Well we finally got the garage roof re-done, just as storm Austen and Boelo hit but we were lucky and had no damage. The trellis behind the garage is still just hanging on but there has been too much on for Harry to fix that just now. We did also have a storm Chloe but that didn’t amount to much. As usual I am trying to keep a lot of my potted plants from getting waterlogged by putting them under the table and under the bench (with a bit of black plastic over the seat).
We had a couple of slugs resting under the birdfeeder lid a month or so ago and this time it was an entire group of them. Did you know that the collective noun for a group of slugs is a cornucopia or a slime or a phlegm of slugs? I haven’t been in the garden much this month so haven’t seen much else in the way of wildlife. I did have a look round at the lovely autumn colours though and checked what was still in flower.
Out in the front garden Harry usually cuts back the climbing just as it comes into its fantastic colouration and I have to curb his enthusiasm but this year he just left it to trail all over the paving and I think it looked great. It was a bit reminiscent of the ceramic poppy installation at the Tower of London. It is all cut back now though.
In the back garden the acer palmatum is getting redder by the minute. There is a gap at one side so I tried to get a photo from the inside as-it-were towards the sun. A lot of shrubs turn yellow or golden in autumn and one such shrub is the hydrangea petiolaris.
The acer will get brighter red then the leaves will shrivel up and some will drop and some stay on the shrub for a while longer while going brownish purple.
The crab apples look great just now and have a lovely droop to the branches) which Harry doesn’t like but I do as I can get underneath them). Last year they were a bit deeper orange at this time. These ones don’t just fall and make a mess of the ground but stay on the tree for a long time. The birds will eventually eat them.
Still in flower are the erigeron, fuchsia, cyclamen and some persicaria. Most of the roses have stopped now but the small pink rambling rose is still flowering away. I had cut back the hardy geranium Roxanne and it has produced a few more flowers. I put the oxalis palmifrons outdoors this year but it still didn’t flower. I don’t know what I am doing wrong – it looks healthy enough but I did have to give it a treatment of nematodes for fungus gnats.
Indoors a couple of cyclamen died but the other 3 survived another year. I have no idea why 2 of them died as they are usually very predictable and always come back year after year. They all had some ants about them in the summer but I treated them with cinnamon and that got rid of the ants. I started watering them all at the same time but only 3 came back. The streptocarpus saxorum are doing well and still have some flowers on. The Christmas cactus, schlumbergera truncate, is flowering away. The pink version is nice but I do miss my salmon coloured one. There is another slug in the conservatory which is determined on nibbling the lithops that had flowered this year.
Things to do this month are: to keep the pond clear of falling leaves, pot up the tulips (I only have a few), keep moving plants around so they don’t get water-logged, make a few bags of leaf compost, chop back some of the tall droopy perennials that have gone over, and find that slug that keeps coming in to the conservatory. I do need to re-pot a few of my larger house plants too. I need to make a few decisions about the pond and the wet area under the down-pipe. The right hand side of the pond is very over-gown and I would like to get rid of the rush that is there. There are a few irises that haven’t flowered in a few years so they should really come out. Maybe the primula should be in an area that is slightly more damp rather than just being in the over-spill area as it doesn’t often over-spill? A lot of the water lilies should come out – I originally only had one plant but it has self seeded and now there are quite a few. Ideally I would like to move the tall fern that is growing in front of the rodgersia into the corner where the rodgersia is at the moment as it does tend to grow taller and shades out the rodgersia and it is has made a rather large clump even though we dug some up and moved it a few years ago and also gave a large clump away. Harry however has a sore knee so that may have to wait a bit.