End of Month View – October

Today was the last day of October, and what a day it was! Glorious sunshine and 23 degrees C – that was the temperature officially for London, in my garden it tipped slightly higher in the afternoon. Not a bad way to end October. The next few days the temperature is going to drop around 10 degrees. We will certainly notice that! I am sure today’s summerlike weather must have broken yet another weather record, but who’s counting, we seem to have broken one weather record after the other the last few years, weather records somehow seem to have gone out of fashion. Who cares, it was amazing today!

Despite the summer weather my garden still knows it’s autumn – some plants are dying down, some are slowing down, and some are just starting to flower or about to emerge. Never a dull moment in my garden!

I had a photo of my thermometer last ‘End of Month View’ post too, on the 30th of September it showed almost 25 degrees. Today it showed just over 23 when I remembered to take a photo, but it crept up to 24 an hour earlier when I was busy filming.

Some of my longest flowering fuchsias have finally decided to take a well-earned break, they have flowered since beginning of July 2013 so that’s 16 months non-stop flowering so far. They are still in flower all of them, but most of the ‘Annabelle’ fuchsias have started to get yellow leaves. No wonder, after such a long flowering time! I have plenty of this year’s fuchsias to get me through the winter, like this 'Perpetual Falls', should we get another frost-free winter (fingers crossed!). We got two amazing summers in a row so we could get two mild winters in a row – just leave out the flooding please, we can all manage without that bit :-)

This is the last of the sunflowers, the rest have been cut down or have blown down in the various small or big storms we have had. The tail-end of Gonzalo which landed here Tuesday last week took half of the other remaining sunflower, the rest I managed to prop up with lots of canes, and after I was finished filming today it ended in the compost bin. I think this one will follow soon.

The five Primula vulgaris Belarina 'Amethyst Ice' I had in the front garden containers last winter have been hibernating under other plants during the summer and have now been let out to play again this week, after I discovered they had started flowering. It always amazes me how little care and attention many plants need, they just get on with it. I like plants like that!

I have made TWO videos from my garden today, one short and one a bit longer. The longer one is 5.54 min long – the reason for such a long video is that it’s got one of my absolute favourite music to it, and I just didn’t have the heart to cut off neither the beginning nor the end, so I just had to make a video long enough to fit the music – which was 5:54 minutes. Simples :-)
The music is Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar by Joaquín Rodrigo, I have used the first movement today, and one day I will try to fit in the second movement in another movie, because that piece is even more beautiful – although nearly 11 minutes long....not sure how I will end up using it but....one day. I can still remember when my parents gave me this LP (yes, CD’s weren’t invented back then!) for Christmas, I was 15 and that’s 35 years ago.

Anyway, the short movie first. I know sometimes my movies can be a bit....ehrm....longwinded? I just have so much to show you! Well, today I have played around with the new setting on my iPad’s camera, the time lapse function. Have you tried it yet? Or have you also been frustrated with all the errors and troubles since upgrading to iOS8 so you haven’t had time to enjoy the new functions and settings? After the latest update the other day things seem to be working better so today I had a go at time lapse. By the way, if you haven’t upgraded to iOS8 yet, you won’t have this, it came with the new operating system. OK, so now I have tried it, and now I probably won’t use it again. It is too fast for anything normal use and way too slow for filming for example plants grow or flowers open or anything else I can think of – and no settings for speed. If you have tried it on anything successfully, please let me know in your comment. After 3 takes that were useless, I decided to go slowly, veeeeeery slowly, that way, you can actually get to see something.

So here’s 1 minute – exactly, of my main garden and my front garden, and a short view of my neighbours’ front gardens too, where I have containers with plants. Oh, and you get to see my kitchen and hallway, twice actually, once going out and once coming back again. Blink, and you’ll miss it! (Best viewed in HD)

OK, I admit it, if you haven’t seen my garden before you’d probably be none the wiser after that, but if you have been here many times before you could probably work out most of it.

Let’s slow it down to normal pace now, I got the second video ready for you. I tried to engage my cat into some interesting behaviour so I could film him too today, but he was having none of it. I am afraid the pieces of him in the video show him at his most indolent and typical cattish behaviour – lazying in a chair in the sunshine. Oh well, there is one piece of ‘wildlife’ in the video, the squirrels are back, and they are not lazying around. My goodness what a racket they make when they are courting! I haven’t got that bit on the video, the female is sitting in the tree and the male is flying up and down the tree trunk whilst shrieking this raw, loud sound that almost sounds like a crow. Anyway, sit back and enjoy the music - and my garden on the last day of October. Best viewed in HD!

The next time you’ll see my garden will probably be on GBBD the 15th November, and by then it will look quite different. In the front garden it will be out with the old and in with the new, the winter bedding is already here, waiting to get planted. I will save the old plants that can be saved, but some I won’t bother with. It is a matter of space too, space for pots over the winter, so some will just end up at the council’s composting service. And the dahlias will all have gone by next time, hopefully I will have planted the daffodil bulbs I have bought by then, they have waited a long time to get in the ground, between the dahlias. And by middle of next month I should have finished pulling out pots from the beds, I have done a lot this month, but there are still more pots to take out to make way for spring bulbs. I have already planted 300 crocuses and 100 daffodils, but the area around the dahlias is inaccessible until I have cut everything down so I can’t plant anything there yet. My idea is to have crocuses and early, miniature daffodils between the dahlias, just to have some interest early in the year before the dahlias start to emerge. That bed has only lilies and dahlias so a few (hundred) crocuses would be nice :-)

That was it for tonight, and for this month, by the time you read this it will be November already and just a few short weeks until Christmas. That feels weird, having in mind that when I woke up today I sat on the steps in my garden for a while, just in my nightie, bare-feet, and with no dressing gown, no cardigan, no blanket, just my cotton nightie – with my face towards the sun I just wanted to make sure I got the last of the summer. I can get through the winter when the summer lasts this long – and when spring is only a few short months away :-)

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.

Until next time, take care.