite a nip in the air in the early morning now. I’m planning to upload some pictures of an awesome & inspirational garden I visited yesterday – I now have serious orchard envy – but here are just a few from around our own little patch to keep you going until I find the correct lead for the little camera!

Around the wildlife pond – two cats and a brontosaurus…

You always kind of know that a garden is never altogether your own, that you share it with all manner of shy & unseen creatures. Or not so shy & unseen, in the case of Felis Sylvestris Catus… Which probably explains why the wild birds are leaving the blackberries alone:

Loads of berries ripe now, more to come, and still flowering…

The plums are at that tantalising stage where they look absolutely ripe & delicious:

Plums next to rowanberries, neither of them fully ripe…

…but they’re not ready to part company with the branches just yet! Some of the tomatos are ready to pick:

The label said, Gardener’s Delight – looks like Moneymaker or even Tigerella to me!

…but I’ve actually snipped off about half of them, ripe or not, as the cool rainy weather forecast for the next few days is a recipe for blight. They’ll ripen up on the conservatory windowsills. And there are still a few flowers going strong: Montbretias, fuchsias, the hydrangea, and these little troupers scattered around in old hanging baskets & windowboxes:

You can’t go wrong with a pelargonium or three!

I’m pretty busy picking & preserving right now; blackberry jam and mango & apple chutney are already made, and 2.2Kg more blackberries were picked today, from the garden and the riverbank. Also a small bag of crab apples, mainly for their pectin; interesting to see that that tree also has a poor & slightly-manky-looking crop this year, so it probably wasn’t anything we did or didn’t do that’s caused our own trees to fruit so poorly this year. Blackberry vinegar will be started off tomorrow, and blackberry & crab apple jelly. If I can find enough of them, Apple Butter’s high on the to-do list too, but finding more jamjars may have to come first!

Almost a month…

…has gone by; I’ve been somewhat busy. Here’s what’s been going on outside, in wall-to-wall sunshine interspersed with monsoon-like showers:

July: fruit starting to ripen…

See what a difference a month makes:

August: almost there!

and the roses have stopped for now. If you look closely at the first picture, you will also see blackberries in the corner. Being picked & eaten now! The figs are also ripening one by one:

A fig beginning to ripen…

The day-lilies are still romping away:

Day-lilies screening a potato patch…

and their slightly-later-flowering cousins the Montbretias are making ready to steal the show, here from the Enchanter’s Nightshade:

That’s probably not a Great Crested Newt…

Some more of the Poundland bulbs:

Some kind of Gladioli?

What a fabulous investment they have been! But better still, this little beauty was hauled out of a skip at the Household Recycling Centre, for free:

Definitely a Hydrangea…

…Petiolaris?

 

 

 

 

These are generally available for free too:

“Plain” ordinary Buddleia…

But I don’t feel guilty for having spent £2 at the market on three massive pots of Bizzie Lizzies, when it became evident that my window box plants sadly hadn’t survived the desert-like conditions caused by my forgetting to water them…

£1.33-worth of Bizzie Lizzies!

Hoping for some foraging time shortly; it’s time to make some jam!

Fallen behind…

Well, I have fallen very far behind with this! I’ve been utterly, frantically busy, preparing for a big show and trying to find some room in the house to fit a returning offspring and his young lady into. But I have still been taking pictures, just not finding the time to post them. Here’s a quick catch-up from the last month:

A Poundland lily!

Some of the wonderfully-inexpensive bulbs from Poundland have come into their own now: pink day lilies clash amazingly with a garden full of standard orange ones! But the alliums are a good foil for both colours:

I wonder if we can eat it?

I have no idea what these pretty things are, but I evidently chose the right container for them:

Some kind of cornflower, maybe?

The cherries are coming thick & fast, round the front. It’s a job to beat the birds to them!

A feast for the eyes as well as the mouth…

And the late-summer flowers are bursting out all over too; what do they know that we don’t?

Two blowsy beauties dancing the can-can in the border…

 

 

 

 

 

But these Phormiums are by far the most striking flowers in the garden just now:

Phormium flowers close-to…

…and in situ.

 

 

 

 

 

To give you some idea just how big these are, the lilac behind is a good 15′ tall, and the phormium flower spikes tower over it – impressive!

I am away doing the show for most of next week. If I get the chance, I will post an update before I go. If not, it’ll happen once I’m back and have had a chance to catch up on some sleep!

 

Mid-summer round-up…

Well, it’s nearly mid-summer, going by the calendar. And as those late-summer favourites the fuchsias are budding up now, the garden has clearly got there a bit before the calendar.

Edibles:

Here begins the raspberry glut…

We usually eat raspberries from now until December. But we have no idea what varieties they are; surplus from various relatives gardens, rescued from the allotments, planted as dry twigs liberated from Woolworths for pennies, apparently dead… they tend to vanish altogether for a year or two, then suddenly you find them flourishing behind something else.

Their cousins the (thornless) blackberries won’t be far behind.

Our enormous thornless blackberry was given as a cutting by one of the Head Gardener’s workmates. Huge fruits, utterly delicious, but with a tendency to rot very fast in wet weather.

Grape clusters in the bud…

Will it be a good vintage this year? Or will we eat them all before I can do anything more sensible with them?

Spuds in the making!

And deep below these pretty flowers, there should be spuds a-forming!

Pretties:

First of the Poundland beauties!

Well, I don’t (yet) have a clue what it’s called, but this is the first of a packet of bulbs that I invested a whole pound in, early this year. I was in a branch of Poundland and couldn’t believe my eyes – just one pound for 75 healthy-looking bulbs? It had to be tried… and indeed, most of them have come up, and look promising.

“New Dawn” bud

“Rosa Mundi” complete with beetle

“New Dawn” in full flower

 

The roses are still going strong. And there’s one last spectacular and very welcome addition on the floral front: the waterlily has sent up one single stunning perfect bloom:

One lovely waterlily flower.

Enough for now!

 

I’ve fallen well behind here…

…but luckily not everything has:

Strawberries ready, chives good to go…

And that’s not all that’s ready; the little rhubarb planted last year looks as if I can start to take the odd stem now:

Rhubarb also ready to roll.

Not to be outdone, the kiwi vine has burst into flower, and there are a lot more female flowers this year than we normally see:

Kiwis up & running!

These look like female flowers.

 

The roses are going wild now; The Mayor is bowed down with blooms:

The Mayor of Casterbridge romping away…

…and DD2’s Apothecary Rose has put out its first couple of blooms:

Ooooh – it’s stripey!

Round at the front, the wisteria seems to have developed some strange blooms too:

Rosa Canina swamping my wisteria!

…and so does the drainpipe!

Who’d have roses round the door when they could have roses round the drainpipe?!

But it’s not all good; we’ve lost our eucalyptus tree. It’ll have to come down, as they’re quite brittle and it’s fairly tall. It’ll be sadly missed by the local bird population; there are usually at least 5 or 6 pottering around up there, and its swaying shape has defined the end of the garden for the last few years. But all good things come to an end eventually…

Our graceful eucalyptus will dance no more…

I wonder what we could plant to replace it?

 

 

A tiny update…

Just 3 rain-soaked pics today:

Couldn’t resist taking one of the Peony round by the front door; it just throws out one or two blooms per year & sadly it’s all too easy to miss the moment:

Fleeting beauty…

But the Aquilegias are going bananas now:

Next to the peony…

…and at the entrance to the driveway.

 

 

 

 

 

They pop up everywhere! But who could possibly object?

 

First fruits…

It won’t be long now…

First strawberry ripening up…

…with apologies for the fuzzy focus, but there’s lots of other fruit in the making. The cherry plums have set well this year:

Lots of plums in the making

and the figs seem well away too:

We may get an early crop of figs

In the meantime, my favourite rose has come into bloom; this is the Mayor of Casterbridge:

Tall, fragrant & very, very beautiful…

and the little Woolworth’s mystery rose is going strong now:

But oh no! What’s that on the leaves – Black Spot!

The corner of the garden around the wildlife pond looks green & abundant…

Broom, roses & aquilegias brighten up a green corner

…and our very own elder graces the other corner of the chicken run, creating a cool & shady space:

It smells so lovely when it first opens…

Here’s a bit of a mystery; we think it’s garlic:

A mysterious allium

but whatever it is, it’ll be tasty. The currant bushes are all laden, I can see tiny apples beginning to swell – it’s all good, as eldest son would say!

A walk on the wild side…

Well, you can’t really call our riverbank wild, but it’s hardly tame, either. I do tend to treat it as an extension of the garden; now we’ve finished our dog-walking duties, I could take the camera down to show you all why we love walking down there, dogs or no dogs! If you click on a picture, it’ll take you to a bigger version; just click “back” to return.

Reflections…

On a calm day, the reflections make you wonder if there’s a whole other world down there…

So many different colours of comfrey…

…and there’s so much comfrey, it’s like a sea of green with multicoloured flowers.

First elderflower of the season!

Almost time to start planning elderflower cordial and champagne…

Garlic Mustard or jack-by-the-hedge…

…maybe to go with a nice wild-gathered salad?

Another pic of the hawthorn

The little hawthorn tree is just heart-stoppingly beautiful when you stop to look closely at it.

A few yellow flags popping up now…

Some yellow flag irises are starting to show their pretty heads in amongst the comfrey.

Buttercups in the boggy field

Further down, in the boggy field, continuing the yellow theme, the comfrey & yellow flags give way to buttercups & clover.

Pussy willow tails in the setting sun

And you can see why they’re called “Pussy Willows” – you kind of want to stroke them! But the seeds are drifting everywhere.

Deadnettles dotting the shorter grass…

The shorter grass is dotted with pretty little deadnettles. And I’d love to know what this shy little beauty is:

A pretty thing – but what is it?

Anyway, two pics to wind this post up; firstly, one new flower in the garden, a rose of unknown provenance:

A rose by any other name…

My lovely neighbour spotted some more-than-half-dead rosebushes going for pennies when our local branch of Woolworths was closing down, and snaffled them up for me, knowing how much I love them. Two of them are still with us, but we’ll never know what variety they are! This one is similar to the Paul’s Scarlet, but with a more open flower. And last but not least, one of the reasons why we appreciate the riverbank so much is because it gives us lots, lots more than just beautiful views:

Comfrey fritters, in cider batter – yum!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Quick, chaps, up there – Mum’s not looking!

Wiggins has brought her chicks out of the broody coop…

Oh, yes, she is! Found you…

They did behave in the end…

Learning how to be proper chickens.

When you’re snooping around with a camera, it’s amazing how many different textures you see…

Intriguing textures & subtle colours by the pond…

And how little creatures lose their natural fear of you, when you’re peering through the lens of a camera rather than looking directly at them. This little chap or chap-ess was literally only  about the size of my thumbnail & looked as if it had only just opened its eyes, when it hopped across the lawn around my feet, quite unconcerned by my presence. By the colour I’m pretty sure it’s a baby wood-mouse, but I’m afraid that in a garden full of cats and chickens (superb mousers, chickens) its expected lifespan isn’t very long once out in the open.

A baby wood mouse – I hope…

Off now to pop some tomatoes into bigger pots!

Cheating a bit…

Can’t resist posting a pic of my third-favourite flower, after apple blossom & roses, although this is from the nearby riverbank rather than our own garden:

Pretty, pretty pink may blossom!

Still awaiting more buds to open, in the garden – jasmine, kiwi and more roses imminent!