End of Month View – September

September brought the summer back here in London, it’s been lovely! Not too hot, not too cold, hardly any rain and the few drops we have had have mainly come as some short thundery showers at night. Payback will come when my water bill arrives in November though, as I have had to water a lot more than I usually do at this time of year. It has been the driest September on record – mind you, we had the wettest January on record this year too so I suppose it kind of evens out! The weather forecast says we get to keep this lovely weather until the end of this week and that’s it, autumn will arrive whether we want it or not!

The photos and movie for this end of month post was taken last Sunday, and it was yet another glorious day.

Almost 25 degrees C, no wind and a hazy sunshine. Perfect day for being outside in my garden.

My garden is showing signs of slowing down here and there, whilst other things are emerging. There is always something new on its way up in my garden. This summer has been amazing in terms of the weather, but I have spent a lot of time and effort watering. Last year we had a very good summer too, but the weather was much hotter, and the summer didn’t seem to last as long, this year it seems like we have had summer weather since May – or is it just my memory?

Last year I battled spider mites in my garden, this year I haven’t seen spider mites at all – instead I have been plagued by mildew. I find it everywhere now, even on plants that never had any issue with it before, like dahlias and hydrangeas. Oh, there is always something isn’t it?! Two of my clematises looked particularly bad from mildew so I cut them completely down in the beginning of August– can’t exactly call it a Chelsea chop, but they are both growing like mad now and Clematis 'Ville de Lyon' is only days from opening the first flower again!

My row of Geranium ‘Pink Chiffon’ has just started their fourth (or is it fifth?) flush of flowers this year, loads of new buds and new leaves. They should probably all have had a new and bigger pot, but if I did that they would no longer fit on this shelf – and where would I put NINE pots of geraniums in my garden? Not sure what to do, unless I give them a root prune and pop them back in the same pot with some new compost. Maybe they will like that? Or maybe they won’t. Better to wait until they are finished flowering anyway :-)

I have made a movie from my garden this time too - and as always, if you have the speed for it, my videos are best viewed in full screen (button in the bottom right corner) but remember to change to 720p or 1080p, depending on your download speed or else it will get too fuzzy. Here’s 3 minutes and 46 seconds of my September Garden, accompanied by some nice music composed by John Rutter.

This is the first time I am also filming in my front garden, and at the end of the movie I seem to stray into my neighbours’ gardens on both sides. There is a reason for that, just watch the movie and I’ll tell you afterwards :-)

I hope I managed to convey the serene and calm feeling it was walking around in my garden last Sunday in the nice summer weather. I know my garden looks even more like a jungle than last month and I should probably have chosen a more wilder music for my movie – but the music, ‘Lullaby for Pegi’ seemed so appropriate for how my garden was that day – calm, serene, secluded and very summery.

OK, so to my neighbours’ front gardens....well, they have never had any plants in their front gardens, so this spring I got so fed up watching all the rubbish they both usually fill their front gardens with that I offered to lend them both plants, if they would promise to keep the rubbish in their rubbish bins. I take care of the plants, water them and they are mine, I haven’t given them away – they just get to enjoy them. But it also benefits me, as I have a nice front garden on each side of mine every time I am outside in my own front garden. Besides, I had too many plants anyway, all these are cuttings from my back garden. So, a win-win for everyone. And the rubbish? Well, it seems it is very difficult to get it in the bins and nowhere else....but it it’s been better than before since I gave them each 3 large containers with plants, so I guess I will let the plants stay for now :-)

My last photo today is from the big bowl I have on my table. I have sunflowers everywhere at the moment, as the dark red and dark orange sunflowers broke during the heavy rain we had a week ago at night. When I got out next morning I had 4 tall sunflowers all tangled up with broken branches. The other yellow sunflowers were just fine though, they have softer and more flexible branches and had no damage at all. I also lost a couple of branches on the tallest hydrangea, but it will survive that just fine. So now 4 out of 8 sunflowers are cut down, didn’t expect to see them gone this early, but I have all the yellow still in place and if they last as long as last year they will continue to flower until late November. I am linking this post to ‘In a Vase on a Monday’, thanks to Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for hosting this meme.

That was the tour for end of September, thanks to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog for hosting the meme End of Month View, if you head over to her blog you will find many more End of Month Views.

And before you go, perhaps you would like to visit my YouTube Channel - youtube.com/user/Heleneutaylor? Here you can see other movies I have made, and subscribe to future movies from me. Or, you can click the info symbol in the top right corner of the video, it will give you a subscribe link.

Until next time, take care.


PS. If you enjoy watching gardening videos on YouTube, here is a wonderful video showing all the ins and outs on how to grow chocolate M&Ms – well worth watching!