tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62652136877392633732024-02-08T15:27:11.456+00:00Graphicality-UKI am Helene U. Taylor from Graphicality.co.uk, and my blog is about creativity and just about anything else. I often say "Anything interesting is interesting". This blog will reflect what I find interesting at any moment in time. Hopefully you will find it interesting too!HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.comBlogger353125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-5052756021807646272018-01-31T23:47:00.000+00:002018-02-01T06:57:41.412+00:00Blogging break from the Serendipity Garden<div style="text-align: justify;">
I guess it was about time I took a break from blogging, I have been hanging on here just because I didn't feel I could let go - but I have decided now. I am taking a break. Not quitting. Just taking a break. So please don't delete me if you have me on your list, you never know, I might decide to write a post again now and then, but I won't continue with any regular updates.</div>
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I have felt for a long time that I have been neglecting my visitors, and blogging is a give and take - you have to put in a lot to receive a lot. I so appreciate all the lovely comments I get on my posts, I have said it before and say it again - every comment is like a nice hug to me! So it feels a bit sad when I can't manage to visit everyone back, and I have sadly neglected a lot of people the last year. I have visited some of you and read your posts, but I haven't left many comments. But I have been thinking of you :-)</div>
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I will try to continue to make my garden movies on YouTube, but they might not come as clockwork on the last day of the month - I struggle with deadlines and it is going to be refreshing to no longer have that hanging over me. I want to make a movie when the weather is nice and my body is feeling up for it, not when the calendar demands it.</div>
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Last year went in a blur of bathroom renovation and health issues - my bathroom was finally finished on the 6th December. I started the process the week after moving into this house in May 2015. Things move slowly when done through the council, despite me pushing and shoving, ringing, emailing, writing letters - whatever means I could think of - to move my case forward. But it's done now, the bathroom is finished and looking good. I am still waiting for a small job to be done in my kitchen, they are going to replace the shelves in one of my cupboards with drawers so I can reach better. I have only waited since May 2016 for this to be done.</div>
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This year I want to concentrate on getting my garden fitted with a watering system and sort out my shed with a clear plastic roof so it can become part greenhouse. I also have some projects I have been thinking about for a long time which there never seem to be time to sit down with. I haven't made a book since 2014 and I have hundreds of photos of roses from my garden that I wanted to make a book about. Maybe I can find time to do that. And I have some more movie projects I would like to do too. If only there were a few more hours in the day :-)</div>
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I will still be posting photos from my garden on Facebook so if you are not on my friend list yet please send me a request. And if I could find an easier way to post photos on Instagram I will start that up again, but I am not happy with the photos from my phone and saving my camera photos to my PC and then transferring them to my phone to upload them to Instagram is seriously cumbersome. There must be a better way to do it!</div>
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So this is not a goodbye, just a -See you later some time :-)</div>
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Helene</div>
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My latest garden movie, filmed yesterday, with music from the movie Millers Crossing. </div>
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HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-1283514064513079872017-12-23T21:22:00.000+00:002017-12-23T21:22:08.909+00:00Merry Christmas from The Serendipity Garden<div style="text-align: justify;">
I bet you all are busy preparing for Christmas right now, but maybe you can spare a moment and come and visit my garden for a few minutes? I have no photos today, just a movie which should set you in the right Christmas mood, should you need it :-)</div>
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The movie was filmed over 3 days last weekend, look out for the busy squirrel running around putting peanuts into pots and containers all over my garden. No doubt he will be back soon when he is hungry - to dig them all up again! The choice of the second song was made because of the pigeon - it looks like it is bopping with the music, I had to find a song fairly the same beat as it was doing lol....OK, no more teasers - I will let you see the rest in peace. The movie is best viewed in HD in full screen - and with your speakers thoroughly turned up :-)</div>
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Music:</div>
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'White Christmas' - Louis Armstrong</div>
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'Merry Christmas Everyone' - Shakin' Steven</div>
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'Silent Night' - Michael Bublé</div>
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Happy Christmas to you all!</div>
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Helene</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-91806956058326593682017-11-30T23:42:00.000+00:002017-12-01T00:48:25.036+00:00Winter has arrived in London<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's last week of November, bone chillingly cold, windy and just above freezing - typically start of winter in London. I even heard on the news today that there was almost 10 minutes of a few snow flurries in the air. Yep, it comes on the news when there is a few snow flurries in the air in London....doesn't happen that often you know! But nothing stops for a bit of cold weather in my garden, everywhere you turn there are flowers, you just have to look a bit closer and they might not be as showy as in June and July although some flowers are exceptionally showy and photogenic.</div>
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Like my princesses which are flowering their heart out right now, so cute and so late out of bed yet again - so appropriate and in sync with their owner :-) The description of Schizostylis coccinea 'Pink Princess' says flowering from July to October but mine flower November - January every year. If anyone think these look a bit like gladioli then you are right, they are related. They are often called kaffir lilies, but they are not a true lilly. I had a rather big clump of this plant in a container that sadly got infested with vine weevils (never ending battle when you have lots of containers....). I took the whole sad looking clump up, washed away all soil and re-planted everything that looked reasonably OK in small batches in pots, gave the plants a stern talking to, which seems to have helped - and got 12 new, healthy plants. Yikes! I have given away a few of them as I haven't got room for that many princesses, the rest are now either flowering or in bud. Nothing is dead in my garden until it is thoroughly, definitely beyond all rescue dead. Until then it is hope.</div>
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The garden is slowly winding down for the winter, although still more green than any other colour.</div>
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I am really missing the tall tree that was taken down last month in the car park behind my garden, it used to shelter my garden from some of the chilly winds - the garden is now wide open and I really notice it.</div>
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The cold weather the last week has meant that some of my plants have had move into my shed for a few days. There is no heating in here, and no other light than what's coming through the small windows so it is far from ideal and would not be possible for a whole winter - but our cold snaps rarely last for more than a few days or up to a week so it's acceptable.</div>
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We haven't had any frost yet, it has been hovering just above and the coldest night I have had was 0.3 C degrees.</div>
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A bit too cold for some of my tropical and borderline hardy, but inside the shed it's just that bit warmer in case it dips below freezing. This is a Pelargonium 'Apple Blossom' cutting, the mother plants are still outside.</div>
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Tomorrow they are all coming out to get water and daylight again as we will be back above 4-5 degrees for this time. This is an Alstroemeria still budding and flowering.</div>
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My desert plants are still outside, but have moved into a plastic tent to shelter them from too much rain. Hah! As if that would be much of a risk....we still haven't had much rain, a few hours here and there with weeks in between is just so short of what we need. When I say to people (non gardeners) that I wish for 3 weeks with non-stop rain they look at me as if I am mad - but that's what we need. I'd rather have it now than in June or July, thank you very much!</div>
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As for showy plants - it doesn't get much more showy than camellias at this time of year. This is Camellia 'Takanini' and my camera is not very good with proper red colours, not sure why, but they always ends up much more saturated than they are in real life so I have to tone them down in Photoshop, which doesn't look like the real thing - and my CamCorder has exactly the same problem, maybe a Canon issue....are you listening Canon? Red is a prominent colour in my garden! Anyway, Takanini is an absolutely gorgeous camellia and I am so glad I got it some years ago, it has grown nicely from that tiny cutting I bought. It has so many buds now I wouldn't even be able to count them!</div>
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And Camellia 'Volunteer' has turned out to be just as much a spectacular camellia with huge pretty flowers. Give it a few years and it will grow into a nice little tree.</div>
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Autumn isn't really over completely in my garden, I still have a few flowers on my unnamed Asters which has been flowering since May.</div>
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Some of the roses have taken a well-earned break, others are still flowering, just not as much as in the summer. This is Scepter'd Isle.</div>
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And this is 'Iceberg'.</div>
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And let me finish with a final photo of 'Iceberg' again.</div>
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My garden movie this time was recorded a few days ago, in 3 degrees C and ice cold wind, the kind of cold weather that feels so cold you really question whether your thermometer has died. And I am no stranger to cold weather, I am used to winters in Norway where we often had week after week with minus 20-25 C and usually a couple of weeks here and there with much colder. The coldest I have experienced where I lived in southern Norway before moving to London was minus 37 C (-34.6 F) - I went to work that day, driving my car :-)</div>
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And I can still remember the coldest day we had when I was a child living up north. Minus 43C! That's minus 45.4 in Fahrenheit. That's cold. We went to school that day, but we didn't have to go outside to play in the breaks - we could stay inside - if we wanted to. Just to remind you, in your freezer there's probably about minus 18 degrees C, if it's working properly. But all that aside - the freezing cold wind from the river Thames here in London, combined with close to zero degrees as we have now, feels so cold compared to minus 20 in a dry, inland mountain area of Norway! I'd swap any day, well, just for a few days though, you can't grow camellias in a Norwegian mountain garden in November!</div>
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Music choice for this month's movie is meant to reflect the sombre weather, hope I didn't go totally overboard, but I love this piece and the music by 2cellos :-)<br />As always, if you have the speed for it, my movies are best in full screen in HD.</div>
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One final photo, just to remind you all that these days it is important to chill out and take it easy between preparations for Christmas. My neighbour's cat is a master in chilling out and comes here every day to do just that.<br />
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Next month's post and movie will hopefully be ready just before Christmas, see you then!</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-2446821726018938822017-10-31T23:42:00.000+00:002017-11-01T04:58:28.751+00:00It’s fox eviction time!<div style="text-align: justify;">
It has been on the cards for a while; I think I have been patient – very patient to be honest. The fox cub is now an unruly 'teenager' and old enough to leave home, the mum has left the den long ago, the sibling cub is long gone or has passed away – mortality is about 50% among urban foxes - thankfully – or else we would be swamped with foxes! So 2 weeks ago one of my garden helpers and her husband were here and we dismantled the smallest of my shed to get access to the large void behind it to clear all the bramble and Virginia creeper behind it. </div>
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Over the years, this space has become a perfect space for the foxes to hide and make a den for their cubs – completely sheltered and totally inaccessible for me to clear. The roof of my large shed was creaking under the weight of the increasing amount of bramble and had started to leak. It needs re-felting and the only way to get access was to take down the small shed and clear the whole lot away. A huge job – and I already miss my tool shed.</div>
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Getting in behind the small space between the shed and the wall was not easy with years of leaves rotting down. Better not be scared of spiders! Clearing out this became my job – I saved all of this and sifted it, it became an amazing leaf mould!</div>
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Seeing the big area behind the shed for the first time was great, I had only imagined it before. It took us a whole Sunday to cut down all this and put into bags.</div>
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And this is what I am left with.</div>
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This is hard-packed soil with roots and broken paving slabs and pieces of old concrete that someone in the past has just left here. I bet 2 hunky young men with pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows could clear this area in an afternoon for me....but I don’t know any hunky young men who would do that. </div>
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If I did, I would have asked them to lay these paving slabs for me that I have been working on the last....ooohh 2 weeks or so. I try to do one or maybe 2 slabs every day I am out in the garden. This is the raised area I have my tropical plants on, where I eventually might have a pond, but that means more dreaming of muscular fit men, as this raised area is filled with 2-3 tons of soil which will have to be emptied out first before any water can go in....In the mean time I am settling for having plants on top. But the pots were difficult to place before so I am now trying to make it better with some leftover paving slabs. I am getting there eventually, just working in my usual turtle tempo. And since I am having this long-term dream of a pond I am not laying the slabs with concrete, just levelling the soil under. Ask any bricklayer if that's possible and they will say nope, you can't do that. Well, you can - it just takes longer to do. You have to make sure all the soil is thoroughly and equally wet, and have a little dry soil on the side to use to drizzle over as a thin layer before putting the slab down. And have a good eye and use a spirit level. Every time that bubble ends up in the middle in each direction is a cause for celebration! I sat on the ground most of the first summer I was here and did the slabs that replaced the lawn that was here before exactly the same way and those slabs have been walked on for 2 years now - still looking good and lying nicely (reasonably) straight. </div>
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Here are my tools for the moment – stool, caddy and trolley – and a huge crowbar. OK, I was hiding a few things in this picture, those who knows me well know that I need my crutches too, but I don’t put them in my photos – and I usually work at night, with flood lights on, and headphones with music on full blast. Oh, and the cats in the area always pop in to say hello when I work – and so do the fox cub – even if it has been evicted. It is still coming. Didn’t really get the message. It is so tame now that sometimes I think it is the neighbour’s ginger cat that has just walked past me, and only when I turn around to talk to him do I realise it is the fox cub looking back at me. They are about the same size and not that different in colour under my LED floodlight. I have even had the fox cub sitting on my backdoor step when my door was open, looking through the net curtain I always have to keep insects out. I suppose the cub didn't understand how to get in through it, but that's probably just a question of time, it didn't take the neighbour cat more than a few attempts before he mastered going through the magnet lock on the curtain. I bet the fox would learn it just as quickly, they are clever!</div>
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Anyway, all this work means my garden look more like a garden centre at the moment, there are pots everywhere.</div>
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I have just had to place the plants where I could find room for them.</div>
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Did I mention there are plants everywhere?</div>
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Including on my table....</div>
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OK, let me find some plants to talk about. I posted this photo on Facebook last week – with the title ‘Last strawberry and first Hellebore’.</div>
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I am happy to report that both ‘Florence’ and ‘Toscana’ are still flowering so there are more strawberries to come – and most of my Helleborus niger are now either flowering or budding.</div>
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This time of year is quite exciting in my London garden – it’s like having 3 seasons at once and happens every year. I am still not finished with many summer plants, and autumn is barely started – and yet here next to the strawberries is a rhododendron with flower buds almost bursting - and snowdrops already out of ground.</div>
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And turn around and you will see my cherry tomatoes which I thought I had to clean pick and ripen indoors, but it is still going strong and giving me enough tomatoes to eat almost every day. I am not cutting it down yet, and this photo is taken 30th October. Not bad or what?</div>
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It is still flowering and the tomatoes are still getting red, I just give them 2 days indoors before I eat them and they taste just as they did in July.</div>
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And next to the tomatoes is my abutilon, which I almost gave away because the nursery sent me the wrong colour. I ordered a dark red one and they sent me an orange. </div>
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It looks gorgeous – still wrong colour for my garden, but for now it is allowed to stay.</div>
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The garden is slowly winding down in certain parts.</div>
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Getting autumn colours....</div>
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....while other parts are just gearing up for their most important show of the year!</div>
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Look at Camellia ‘Takanini’ – isn’t this the most gorgeous flowers you have seen?! And it will continue to flower until March or April and possibly May if we have a cool spring. I often say that the camellias are taking over when the roses are having a break but that’s a bit nonsense in my garden as most of my roses are still flowering and will continue until I cut them down in late January.</div>
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Next to ‘Takanini’ is 'Winter's Snowman', a completely white camellia, still quite small as I bought it as a cutting. It will be a lovely plant when it gets a bit taller.</div>
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And third one to flower – almost there is another peony camellia, just like ‘Takanini’, this one is called 'Volunteer', with huge flowers in a soft pink with a lighter edge, the flowers look as they have been dusted with icing sugar.</div>
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There are more spectacular colours – this is not Photoshopped – this is as close as true to the real colour of Acer 'Amagi Shigure'.</div>
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And this is a plant I haven’t talked about before – might not be known to many – it is an Impatiens and it is about 7ft tall. What? Nope, I am not lying, it’s true. It is an Impatiens tinctoria, a hardy perennial, and it grows like mad – a bit unruly, definitely a plant for the back of the border, but these flowers just keep coming non-stop and it seems like it will keep going until we have frost – if we get any. The flowers look like orchids and the plant is enormous – I have re-potted twice and will have to do it again next spring as I am not sure if I am going to put it in the ground. It is currently placed in between the roses which seem to be a good place for it – feet in the shade, face in the sun. <a href="http://www.strangewonderfulthings.com/214.htm" target="_blank"><b><u>Here is more info for the curious.</u></b></a></div>
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Do you remember my cosmos from last year? Those that grew so tall that they were much taller than my shed? They are even taller this year. And even later to flower – some of them have just started flowering this week! A cool August and topsy turvy September is probably to blame for that. Deadheading is probably futile to think of....all these were sown outdoors in small pots and planted in these containers. Easy-peasy, just wish they were a bit earlier to flower - after all, they are meant to be summer flowers and.....ehem, summer is loooong gone by now.</div>
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I’ll just admire them for as long as I have them and hope we don’t get a frost night for a long time – it only takes ONE frost night to kill them all.</div>
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And finally, I have bought one more birdbath, the birds have christened it already....I can’t for my life understand why they need to poo in the water they drink and bathe in – but there you go, I am not a bird so how would I know. The birdbath is made of recycled car tyres, great idea, looks good – it actually looks like stone, you have to touch it to realise it is not made of stone. But I appreciate the light weight when cleaning it, I can just tip it over and hose it down. Bert the frog has made himself a home in the birdbath and there is still ample space for even a pigeon or two to have a wash-down.</div>
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I usually finish my blog post with a garden movie, but having in mind all the work going on at the moment I have not made my usual movie – instead I have something else I hope you will enjoy. </div>
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People say never work wild children or pets - try adding wildlife to the equation! I have spent 6 months trying to film various birds, squirrels, foxes and more or less wild cats visiting my garden. Sometimes they walk around my legs while I work in my tiny garden - and I NEVER have my camera close by when that happens of course - sods law! Some of the footage was filmed by simply setting my camera on a tripod and press record and let the card catch whatever came by. Usually nothing. Hours of sifting through absolutely nothing, just for 3 cats and a squirrel to run over the wall while I was checking the camera....sods law again :-)</div>
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I tried for 3 weeks to get footage of the foxes walking over the wall, they do that every evening, but all the footage I got was too dark to be useful. That's foxes for you, sleeping all day, roaming all night. They are in good company, I do the same. Well, I am not roaming very far, I keep to my own garden, but I am sleeping most of the day and up all night.</div>
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I hope you enjoy the movie :-) </div>
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Music: Baby Elephant Walk from the movie Hatari, performed by City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.</div>
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See you next month, until then take care,</div>
Helene</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-60694592935405571622017-09-30T23:30:00.000+01:002017-10-01T03:03:02.840+01:00Where have all the trees gone?<div style="text-align: justify;">
It’s definitely autumn in London, can’t deny it anymore. The nights are getting cooler and we have had much welcome rain several times. We have even had our first storm, Aileen. But we have had many lovely, warm sunny days in September and this past week it has been absolutely lovely with many days around 25 degrees during the day. Every year at this time I invite a couple with their young son over for an afternoon and we celebrate her birthday just past and mine on the 9th October. It has become a tradition to have a picnic in my garden if we can, and with the lovely weather this year I had my fingers crossed for this year’s celebration which we are doing Sunday the 1st. However, the forecast is for heavy rain and to top it up we are getting the tail end of hurricane Maria and Lee this weekend so it will be rather windy....I think our picnic will be in my kitchen this year!</div>
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Last Friday I woke up to the sound of chainsaws and wood shredders. I used to have a tall, lovely avian cherry tree in the carpark behind the tall wall in my garden. Part of the tree was hanging into my garden and was in a way a major feature in my garden. There were three avian cherry trees in a row, and two on the side of the council building but ‘mine’ was the tallest, widest and prettiest. Just look what an amazing sight it was in full bloom.</div>
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I am sad to say, the tree is no more – along with the other further down. The council has chopped all five of them down to the ground. The skyline in my garden is so weird, every time I look up it seems so strange not having the tree there.</div>
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I haven’t got any good photos of the whole tree in leaf, it was so tall that I could not got on a distance without getting on the roof on my house (not likely to happen!) – but you can get an impression from the top-left corner seeing just a small part of the dense tree from this photo from last September.</div>
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The tree contributed to a nice micro-climate in my garden with a higher temperature in the winter than normal. It will be interesting to see what difference this will make, and the impact it will have for my borderline tender plants. More trips to my shed during the winter I guess. The only tiny silver lining is that I will get evening sun in my garden from now on, but I would rather have liked to keep ‘my tree’ if they had asked me.</div>
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My view in that direction has now changed dramatically. Instead of seeing that amazing tree, all I can see is the roof of the community centre. The reason for taking down the trees was apparently that the trees had become so big that the roots had started to damage that building. Bad planning is what I call it. The council planted those trees, they should have read up about them before they planted them, they should have known how big they grow. Research, research....The trees were home to hundreds of birds, some of them have now moved into my garden and I can already see it on my birdfeeders even if it has only gone a week - and there is a cacophony of different birds fighting over the space here. I am happy as long as they can keep the peace among themselves, but I suspect some will move on as my small garden can’t accommodate them all. </div>
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Autumn is a time when I do a lot of pruning – I am not chopping down anything – nothing that drastic, but I have done a rather big pruning of the hibiscus. It is just too big for this garden so instead of an early spring pruning I am now trying an autumn pruning and I hope it won’t regrow just as quickly by doing it at this time of year. I cut it down just as much 18 months ago and look at the difference on the previous photo. This time I have taken a couple of branches from the honeysuckle growing on the wall behind and trained them into the hibiscus. I had some very long ones that were just the right length to reach up into the hibiscus to the right ‘sniff-height’ and every time I go to and from the shed I just have to stop and have a sniff. That honeysuckle is just out of this world! I don’t know the name as I just got it as a cutting, but it smells like Granny Smith apples with sugar on!! If the honeysuckle gets enough light and water it will flower on and off all year on and being evergreen it will be a feature in the hibiscus when little else happen there. When the hibiscus is full of leaves and flowers the honeysuckle will just seek towards the surface and light and still flower. That’s the plan anyway. I’ll get back to you on how successful it became in a years’ time :-)</div>
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OK, some photos from the garden? Some things are winding down, some things are just about to start blooming. Nothing ever stops in my garden.</div>
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My Japanese Garden has colourful leaves and is full of plants – I can hardly get through on the path.</div>
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Last year the branches of the plumtree were so long they touched the wall and the fence so I cut off all the branches leaving the trunk so I could manage to move around. The plumtree has got its branches back and I have pruned it again – but this time I have just shortened all the branches. I am so undecided what to do with this tree, I would like to keep it, but need it to be tall and slim (who wouldn’t?!). This is just trial and error, fortunately plumtrees grow back fast so I don’t have to wait for long to see the result every time I prune.</div>
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While we are here in my Japanese Garden, look at the camellias, almost ready to flower. Another 6 weeks or so and the first flowers are here. ‘Takanini’ is one I have had for a good few years, from my previous garden, ‘Volunteer’ with very glossy leaves was new last year. Both are very early flowering in my garden. And not long after will the first of the rhododendrons start and then it goes on and on until late May. All the flowers here in this part of the garden is kind of making up for the lack of roses the few months from when I cut them down in late January till the first ones start flowering again in late April or early May. </div>
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Speaking of roses, it is still many months until I am cutting them down and most of them will go on producing flowers until the day I prune. This is Queen Elizabeth.</div>
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This is 'Macmillan Nurse'</div>
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And this is a pot rose without a name – sorry it is not such a good photo, my camera can’t capture the amazing colours, and please excuse the mildew, these pot roses are notorious for getting mildew. I had planned to slowly replace all my cheap pot roses with nursery bought miniatures with better disease resistance as I get so fed up with all the spraying and pruning to no avail – they still get mildew. There are better varieties, I have one called George Best that doesn’t get mildew at all. Oh well, all in good time.</div>
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Here is one trooper that doesn’t get mildew at all, ‘The Generous Gardener’ is really generous, especially with new growth. Turn your back to him for a few days and he has thrown out a couple of 2m long branches in places you really didn’t expect or plan to have your climber growing. He was meant to grow up against my wall but I have to admit I have lost that task for this year, he is now growing on the wall, along the path, inside three other roses, inside the jasmine and is well on the way to overtake the obelisk in the middle of the rose bed. Very generous indeed. When I get to January I will rein him in, but for now I will simply just let him continue. The reward is flowers like these. The scent is like tutti-frutti with lemon. Heaven! </div>
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And next to the very generous gardener is ‘Iceberg’, poor thing – not enough water for it here in London despite that I have flooded this bed many times this summer. Yep, you guessed it, mildew.</div>
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Some other flowers? A pretty hosta flower flower for example? This is ‘So Sweet’ and I think it deserves its name.</div>
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My peculiar gerbera is doing its thing again. I bought it from Ikea here in London some 14-15 years ago and have re-potted it a couple of times but never fertilised it. All it gets is water. Gerbera normally flowers in spring and summer, and while other gerberas flowers like mad, mine looks a little sad. Come autumn, mine spring into action and produce a new set of leaves and starts to produce flowers. And then it throws out 2-3 flowers ALL winter come rain or shine (or frost) all the way to end of May when it starts to look a bit sad again. Every year. I wonder if my gerbera thinks we are in Australia?</div>
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One plant that isn’t season confused is my lovely Aster. I have tried growing other types of asters but they tend to get mildew and don’t like the heavy soil we have here. This aster is perfect for the soil and like a bit of shade too. It needs a bit of staking or a piece of string around its belly – I have done both, but apart from that it is refreshingly easy. Come first frost I just cut it to the ground and that’s it.</div>
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The pelargoniums and alstroemerias however are completely opposite – they don’t have any dormancy periods in my garden and flower all year round. They all need a trip into my shed if we have frost so most of them are in pots, but I have a few alstroemerias in the ground and they survive fine but with less flowers and much later flowering in the spring.</div>
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The Woodland Garden has had fifty shades of green since the lilies were finished flowering, I need to find some late summer and autumn flowering plants to put here. It is on a to-do list.</div>
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I am still dabbling in the making of Bonsai Trees, look at the first one I made, at the back with gorgeous red autumn leaves – it is a Parthenocissus henryana, and I made it in 2004. The one to the left in the terracotta pot is still in a training pot, it is going to Bonsai School learning to become a Bonsai Tree and have many years still left before it can advance into a proper, nice pot like the others. It is still in infant school! </div>
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This new Bonsai is a cherry, Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’, and being forced into that small training pot it lost all its leaves – which is completely normal. Luckily it seems it has taken as there are now new leaves – but this poor pupil is still learning so by losing all the leaves and growing new ones it thought it must be spring so it is now also giving me flowers which normally come in April. I guess when it gets a bit older it will get the hang of it, that’s what school is for :-)</div>
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Out at the front there are 4 tall elm trees. That’s a lot of leaves to sweep up. You could sweep 3 times a day here and it would still look like this. It is autumn.</div>
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The winter flowers are in place out in the front, they will provide flowers all through the winter until late May.</div>
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And the first of the beautyberries are here. Oh yes, definitely autumn.</div>
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Final photo of the Hydrangea paniculata 'Mega Mindy', it has slowly changed colour from white to pink to red and now the leaves are changing colour too. An absolute star in the garden right now.</div>
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Here is my monthly garden movie this time, filmed over the last days of September. Look out for the squirrel sharpening its teeth with a stone! I filmed the whole process and it took 17 minutes – I have only included a few seconds but my goodness how thorough it was, it was mesmerizing. </div>
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The music was Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by John Williams and Nic Raine, performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.</div>
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Have a lovely autumn, see you next time.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-57438031789365892912017-08-31T23:45:00.000+01:002017-09-06T02:24:58.798+01:00Can I find summer in Lost and Found?<div style="text-align: justify;">
Hello, I am still around....but someone took my summer and ran away with it – I can’t find it! And now the weather forecasters on TV keep talking about autumn. Eh? Not yet please, I want July and August first, I have been too busy, last time I looked at the calendar it was late June.</div>
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This is what’s been going on here, my bathroom is not finished yet....but we’re almost, almost there. It’s been a very slow process with workers being off site more of the time than working here, but it’s only one small job left – and then it’s the inspection and signing off the work to do. I have promised not to plaster loads of photos on Facebook of the finished bathroom as it is really looking gorgeous (they let me choose fixtures, fittings, colours, floor and tiles etc so everything fits nicely together) – the surveyor from the council was slightly worried they would have a rush of people wanting to have the same. So I am not ‘plastering loads of photos on Facebook’, I am just posting ONE photo on my gardening blog, and quite frankly I don’t think there’s much risk of many council tenants in my borough reading gardening blogs from looking at most gardens in my neighbourhood. So here’s a photo from my renovated and especially adapted bathroom. The most important part of the bathroom is the bath lift which means that I now have a bathtub instead of the old, difficult to use shower and can safely get out of the bathtub on my own. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy having a soak in the bath after having been working in the garden in the evenings!</div>
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It has been extreme weather around the globe the last few months, London has not had anything we can call extreme but we have smashed a few records both in terms of cold, hot, dry and wet – all in the space of a few months. This photo is from first week of July when we had a long spell of mid 30s C. My neighbour’s cat knows where to find water.</div>
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The garden today is mainly about keep watering, I am not doing much else, it takes most of the time I have. It has been raining now and then, but a single day with rain is just so very inadequate. We need 3 weeks with constant rain. At least. The trees are already losing leaves because it’s so dry, and I didn’t get any apples this year because of drought. But the roses are growing like mad, they seem happy enough – if you can disregard the mildew here and there. Some parts of the garden you need a machete to get through. I can see some pruning being on my to-do list soon!</div>
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They say you can’t grow plum tomatoes in Britain without a greenhouse – so I had to try, of course. Despite a chilly August they are ripening nicely and taste delicious. I hope they all have time to ripen, failing that there’s always airing cupboard, works a treat for cherry tomatoes so I hope it will work for these too.</div>
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I have been eating food from my garden since early June.</div>
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Not sure what happened to these cherry tomatoes, they are not split so I don’t think it is my watering regime. It was only one branch, but in any case – they tasted just as lovely!</div>
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Today’s harvest.</div>
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The raspberries are the most productive food plants I have – they have become a jungle next to my front door. These autumn raspberries were meant to be small and compact, suitable for containers. Hah! I have cut down, pruned and pinched since April and it’s still a jungle – and I pick a bowl of raspberries every day. The pharmacy driver who delivers all my medication is interested in gardening and keeps asking questions about my plants, I know he has a much bigger garden than me so I have given the 2 containers to him. Once we have had frost and the plants have died down he will get them and the plants will get a new home in the ground where they will be much happier (and bigger!) and provide food for his family for years to come. I have already bought some new (definitely compact!) raspberry plants for next year.</div>
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I have taken so many photos since last time I wrote a post, I can’t possibly show you all, but I have made some collages to enable more photos today. To best view the photos you can click or tap to get them full size. More photos will be on my Facebook page in the next few weeks.</div>
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Rosa ‘Wildeve’</div>
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Rosa ‘Wildeve’</div>
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My brugmansia, now so big I can just about squeeze past to get into the kitchen!</div>
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Brugmansia.</div>
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Brugmansia cutting, and the cutting I took in November last year, now a flowering 1m tall plant. Yikes!</div>
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The last of the lilies, no more lilies until May next year.</div>
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The darkest rose ever!</div>
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Rose ‘Gaujard’</div>
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Hydrangea ‘Mega Mindy’ is an amazing hydrangea, the flowers slowly changes colour from white to red over the course of summer into autumn!</div>
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The soft pink stage is very pretty.</div>
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And this is the colour today. Will it be even darker red?</div>
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Cosmos</div>
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Dahlia Gallery......can't remember which one, but she is sweet :-)</div>
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Zantedeschia aethiopica</div>
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Gladiolus callianthus murielae.</div>
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My experiment with cucamelons has been more than successful – I have cucamelons coming out of my ears!! I am giving away to anyone coming here, and I knock on my neighbours now and then and give them too – I have even given away to Tesco delivery drivers if they have wanted....well, better than putting them in the compost bin. They really need to be eaten the day you pick them and are best when they are firm like a cucumber. They taste a bit sour, I think they taste a bit like cucumber with lime, some people say they taste a bit lemony and some say just a bit sour. I guess we all taste a bit different – if you leave them too long they go soft and loose the flavour and don’t taste much at all. They should feel like biting into a cucumber and that’s when they are really yummy. You could go and just eat them like that, or cut them in two and toss in a salad or a stir-fry or anywhere you use cucumber – or find inventive use for them online. I bought mine as tiny seedlings online and as they are perennials I will try to keep them for next year. Failing that they are easy to buy from nurseries here.</div>
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Dahlia ‘Onesta White’.</div>
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My only martagon lily – I can’t make up my mind what this colour is – orangey-pink?</div>
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I keep getting questions about the foxes, yes, they are still here, I see them every day and they often pass me in the garden unaware that I am sitting by the table working - suddenly we end up face to face and the foxes run for nearest bush to take cover. The cubs are getting quite big now and only when you see them together with their mum can you see there is still a difference in size. There is however still a marked difference in their bark and other sounds, and when the cubs are play fighting in the garden it sounds like they are tearing each other and the whole garden apart! I have had to go out quite a few times to break up their fights as I have been afraid they would make too much damage to my poor plants. Fortunately they are still afraid of me so cubs and mum scatter as soon as I come out and give them a stern talking to! </div>
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I have been trying to take photos and movies of them ever since they were born, but they didn’t emerge from behind the shed until late April and being so shy it has been very difficult. I never carry my phone around in the garden, and neither my camera, except when I am taking pictures, and the few times they seem opportune to appear right when I am standing taking photos you can bet your life all I get is a blurry line. This photo I took the other day is the closest I have got to a cub photo, and you probably have to enlarge it to see the cub next to the rubbish bin in the background. Cue the chilled out cat in the foreground! The foxes and the cats live side by side here and don’t bother each other. It is a myth that foxes eat cats – foxes are scavenges and the foxes in London would much rather have a half-eaten Mc Donald meal than having to go through the trouble of killing and eat a cat :-)</div>
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I have managed to film one of the cubs though, a small piece is part of today’s garden movie at the bottom of this post, around 3:15 minutes into the film.</div>
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My most successful pelargoniums, they are mostly surviving outside all year.</div>
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Hydrangea cuttings from my previous garden.</div>
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Cosmos.</div>
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Last photo - of beautyberry flowers. Soon these flowers will turn to gorgeous dark plum berries and it will be autumn.</div>
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My garden movie was filmed Monday this week – apparently the hottest August Bank Holiday Monday on record, it was 31 degrees in my garden during the day and filming had to wait until early evening.</div>
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Music: Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka by Antonín Dvorák, performed by Joshua Bell.<br />
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As always, my movies are best viewed with the sound turned up, in HD and full screen if you have the speed for it.<br />
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That was a brief update, so much to tell – so many photos to show you. Monday this week we had sizzling tropical summer, 3 days later we have only 18 degrees C – it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the British weather. If you have found my summer, please return it to me, I could do with another month or two :-)</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-32821195263594949512017-06-30T18:53:00.000+01:002017-06-30T18:53:07.616+01:00Patience, patience<div style="text-align: justify;">
They say patience is a virtue, but my goodness – my patience has been wearing thin lately when it comes to my bathroom adaptation. I have worked hard to drive the case forward since moving in here in May 2015 and I have no idea how long it would have taken if I had just left everything to the council, but this week the work started, FINALLY!!!</div>
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I was prepared for some shattering weeks while the work was going on and boy has it been full on from early morning. But it is all worth it in the end and I can’t wait for my new bathroom to be ready to use. In the mean time I am left with a commode and washing myself in the kitchen – that is when the water is turned on. By the end of next week most things will be done with perhaps a few finishing touches the following week. Hopefully.</div>
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This is how my bathroom looked this morning, just a shell with my toilet.</div>
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The hallway has plastic zip doors to protect from the dust – but some dust keeps creeping in anyway as I walk in and out so I think a thorough spring cleaning will be needed once everything is finished. </div>
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All this work means I haven’t had time to do much preparation for a blog post. I have taken loads of photos the last couple of weeks, but they are still safely stored on my camera and have not even made it on to my computer. But I managed to make a movie and I hope you will enjoy seeing my garden – it is so full right now – another month like this and you will need a machete to get through! As usual, my movies are best viewed in full screen, at the best resolution your speed can tolerate, HD if you can, and with your sound turned up.</div>
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Just a few photos to round up this post. I bought a bottlebrush plant in 2012 as a small 2L plant and in my naivety I thought it would flower the following year. It didn’t. And it didn’t flower the year after either, or the next year. I kept potting it in a bigger and bigger container when it needed it and last year I gave it the next size up and decided this was it – it is not going to get any bigger container than this. Finally, this year it has given me flowers! Only a few, but it is a start, hopefully I will get many more next year. </div>
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This is a Callistemon rigidus, especially chosen because it was advertised as evergreen, compact and suitable for permanently growing in containers. Mmmm....compact? It is 5 ft tall and growing....</div>
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The brushes are deep pinky-red, not orange-red like many other bottlebrushes are – even though my camera struggles with catching the right hue.</div>
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The brushes don’t last very long and has already started to drop off, but if the whole plant is covered in flowers next year (I hope), the flowering will last longer.</div>
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That’s it for this month, I will try to post some of the photos I have on Facebook so if you haven’t signed up as a friend yet please do – link to my Facebook page on the top left side.</div>
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See you next time, take care.</div>
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EDIT:</div>
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Sorry if you are trying to watch my movie on a phone, for some reason YouTube says it is not available - it is! At least it is if you watch it on a computer. YouTube keeps changing things all the time and it is hard to keep up with all their rules and regulations, not sure what the issue is this time....</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-22179822990262643662017-05-31T23:50:00.000+01:002017-06-01T02:47:17.547+01:00Roses, roses and more roses<div style="text-align: justify;">
Can you have too many roses? Silly question really, of course you can’t! </div>
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I have managed to squeeze in 31 roses in my tiny garden, among a whole lot of other plants – and I think I can manage to fit in a few more roses if I look carefully. There are tall climbing roses and tiny miniature roses and everything between. I will show you a few today, but all 31 are flowering beautifully right now.</div>
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I have finally managed to sort out my seating area, the parasol is in place and a new table and cushions. The parasol is desperately needed as there is no shade in this garden except for a tiny area under the apple tree.</div>
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But back to the roses, here with some Alstroemeria 'Dandy Candy'.</div>
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This is the main rose bed, but there are more roses in the front garden and two next to the Woodland Bed.</div>
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The whole bed is framed by miniature roses in containers, just cheap pot roses I have bought from Asda (Walmart).</div>
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This is ‘Constance Spry’ and ‘The Generous Gardener’ and eventually they will fill the whole wall if I let them!</div>
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Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ starts out as this intense dark pink and fades into a light pink, especially in hot weather and when fully open.</div>
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‘Chandos Beauty’ is possibly the rose with the most exquisite scent of all my roses, but ‘The Generous Gardener’ has a powerful, lemony, really lovely scent too.</div>
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The new table in my garden was a necessity to accommodate my huge parasol – this is the parasol I had from my previous house and it fits right in here, perfect size and because it is square it fits along the wall and covers my furniture if we get a shower. Not that we have had much of that, I wish we could get 3 weeks of rain, that would be great for the garden. Just wait until the roses are finished flowering!</div>
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The old garden table has been recycled and is now a nice seat under the apple tree for a quiet moment in the shade.</div>
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And just behind are my strawberry beds – now with custom made, squirrel proof canopies. I bought aluminium canopy frames made for the raised beds, the idea was that you just throw netting over them to protect your crop. That would not have worked against the local squirrel population so I used chicken wire to cover the frames from one end, over the top and down to the other end. The real head ache was what to do at each end – and how to get to the strawberries to pick them.</div>
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I made a door at each end out of bamboo, steel wire and water proof tape and attached chicken wire to this too. The door can either be removed completely or just opened on either side.</div>
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The door is fastened with a simple steel wire that just bends up to open. The chicken wire is attached to the bamboo and aluminium frame with small size cable ties. Thank goodness for zip ties, I use them everywhere in the garden!</div>
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The cages have proved very successful, I haven’t lost a single strawberry and I have already eaten many. This is the way to eat strawberries, from the field to the mouth in seconds! And as for my worry last month about pollinators being able to get through the chicken wire? I needed have worried, they seem to manage that just fine, whoever they are, doing the job for me. The new strawberry flowers are obviously taken care of and have produced berries since the cages were made :-)</div>
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By the way, as we are talking of strawberries, have you seen PINK strawberry flowers before?? I had not, so when I saw these online I just had to buy some plants. They are so pretty, I hope the strawberries turn out to be just as nice. This is ‘Toscana’ and I am quite sure I have eaten Toscana strawberries before, bought in shops, I think they are quite commonly used in Norway.</div>
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The rest of my vegetable garden is a mixed success, the 3 window boxes to the left were sowed with mini carrots and spring onions, but the squirrels kept messing about here and many of the tiny seedlings died or were eaten. I might just give up this project. On the right side are seedlings waiting to be planted in the window boxes in my front garden, once the winter pansies give up their extraordinary flowering – they just go on and on so I don’t have the heart to throw them out just yet.</div>
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My cherry tomato plant is growing like mad, not long before the first tomatoes are here. Just below, in the bottom right corner are my first radishes, I have eaten many already. And the chillies to the left are growing well too and have started to flower.</div>
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The Japanese garden is lush and mainly green, just waiting for the lilies to start flowering.</div>
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The foxgloves are still flowering, these photos were taken a week ago and I have now taken off the tallest spikes to let smaller, new spikes emerge.</div>
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This is a lovely campanula, I have had them in way too small pots for a couple of years – now finally in the ground in two different places they really have taken off.</div>
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Some of the many alliums in my garden.</div>
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I finally took the plunge last year and bought an abutilon. I looked for a long time as I wanted a dark red one and this one was named ‘Red’. Sadly it turned out to be more orange than red so I am not sure if it is a keeper, but it seems happy here and didn’t mind the cold winter at all despite not being hardy. I have taken the liberty of re-naming it ‘Orange-Red’ as it is a bit more fitting!</div>
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My wisteria from last autumn is doing well, deciding how to train it is a bit of a head ache as I have only seen the finished article and don’t really know what to do to get there. Eventually the wisteria should have a large umbrella shaped canopy with bare stems halfway up so that’s what I am aiming for. Might take some trial and error. It is growing like mad so if I get it wrong I can always cut it down and start again. Once it has reached the top and spread out as far as I want it, it is just a matter of pruning to shape. Often. Very often. But I am prepared for that. This American wisteria flowers on new wood and is therefore happy to be pruned several times a year and will still re-bloom, the Chinese or Japanese wisteria which flowers on old wood can’t be pruned like this and often take many years before the first flower appears.</div>
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My calla lilies have started to flower again, last year I had flowers into October so if we get a good year again I have 5 months of flowers to look forward to.</div>
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This is Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’, isn’t it lovely? I know it’s just a thistle, but even so....</div>
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This is my inherited clematis, growing behind the hibiscus in way too much shade – but it seems happy enough. Would have loved to know which one it is.</div>
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My two container grown clematis’ on the arch are doing so well that next winter I will plant them in the ground here where they are growing. I put them in containers in case I had to move them as this space gets quite a lot of shade from the house. </div>
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They are both outgrowing the big containers by now and I think both will appreciate to have their feet in the soil by next spring. </div>
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One last rose picture, this is ‘Abigail’, a miniature that has grown quite large this year, about 70cm tall, I hope she doesn’t grow any taller because then she will have to find a new home elsewhere in the garden. But an absolutely stunning rose she is.</div>
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The garden video this time is filled with roses of course, but I have managed to fit in a few other plants too, I filmed Monday this week when the weather was changing from blazing sun to overcast from one minute to the next making it look like I have filmed over several days. That’s the British weather for you – changing all the time. Put your sound up, increase the screen to full frame and change the quality to HD or as best as your download speed can allow - I promise it will be worth it.</div>
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The music was ‘Sometimes when it rains’ with ‘Secret Garden’. <br />
See you next month, when we hopefully have had some rain, take care.HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-68552761956259245952017-04-30T23:45:00.000+01:002017-05-01T01:19:38.381+01:00A pixie, a wizard and a green man<div style="text-align: justify;">
I seem to start every blog this year by apologising for being so absent – this month I have been so busy I didn’t even think I would be able to put together a blog post but I keep taking gardening photos all the time and I managed to film last Friday so here I am again, writing a last minute post. </div>
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There is still no news on my bathroom, no work is started but there is hope it might start sometime in May. Yay! I have been allowed to make choises for just about everything if I want to (as opposed to the council just choosing what they think is OK), so I have spent hours and hours on the computer trying to find suitable taps, tiles, flooring, bathroom fan, bathtub, basin....my goodness how much time it takes. I have to keep within reasonable prices, and with companies they shop from – no luxury fixtures I am afraid, but I think it will look very nice once everything is done. Now, if we could just get started?!</div>
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At the moment I am looking at paint for one of the walls, the other three will be white tiles with a border. I have an iPhone, an iPad and a Windows computer, the colours look different on all three devices. I had to order paint samples and I paint them on paper plates so I don’t ruin the wall. The colours you see on your computer are probably very different from the actual colours, but they are all dusty plum colours. Eeny meeny....</div>
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And the paint samples are for matching my new towels.</div>
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This will hopefully be the border on the 3 tiled walls. Can’t wait to see it finished!</div>
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OK, some photos from my garden now – and boy does it look different from a month ago. The green leaves on the trees kind of fill the garden and makes it looks smaller and more enclosed. </div>
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My waiting room garden bench seems to never be empty of patients to attend to, I hope to clear this soon so I can sit here.</div>
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The Japanese Bed is colourful and the Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ has got a piece of decoration – can you see him?</div>
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He is called ‘Green Man’ – when I found him online I thought of this space straight away :-)</div>
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There are some new occupants in my Woodland Bed too.</div>
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A wizard, a pixie and a frog. They look a bit too ‘new’ still, but will weather with time.</div>
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Back in the Japanese Bed, the new Acer palmatum 'Pink Passion' is just as gorgeous as I imagined.</div>
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Just look at these leaves!</div>
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My 4 year old Acer palmatum ‘Ariadne’ is pretty good on gorgeous leaves too, starting with pink, turning to orange, then green in the summer and flaming yellow and red in the autumn. I love it!</div>
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My earliest rhododendrons and azaleas started flowering in January and I have had some in flower ever since. This is Rhododendron 'Princess Anne' and it is at its peak right now.</div>
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I have rhododendrons with huge flowers and leaves – like Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Sneezy'....</div>
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....tiny flower and leaves, like this dwarf Rhododendron 'Carmen'....</div>
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....and this is somewhere in between, Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Doc'. Both ‘Doc’ and ‘Sneezy’ are part of the 7 dwarf series of rhododendrons and you might remember I had ‘Dopey’ in my previous garden – the new tenant there is hopefully enjoying the flowers of it right now.</div>
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I still have a few spring flowers left, this is Ornithogalum nutans 'Star of Bethlehem'.</div>
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I wish you could smell my dwarf lilac, it has the most exquisite scent! This Korean lilac has a much more fruity scent than Syringa vulgaris.</div>
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I have done a lot of work in the garden the last month, this bed has finally been planted. Give it 3-4 months and it will be filled with flowers.</div>
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The front garden has also finally been planted, in the ground are roses and penstemons.</div>
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And the small square bed in my Woodland area has been dug up and replanted. I have filled it with a few lilies in the middle and hemerocallis’ – probably too many but I just had so many in pots that was languishing in my pot jungle so I stuffed in as many as I could manage to fit.</div>
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The lilies are growing tall already (must start to stake soon!) and the foxgloves are already flowering. Are they not supposed to flower in June? It’s April - and it’s been a chilly April!</div>
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I grew these from seed last year and they are the only foxgloves I had. The seed packet says Digitalis purpurea 'Camelot Cream' – but these look peach to me. Not the first ones to come out wrong from Sarah Raven for me.</div>
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I have got a nice collection of Dicentra by now, this is Dicentra spectabilis 'Valentine' – or Lamprocapnos to be correct, I can never remember that word!</div>
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And this is one of my new ones, Dicentra cucullaria ‘Pink Punk’ – and this is actually a dicentra. I got some dicentras sent me from a fellow blogger last year and I love the unusual flowers on them. Thanks Roger, they are all doing well :-)</div>
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I might have planted over a hundred plants the last month, but there are still pots everywhere – they seem to have a unique ability to multiply. And there are pots of seedlings everywhere too, those the squirrels haven’t ruined already.</div>
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I got some new magnolias last year and I had no idea they would flower so soon. These photos were taken last week when they still were looking gorgeous – but the smell is out of this world! I finally have magnolias with scent!! These are pretty unique as they can be pruned as much as you like, they flower on new growth and can even be grown as a hedge. I have 4 plants and I am not sure yet what I will do with them, they are still small and I might grow two as a tall standards.</div>
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My tulips are early and all have finished by now, these photos were also taken last week of the latest ones, ‘Shirley’.</div>
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Lunaria is a new one for me, a plant I got in a swap, it is a biannual so unless it self-seeds it will be a one-off. But it has lovely flowers and leaves so I might get it again.</div>
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The first alstroemeria flowers are here, many more to come!</div>
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The first lavender flowers are here, also many more to come. This one is aptly named ‘Fat Head’. </div>
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And the first roses are here! As usual it is the pot roses that flowers first, but all the roses have buds not far from opening - a bit warmer weather and they will all burst open.</div>
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These pot roses don’t come with labels so I don’t have any names.</div>
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The last photos from the garden were taken a couple of weeks ago when the big cherry tree was in full flower. </div>
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I just thought it looked so lovely against the sunset so had to include them.</div>
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And finally – do you remember I used some of the plums from my tree to make plum liqueur last autumn? Well, the liqueur is now bottled....</div>
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....and labelled....</div>
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....and even got screw cork and bottle tops like the wine bottles you buy in shops. The liqueur needs to mature for another 6-8 months or so and will be ready for Christmas. I don’t really know what it will taste like when it’s ready, but I had a little taste when I bottled them and it was very yummy already now :-)</div>
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The garden movie today has music from the BBC TV series Poldark so if you are impatiently waiting for series 3 like me, maybe this piece of music will help a bit – accompanied by my garden from a few days ago....and the green man, the wizard and the pixie are all here. By the way, the pixie is not a gnome, elf, fairy or nisse or anything else – he is a pixie, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie" target="_blank"><b>Wikipediea will help to explain</b></a> :-)</div>
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See you next month, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-59783710904450991502017-03-31T23:53:00.000+01:002017-04-01T00:31:02.904+01:00The Serendipity Garden <div style="text-align: justify;">
The time has flown away for me again – I am sitting here with 3 hours to go before the end of March, trying to put together a post about what’s happening in my garden right now. I have been so busy my feet is hardly touching the ground so this post is going to be brief and I will let the photos speak for themselves. There is an end to all this – well, I keep reminding myself that, although the amount of red tape the council has managed to create regarding my bathroom renovation is astonishing. I still haven’t got a start date for the work, but I am slowly getting there – I hope!</div>
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The garden is bursting with flowers and in a way it would have been nice to slow down everything a bit – I have to water quite often now as we haven’t had any substantial rain at all and the ground is dry and the pots and containers are getting dry in just a day or two. </div>
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But on second thought – I wouldn’t want to slow down anything – at this rate I will have roses in flower in 4-5 weeks :-)</div>
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The last hyacinths.</div>
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The woodland area is slowly developing according to plan. </div>
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Give it another 2-3 years and it will look really good.</div>
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This arum lily have finally started flowering again after having been moved from my previous garden.</div>
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Arum creticum 'Karpathos' is absolutely gorgeous, I hope it will bulk up and have more flowers next year.</div>
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There are a few hellebores left, most of them are finished flowering and look a bit sad.</div>
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Out in the front garden the tulips are in full flower – complete strangers keep coming up to me and asking questions like where I bought them, what they are called, how do I grow them etc. These are just bog standard tulips, but I think the colours I have put together are quite nice :-)</div>
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Here is another colour combination that turned out quite all right – in these pink containers I have planted Heuchera 'Southern Comfort', Omphalodes cappadocica ‘Cherry Ingram’and Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. My goodness, that was a bit of a mouthful!</div>
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I used to have a different type of Omphalodes in my previous garden many years ago but after some years it vanished. This one is prettier and when it gets a bit bigger I will divide and plant some in the woodland bed.</div>
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I bought a new Loropetalum last year, the one I had in my previous garden died the cold winter we had 2009/10 so it was about time to get a new one. This is a different one, Loropetalum chinensis 'Ever Red' and supposed to be the darkest red of them all.</div>
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And I have bought yet another magnolia. Sigh....yes I know, small trees grow big eventually, but I will grow it as a standard and it grows very slowly (that’s my excuse anyway). Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' has double flowers – and it is soooo pretty, and already has one flower!</div>
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The first clematis flowers are soon here, this is Clematis ‘Pink Fantasy’.</div>
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I love muscari, and especially the pink ones – had to search high and low to find them!</div>
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My Forsythia ‘Minigold’ is supposed to be a dwarf and should grow to less than 3 ft. This one has not read the instructions, I have to prune it about 50% every July. The pot is terribly root bound so this summer I might give it a bigger pot. </div>
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If I planted this in the ground I am sure it would become a 3m tall tree before I could turn around. I haven’t really got space for that – too many other trees that need the space! But I love the colour of these flowers so it is a keeper.</div>
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One of my new camellias – it is called Camellia japonica 'Volunteer' – not sure where that name comes from but maybe there is a story behind it.</div>
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This is another one of my camellias, still just a tiny baby, but with absolutely huge flowers. Camellia japonica 'Amabel Lansdell' will be an impressive sight once it becomes a big bush covered in flowers like this!</div>
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There are still some daffodils left in the shady corners, this is Narcissus 'White Lion'.</div>
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And this is Narcissus 'Ice Follies'.</div>
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And this is Narcissus 'Bridal Crown' – sorry not a very good picture, they are absolutely lovely!</div>
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My lovely magnolia soulangeana has been flowering for a good few weeks, 2-3 weeks more and it will all be over for this year.</div>
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I am so happy it has taken the move from my previous garden so well.</div>
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I have bought frames for my raised beds, now I just need something to cover the beds to protect my strawberries from the squirrels eating all the berries I hope to get.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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Not a day too soon it seems, the first strawberry flowers are here!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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I am not sure what to use that will keep the squirrels at bay. Will chicken wire be suitable? Would be great with some advice here as I am growing several different types of strawberries so the pollinators will need to get through the wire. Will they fly through chicken wire this size? I am thinking of making a door on each side to get the strawberries out, but if this wire also keeps the pollinators out it will obviously not work. I read that you could use butterfly netting and put it on after the strawberries had started growing – but that won’t work in my garden, the squirrels happily eat unripe berries and the fruiting takes place all summer. Any suggestions?</div>
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More flowers – my dwarf rhododendrons.</div>
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And the robin is back, I do wonder where he is when not here :-)</div>
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Final photo – some more tulips :-)</div>
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And as usual I have made a movie from my garden this week, turn your speakers up and enjoy.</div>
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The music was ‘Bells across the meadows’ by Albert William Ketèlbey.</div>
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That was it for this time, thank you so much for all the comments on my previous posts – I will try to answer and visit when I have more time, but I read all comments and I so appreciate every single one. I wish you all a happy spring! </div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-63773338336491885792017-02-28T04:14:00.000+00:002017-02-28T04:14:56.439+00:00Goodbye winter, hello spring!<div style="text-align: justify;">
I can’t believe we are in March already, where did winter go? I have been so busy with so many things, and in my garden winter is one of the busiest times so I have tried to get a bit done now and then when I have been feeling up for it. The weather has slowed work though, it has been an unusually cold winter here in the South-East, but an hour here and there outside with 3-4 layers of warm clothes and good shoes and I can get a bit done. There’s LOTS still to do in my ‘new’ garden, but I am slowly getting there :-)</div>
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When it comes to the inside of my house – with adaptations and renovations, a few things have been done since last time i posted, but only minor things. I have spent an incredible amount of time writing emails, letters and making phone calls to move things along – but there’s still the biggest job left to do, which is the renovation of my bathroom. I am so looking forward to having it done....and I am so dreading the process of getting it done! I still haven’t got a start date so no idea at the moment when I can expect everything finished, but I have waited a looooong time now so it should be my turn soon.</div>
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In my garden the biggest event in March will hopefully be to put down an automated watering system. I will need help to do the installation so when it will be finished will depend on how many people I can mobilise for the job. And in the middle of all this I am still recovering from torn chest muscle and slipped discs from last year. Yep, never a dull moment around here!</div>
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The last few days it seems winter has decided to show off one last round of anything and everything – we have had all sorts of weather starting with the storm Doris which really could be felt here in London. And after Doris the temperature has plummet again and we are back in single figure day temperatures. Today we even had a 3 minute hail storm! But the cooler weather is only for a few days, spring is definitely here and I can already feel the sun is getting stronger.</div>
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Rhododendron ‘Bo Peep’ has been flowering since beginning of January, in this cool weather the flowers last much longer than later in the spring – a great advantage with early flowering plants.</div>
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The flowers of ‘Bo Peep’ are pretty pink with freckles. </div>
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But it is when you see the flowers against the sun that they really are at their most exquisite – with tissue-paper-thin flowers and a sparkly surface they look like little jewels.</div>
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OK, so the rhododendron might have flowered for almost 2 months already, but the Iris reticulata have let me wait this year – they are all rather late due to the cold winter. </div>
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But once they emerge they are very quick to open their beautiful flowers. I have them spread around the garden and they are usually flowering before any crocuses or daffodils – and to me the Iris reticulata are announcing spring.</div>
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The hellebores are late to the garden party this year too – very late actually. I usually have hellebores in flower before Christmas but this year it was early February before any flowers opened. This ‘Picotee’ is a beautiful one, I am glad it managed the move from my previous garden – some of its cousins did not, I am afraid quite a few of them died the first summer cooped up in my pot jungle.</div>
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Another pretty hellebore from the Lady Series, give them all another 10 years and this woodland area will be absolutely covered in hellebores. Well, that’s the plan at least!</div>
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I have a few Helleborus niger and they flower earlier than Helleborus hybridus. </div>
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Most of these Helleborus niger have been flowering since early January, and as long as the temperature is as cool as it is now, they will go on flowering for a long time. </div>
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The snowdrops are almost finished, only a few patches in shade part of the day are still in flower.<br />
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Iris reticulata, primroses and pansies.</div>
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The primroses have been in flower since October, but are really taking off now.</div>
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The day I was taking these photos the sun came and went – and didn’t stay long enough for the crocuses to open their flowers fully like they do in full sun. But give them a nice sunny day and they will open, all of them. I have no idea how many I have left – and how many have become squirrel lunch. Time will tell!<br />
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One more helleborus photo? I got another photo of some Helleborus niger :-)</div>
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I have a video for you today, it’s the end of the month and although I am writing less and less on my blog I still want to try to keep up with making a video and write a post on the last day of each month. As usual, if you want to get the best viewer experience with my videos, please use full screen and view in HD – 720 or 1080p.</div>
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The day I was filming I was treated to a full squirrel crew – which is ALL THREE OF THEM at the same time messing about. And boy do they make a lot of mess, but they are not the only one, the pigeons and the foxes are pretty messy too. I am still seeing the fox quite often and she is eating bird food most evenings. I am just letting her have it – sunflower seeds and peanuts. At least she isn’t digging any more holes so if that means paying her in peanuts then so be it! There’s no fox on this month’s video, she has been rather shy the last few weeks, but there’s hopefully plenty of other things of interest.</div>
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The music was Liebestraum (which means love dream), by Frantz List. </div>
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Next blog post will hopefully be on Friday 31st March – in the mean time I hope to do some more short posts on Facebook and Instagram where I have been rather absent the last month.<br />
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I hope you have lovely gardening weather – and if your garden is buried under snow right now, just remember it won’t take long before the snow has gone and spring arrives everywhere. </div>
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Until next time, take care :-)</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-45339257856122977282017-01-31T23:29:00.000+00:002017-01-31T23:29:13.723+00:00The longest month of the year<div style="text-align: justify;">
The longest month of the year – January – is over, it has been dark, unusually cold and unusually dry. We still haven’t had any substantial rain, only a little bit here and there, but the coming week is promising a bit of rain now and then so it might help. If we don’t get a couple of WEEKS of rain soon, I fear we will be in trouble by mid-summer.</div>
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I have braved the cold weather – which has been almost down to freezing for a couple of weeks....I must have been living for too long here in London, temperatures like 2-3 plus in January (35 F) would have been considered absolutely balmy years ago, now I think it’s pretty cold. But I can’t keep away from my garden for too long so in true Norwegian spirit of ‘There’s no bad weather, just bad clothing’ – I have been out in the garden a couple of hours most days during January.</div>
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My usual view of the garden was taken today, the last day of the month, with a grey sky and drizzle in the air which came with the milder weather this week. Where is the proper rain??</div>
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But most of this past month we have had glorious crisp sunshine and blue sky due to the cold weather.</div>
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This is the second winter here in my new garden and it is nice to see that despite a much colder December and January, it is still benefiting from a sheltered surrounding, exactly like my previous garden was. The ferns have not lost their fronds despite the weeks of hoovering around frost, and the first spring plants are already up above ground.</div>
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And one of the new Hepatica nobilis has made a very early entrance, the other 3 are still in bud. I have 2 blue and 2 pink and I hope they will be happy here in my garden – but are fully prepared for them to turn up their nose at the London climate, the London clay, the London hot summer – and just about everything else to do with London gardens. Hepatica nobilis are not supposed to grow in gardens like mine - but that won’t stop me from trying!</div>
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A much better choice here in the Woodland Bed is primulas, and I have lots of them in various colours. I would have had many more if only the vine weevil grubs hadn’t liked them so much too!</div>
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The pansies at the front are doing well, and even though I do have perennials in flower all through the winter I still need to buy some pansies every late autumn, I just love to see those cheery flowers on gloomy days like today.</div>
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The three witch hazels I bought in late spring last year is flowering for me for the first time. They were advertised as ‘highly fragrant’, but as with so many plants – the reality has been very different. </div>
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Should I perhaps give the nursery the benefit of the doubt and think they possibly didn’t know? Perhaps they thought all hamamelis’ were scented - like I thought? Or perhaps they knew but didn’t care and assumed they would sell more if they called them scented?? </div>
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I have since read about witch hazel and I realise now that none of the Hamamelis x intermedia varieties are particularly scented and many of them have no scent at all. </div>
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The flowers are pretty and very unusual though, and the leaves have pretty autumn colours. I intend to keep them in containers so they can be plopped in wherever there is an open space in the borders. A nomadic life awaits the 3 witches.</div>
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The fox is still around, she is here most days, and I often both see her and hear her in the evening, raiding the birdfeeders and digging in the flowerbeds. Before you start aaawing and oooing and say how lucky I am to have a fox living in my garden…..there is a price to pay.</div>
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The fox has taken a shine to this exact spot, and this poor pulsatilla which is just about to flower was dug up for the second day in a row. The fox isn’t interested in the plants, she just wants to find worms, beetles and grubs in the soil to eat.</div>
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This part of the Woodland Bed was dug up during the big upheaval in November, and I have just got everything back in the ground. All the plants are small, there are spring bulbs on the way up and plants just about to flower. So I have resorted to using chicken wire – and for the last 3 days this patch has been left alone. One point to me.</div>
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But that just moves the fox somewhere else…..she has been here before, a few times. This time the hole is really deep. Poor plants being disturbed yet again!</div>
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So I filled the hole and put a pot in the middle, but today when I came outside I could see the fox has been here during the night despite the big pot. What can I do....</div>
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The squirrels are pretty bad too at times, they don’t dig such big holes, but they dig MANY instead, and they usually come back to the same pots over and over and over again. Some of these seedlings have been chucked out so many times it is a miracle they are still alive. The rest of the chicken wire went over the seedling pots in an attempt to protect them. That was 2 days ago. Yesterday when I came outside there was a big pile of squirrel poo right in the middle of this area, on top of the chicken wire. It had obviously not been a problem for the squirrel to walk out in the middle to do its business, but it was possibly frustrated over not being able to root around as they usually do? I guess that was me told off then! I thought I would spare you a poo-photo so I scraped it off yesterday :-)</div>
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But no matter how much chicken wire I buy it would be impossible to protect everything, and this is what greeted me today when I came outside. It’s a 20 litre pot with 5 big lily bulbs, they have just started sprouting and with the fox digging that deep it is a risk of the new shoots being broken off. </div>
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The wildlife in my garden is inspiring and interesting most of the time, but boy do they add to my workload. I do hope I will have some really cute photos of fox cubs to show for at the end of the spring for all the extra works she is giving me :-)</div>
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I have a queuing system in my garden and during the winter and spring I use my garden bench to organise what to do when. Just like in a doctor office or a hospital department, the patients in my garden is waiting patiently to been seen to – and just like with patients under the National Health Service here in Britain, sometimes you have to wait a very long time to be seen but eventually you will be seen – if you don’t die in the queue while waiting!</div>
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Oh, must be about time to show off some snowdrops? This is Galanthus elwesii 'Maidwell L' – usually the first ones to flower in my garden.</div>
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And my earliest rhododendron has been shrugging off the cold weather as if it was no bother, flowering its heart out for 2 weeks already, this is ‘Bo Peep’. I wonder who comes up with all these cultivar names – silly name for a gorgeous rhododendron.</div>
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The hellebores are late to the party this year, I usually have at least a few in flower before Christmas, but this year they all still look like this – none fully open. Give them a few warm days and a bit of sunshine and I will have lots in flower.</div>
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I have so many plans for my new garden – so many things I would like to try to grow but also things that could make life easier in the garden – and things purely because it looks nice. It took me 10 years to develop my previous garden, and a further 4 years to tinker with it – before I moved house. I hope the experience I now have means it will be slightly shorter before I get to the stage where I can start just tinkering!</div>
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One if the things I would like to have in the garden is a door on the wall, and that’s why I already have these paving slabs leading down here. This photo is just a result of me playing around in Photoshop, but this is what it might look like. If you now imagine the rose on the right side growing for a couple of years so it reaches to the top of the wall, over the door and down to the other side with plants in the bed on both sides and some nice containers on the ‘step’ – then you got the full picture. The door is just an illusion and won't lead anywhere and can't be opened - it is made with an outdoor mirror behind the door frame and the actual door is cut on an angle so it looks like it is open – an optical illusion. The reflection in the image will of course be whatever is in the garden at any given time, what you see here is what was on their website. <a href="https://www.primrose.co.uk/6ft-2ft-8in-glass-illusion-mirror-gate-reflect-p-82035.html?src=prod_col&cPath=83" target="_blank"><u><b>Link to more illusion mirror gates here</b></u></a>.This is just one of many, many ideas I am playing around with, if I had a couple of acres I might be able to realise ALL my ideas!</div>
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I have a movie for you today too, and in the middle of it there is a part with not just one but TWO squirrels raiding my bird feeders. I just happened to see it while being in the kitchen and grabbed what I had at hand, which was my iPad, and there is no zoom on the iPad so unfortunately it’s not as good footage as I would have liked. And that day, right when those two squirrels where hogging the feeders and the birds had to sit and queue up to get something to eat, the cat next door was visiting me. He was sitting watching the whole thing through the cat flap looking like ‘this could have been a nice lunch’ on his face. I guess the cats learn very quickly that squirrels are MUCH quicker than cats! </div>
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The music was Largo - from The New World Symphony by Antonín Dvořák</div>
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Today it is 4 weeks till spring starts here, it is at this time of year I appreciate most living and gardening in a climate like here in London. So whether you have T-shirt weather or 6 ft of snow in your garden right now, enjoy February because after the longest month of the year comes the shortest of the year – and then it’s spring!</div>
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Take care everyone, see you again at the end of February.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-61665922585162065122016-12-31T06:00:00.000+00:002016-12-31T06:00:00.894+00:00Happy New Year 2017 from the Serendipity Garden!<div style="text-align: justify;">
The weather is important for a gardener, too much of this that and the other and the whole balance gets skewed - and things get out of order. Last spring we had a lot of rain, much more than usual, but it ended in June and here in London we have not really had any substantial rain at all since June and only a few days with any rain at all. It might be winter on the calendar, and it has been rather cold the last couple of days (just below freezing – which is cold in London!) – but gardening never stops for a bit of night frost, not in my garden. In fact, winter is the busiest time of year in terms of planning, planting and getting new ideas into action. That is – if we could just get some rain! The ground is still too hard to manage any planting so I am planting bulbs in pots and containers for now and hoping for some rain. Soon please!</div>
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The temperature has varied widely in December, just see what we got on Christmas Day. A balmy 14.7 degrees (58.5 F)!</div>
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The garden looks so nice in the winter sunshine, the beds are so empty and the trees so bare – everything has paused for spring. Only 3 months to wait and I got LOADS to do in the garden before we get to 1st March so I won’t run out of things to do!</div>
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The fox is still here most days, I am still not sure if it is a male or a female but I can’t say it looks particularly pregnant so I don’t know. Maybe it is just a young male that likes to hang out in my garden? I can understand that :-)</div>
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The fox usually sits on the roof of the shed where it has a good view over the area and can jump quickly down behind the shed in that little safe space between the shed and the wall. If it is a female it is likely she will have her cubs in that space and the cubs won’t come out until they are around 4 weeks old. The cubs are usually born in February or March after a 52 days gestation period so this fits well with a female fox not even pregnant yet. But she would have looked around and found her perfect home and I suppose I should feel honoured she chose mine. If I am right I will probably have some cute photos of fox cubs running around in my garden to show you by May or June. I do have a bit mixed feelings about the prospects of having a fox family in my garden until the autumn, I had this twice in the past in my previous garden and although the cute-factor is sky high, the mess and destruction is equally high. </div>
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But I might be wrong, it might not be a female at all, but rather a young, male just looking for a place to crash. I am pretty sure it is the same fox I am seeing every time – which also begs the question in case of a pregnant female; where is the father? Fox parents stay together and the father brings food to the mother the first few weeks when she is cooped up in the den. I guess time will tell :-) </div>
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In terms of wildlife, there’s a lot going on in my garden. My bird feeders are well visited all year round and the blue tits and green tits are very active right now.</div>
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So are the collared doves, I seem to have a flock of 5-6 birds that stay close to my garden, usually in the tall avian cherry tree and they help themselves to bird food many times a day.</div>
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And then there are parakeets.</div>
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What? Parakeets?!!</div>
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Yes, the other day I was treated to this sight when I got up in the morning and looked out the kitchen window. Two ring-tailed parakeets were literary emptying my birdfeeder between them and scared off any other birds attempting to have a snack. The parakeets stayed for a few hours and then left. They haven’t been back so far and to be honest I hope they won’t come back. This was the first time I have seen parakeets in my garden and it was a treat to be able to take some photos, but they are very noisy, messy birds that do a LOT of damage and they often come in a large flock and can completely wreck a garden in matter of hours, eating all new shoots on shrubs and trees. There are estimated to be 6-10.000 feral parakeets in London alone and possibly as many as 30-50.000 in Britain. </div>
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Parrot colonies have only resided in London in significant numbers since the 1990’s, and various theories have been put forward to explain their presence. It is generally accepted that just one single breeding pair of rose-ringed parakeets being released into the wild could have formed the basis of the existing London parakeet colonies. It has also been suggested that a flock of the birds escaped from London’s Ealing studios during filming, that a container of the birds fell open at Heathrow airport, and that a large aviary collapsed during the storms of 1987, releasing a significant number of the birds into the surrounding area. Whatever way they came here they are now considered a problem as there are way too many of them, and there are steps taken to cull their numbers. I hope these two birds had just taken a slightly longer trip than usual, as West London is the usual area for them. I hope they won’t be back with all their friends soon - two at the time is more than enough!</div>
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And most of the time the main ‘bird feeder raider’ in my garden are the squirrels. I have three visiting squirrels at the moment and sometimes they are here all three at the same time. I haven’t managed to film or photograph all three together, I am still trying! The squirrels eat anything but seem to especially favour the sunflower seeds I use in this feeder.</div>
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And afterwards it is off to the birdbath to have a drink of water!</div>
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OK, that was the wildlife presented, let me show you some plants and flowers. These are my 3 witch hazels that I bought in March on sale, after flowering was finished so this is the first time I see them in flower. They were advertised as ‘Highly Fragrant’. I wonder how many plants I have in my garden that has turned out to have little or no fragrance after all despite being advertised as fragrant? </div>
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These witch hazels are all Hamamelis × intermedia, which I have later found out have very little fragrance and the faint fragrance you might possibly detect would only appear in sunny, warm weather. We have had rather cold weather since flowering started so perhaps there might be some scent to detect later on but I am not expecting it. The varieties I have are ‘Arnold Promise’, ‘Ruby Glow’ and 'Orange Beauty'.</div>
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This yellow one is ‘Arnold Promise’ and so far is the only one in full flower, but the other two are not far behind. Witch hazel grow quite slowly and I intend to grow these permanently in containers, perfect to plop into beds that need a bit filling out when other plants have passed their best or died down.</div>
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It might be winter, cold and 3 months till we officially start spring, but the snowdrops wait for no one. The first ones are here, just one sunny day or so from flowering.</div>
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But before I get too much into spring-mode I would like to finish with 2016 and here is a movie from my garden – I know some of you have waited a long time for a new garden movie. Sorry I didn’t manage to produce any in October and November, but I hope this movie will make up for that. I filmed the footage Thursday the 29th December, apart from a small section of the fox in my garden, which is from beginning of November. I have added a small selection of the ‘Best Bits’ of garden photos as a sort of photo cavalcade at the end, I hope you enjoy the tour! Best viewed in full screen in HD if you have connection for it, please adjust your settings in the bottom right corner.</div>
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Today I have been blogging for exactly 6 years – if you had asked me 6 years ago if I would still be doing it 6 years down the line I would probably have said of course not! – but here I am, still writing! I find it more challenging though to sit down and prepare photos and write the posts and as a result I haven’t posted as much this year as previous years, and the last couple of months I have been rather absent. I use my blog as a kind of garden diary and it is amazing to see how the garden changes from year to year. I am especially grateful for having a record going as far back as it does since I moved house in May last year, so my previous garden still lives on through my blog :-)</div>
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I will definitely continue blogging, but I am not sure how frequent it will be - I tried to do it twice a month in 2016 and struggled with that. I have started posting photos from my garden on Instagram and I use Facebook as well to post short updates. I find this easier and I will probably continue with it more often. But nothing can replace one of my really, really long blog posts absolutely loaded with photos and I am sure there will be plenty of them in the future, maybe perhaps not just as often :-)</div>
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May I wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for 2017 – and I hope we all get a great gardening year with just the right mix of sunshine and showers! I am off to delve into some of the plant and seed catalogues that seems to be coming my way in droves at this time of year. So many exciting plants! Not that I need anything at all until I have planted my 530 plants already waiting to go in the ground, but I could always have a look....:-)</div>
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See you next time!</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-29996583895629599792016-12-23T23:22:00.000+00:002016-12-23T23:22:43.153+00:00Merry Christmas from my London Garden<div style="text-align: justify;">
Thank you to all of you who has been following me on Facebook and Instagram through my blogging break, I am better now and have been able to do some pottering around the garden the last couple of weeks. The weather has been unusually dry for the time of year and last week I actually had the garden hose out and watered the whole garden – in December! I can’t remember ever doing that before, but it was necessary, we haven’t had any substantial rain yet and the few times it has rained it hasn’t mounted to much. Even Wednesday this week, when the whole country was promised buckets of rain....what did we get here in London? Some measly drizzle for a couple of hours. As I am writing this, UK is bracing itself for storm Barbara and we were supposed to get 6 hours of rain this evening. We did get some rain and it was heavy for a short time, but it just barely covered the bottom of a tray I left out to catch rain water. Here in the quiet corner of the South East we are mostly spared the winter storms and a lot of the rain, I know there are other parts of UK that has had more rain than they would wish for lately so sometimes it would have been nice if we could share it a bit more evenly between us :-)</div>
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The dry summer and autumn has meant that the trees have shed all their leaves very quickly this autumn, the whole thing was over in a few short weeks. I don’t mind, it makes life easier when clearing up the leaves, last year I was sweeping up leaves until February. </div>
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The garden looks so open and empty with many of the herbaceous plants gone away for the winter.</div>
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I have started pruning the roses and slowly clearing the beds for leaves at the same time.</div>
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It is a bit sad to cut down the roses when they still have buds and flowers, but it is a job that has to be done and it’s better to do it now than in a month’s time when they all are sprouting new leaves. This bed is ready to get some of my many potted plants waiting to get in the ground. Not sure yet what will end up here but as it is a fairly sunny bed I have lots to choose from!</div>
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The last couple of weeks I have mainly been sitting on my gardening stool picking up leaves from the flower beds. This large gardening caddy is the best tool I have in the garden beside my trusty stool and I can’t manage without either of them.</div>
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Fortunately green waste is picked up for free by the council and all I need to do is send them an online request and they come and pick up the bags within the next 2 working days. The council compost the waste and use it around the borough – I think it is a great arrangement since I couldn’t possibly compost all the garden waste I produce myself anyway, and at least it doesn’t just go to landfill.</div>
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I have lots more leaves to pick up and many more roses to prune – I just couldn’t cut off all these David Austin roses so I pruned half and left the branches with flowers on for now. I will get back to these when they are finished flowering. </div>
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It might seem a luxury to have roses in December but I always have at least some roses flowering for Christmas every year.</div>
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This is David Austin’s ‘Wildeve’.</div>
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And this is ‘Scepter’d Isle’ – and both David Austin roses are much darker pink during the winter than the rest of the year, a feature I really appreciate, it’s almost like different types of roses than the pale pink I get in the summer.</div>
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Here is a photo I posted on Facebook the first week of December, for all of you who haven’t seen it - it is the last of the strawberries and the first of the snowdrops. Gardening in London is a joy :-)</div>
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And here are the same snowdrops 3 weeks later, photo taken yesterday, only days away from flowering.</div>
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We have had a mix of very gloomy weather with a lot of fog – and days of glorious sunshine. This is the view from the corner of my front garden and what I see from my bedroom window.</div>
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Penstemon Pensham 'Amelia Jayne' is always flowering long into winter.</div>
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Out here in the front garden there has been all-change since my last post. A couple of frost nights where the temperature dipped just below freezing did away with all my bedding plants including all the tall cosmos still with lots of flowers and buds. So that meant out with the summer flowers and in with the winter plants. </div>
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I have planted pansies, primulas and cineraria in the window boxes and some of the containers.</div>
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They will go on flowering until early summer and brighten up the front garden.</div>
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The magnolia seems to be doing well here in the side of the front garden. It was planted in February and I am sure it was happy to finally get its roots in the ground after having lived all its life in a container and survived moving house last year. I have counted over 40 buds so if the weather is not too rough in March it should be the best magnolia flowering I have had so far.</div>
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Out here in the front garden I have some very neglected pelargoniums – they haven’t been fed since last spring and have hardly had any water being half under the porch – but they still flower!</div>
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The flowers of ‘Appleblossom’ are just lovely. Such a treat to have flowers like this for Christmas.</div>
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Even more treat is it to have raspberries! This is one of the two raspberry plants I bought almost a year ago which didn’t flower last summer. I thought perhaps the canes needed another year, but this one was a bit too impatient so decided to get started now, in December. It looks like the berries are ripening too so I might get a taste, if I can get them before the squirrels or birds eat them!</div>
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In the Woodland Garden most things are gearing up for spring and plants and bulbs are peeping out of ground everywhere. </div>
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Last year I had lots of mushrooms here in the Woodland Bed, this year it has been so dry and not really good conditions for them, I have found one though – and funnily enough – it is growing right next to the group of ceramic toadstools. Almost like it knew where it belongs!</div>
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Camellia ‘Winter’s Snowman’ has grown to double size since I bought it as a cutting 18 months ago. I wonder if it will double in size every 18 months?? The flowers are pure white and gorgeous.</div>
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I have a winter jasmine in a pot with no permanent home yet. These plants grow to monster size eventually and needs serious hacking back every year – I bought it just when I moved in here in a rather foolish belief that I had ample space for lots of new plants. Hah! I struggle with squeezing in the plants I already have, even with a bigger garden than I used to have. Same old problem :-)</div>
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Let me show you the beautyberries I was fretting about last year when I didn’t know if this bush was self-fertile or not. The berries look even lovelier now when the leaves have gone – and of course the matching coloured fence helps too!</div>
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Here is another beauty against my plum-coloured fence; Malva sylvestris 'Mystic Merlin'. I can’t believe it is still in flower, it is supposed to flower until September, die down for the winter and come back next spring. I don’t think my plant has read the instructions....</div>
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Among the more or less showy flowers in my garden there is some really beautiful foliage. To the left is Rhododendron 'Princess Anne' – evergreen with green foliage that turns bronze in the winter and then green again in the spring. Amazing! And to the right is Epimedium x versicolor 'Sulphureum' which has lovely, pale yellow flowers in the spring, green foliage most of the year except in the winter when it is burgundy-bronze. Epimedium is semi-evergreen in my garden and I cut it down only when new foliage appears. </div>
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My garden bench is as usual being used as waiting room for plants in need of care and attention. Right now it’s rather crowded here both on and under the bench, and some plants are a bit unruly and not good at keeping their place in the queue. That’s not helped by squirrels playing about thinking that everything I place here is especially served for them! Not that it matters much where I put things, everything growing in a pot or a container seems to be in danger of a squirrel attack. </div>
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But most of the time we live in harmony, birds, critters small and large – and me. And sometimes we are treated to some lovely sunsets. I have posted some of these on Facebook and Instagram, but for those of you who don’t follow me there – here are a couple.</div>
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These are all from December and taken from my garden.</div>
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The moon, seen from my front garden.</div>
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And finally – as it is Christmas I am rounding up with some photos of this year’s Christmas decoration. This is my Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’ with battery fairy lights. It is a lovely, container grown evergreen bush now in its 12th year and perfect as a small outdoor living Christmas tree. In my bedroom window you can see the Christmas star so typical for Norwegian Christmas decoration.</div>
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Indoors I am opting for a much more practical artificial tree - I had never even seen one before moving to Britain but over here they are the most commonly used Christmas trees so I am having one too. I do miss the smell of a real Christmas tree though!</div>
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The candle bridge is typical Norwegian Christmas decoration but thanks to Ikea it now seems like every other home has one here in Britain. It is the very first piece of decoration that comes out of storage in my house together with the Christmas star - on the 1st day of advent. The Christmas tree and the rest of the decoration are usually saved until a week before Christmas. The funny looking stones in the foreground is my first attempt to grow Living Stones – Lithops. They seem very happy so far and have grown since I got them in September. They need absolutely no water between September and May. I have to really be careful when I water the plants here so I don’t give these a splash without thinking – they really need NOTHING and could rot and even burst if they are watered. It will be fun to see if they all grow a new ‘stone’ next spring!</div>
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My Christmas tree decoration is plum and gold, nothing over the top really.</div>
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And the traditional tree topper seems to have been swapped with just about anything these days, but I am sticking to my 32 year old Christmas star.</div>
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Out in the hallway I have some Christmas figures that are 30 years this Christmas, I got them when my son was just a baby.</div>
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Happy Christmas to everyone, I hope you have a lovely and peaceful festive season and I hope the weather isn’t too forceful in your corner of the world – wherever you are. Here in London we are expecting 14 degrees C (57 F) on Christmas Day, it could be tempting to go out and plant some of the crocuses I still haven’t managed to get in the ground! Whatever you do and however you celebrate, have a lovely weekend. Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-76067813572748537892016-11-17T05:30:00.000+00:002016-11-18T04:02:15.541+00:00Blogging break from my London garden<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sorry if you were beginning to think I had vanished from the blogosphere with no goodbyes, I am still here - but struggling again with health issues. Thank you so much to all of you who have contacted me via email and Facebook to ask how I am, I so appreciate all the messages and I will try to reply to you all eventually. I also hope to catch up with blog comments from you on my previous posts and visit you all, but it will take some time to get there.</div>
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The last couple of months I have been struggling with my back again along with my very long list of other health problems and although I am trying my best to be very careful I have been feeling that I am heading for yet another slipped disc episode – very difficult so soon after the double slipped discs I had back in May this year. It is often just a minor thing that tips the scales when you go around with bulging discs in your back as I have now, it is painful like this - but much, much more painful to have an actual burst disc or two. I have been here many times before and recovered – and I have had 8 episodes of slipped discs before, between the age of 18 and May this year. I have no idea what the end will be this time, I am trying to sit as little as possible, computer work is limited to a minimum and needless to say, gardening has not been on the agenda for a long time.</div>
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But as if that wasn’t enough....The last time I posted was a whole month ago and I wrote about the cold I had, a nasty cold – I still have it! After the first 3 weeks of really bad coughing I managed to tear a chest muscle and had to go to A&E.....yeah, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s actually possible both to tear muscles and even crack ribs from persistent coughing, although it is very unusual apparently. Most abdominal strains or tears that do happen affect the muscle that runs down the middle of the abdomen, the one people often call the six-pack, but I have torn the external obliques muscles and it runs from the groin all the way up on the sides and is attached to the bottom 8 ribs. </div>
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If you put your left hand flat on the left side of your chest, between your armpit and your waist, as far back as you can put your arm while still holding – and then give yourself a long, deep cough....ouch! That’s where it hurts! And the other end of that muscle is buried under the pelvic bone on the side, almost in the groin - and hurts just as much. Everything I do involving that muscle hurts, and you’d get surprised how much it is in use in ordinary, everyday activity from getting up and down from the sofa, in and out of bed, going to the toilet, eating, drinking, just swallowing....even breathing. Oh, and did I mention coughing? And sneezing?? My goodness, I don’t have much control over when I need to cough, but I have absolutely NO control over sneezing. It’s like being stabbed with a knife with every sneeze and it takes a while to recover afterwards....</div>
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The A&E didn’t have much to offer besides a chest X-ray to exclude anything seriously wrong with my lungs, but I got the all clear and I just have a post-viral cough so that was good news at least. I was told that rest is the best remedy and avoid anything that hurts. Ha! Easier said than done. It’s gone 3 weeks now and I have been mostly in bed and on the sofa, with short, careful strolls in my garden a few times. I realise I am probably in for a long recovery, partly due to the nature of the injury, but also because of my underlying main condition (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndrome" target="_blank"><u><b>Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome</b></u></a>) which makes recovery from any operation, injury or damage more difficult and prolonged compared to normal. So I am trying to take it easy and follow the advice I got from A&E and what I have read online. The pain should dictate the activity: ‘No sport or heavy lifting, no sweeping or digging.’ OK, that’s fine, I can live with that, although the sweeping part is going to be hard....it’s autumn! I should have very gentle activity that doesn’t hurt, although after 3 weeks it still hurts just lifting my arm up and down, never mind trying to move. So there you have it, pain both front and back but if I am not being careful I will cause this to last longer and become more severe than it is now. I already have gardening withdrawal symptoms so this is going to be challenging :-)</div>
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In the middle of me struggling with back pain and a torn chest muscle, the council finally started the adaptation work on my house that I have been waiting for since moving in here 18 months ago. It was agreed back in May, but it took till October before any of it started. When I am at home or in the garden I manage on one or two crutches with my disabilities, but I am not very good at walking more than a few steps here and a few steps there. I have therefore been mainly confined to my house and garden for many years except going to hospital and doctor appointments. In January I got a wheelchair to use outside and although I am not strong enough to wheel myself for longer stretches out and about, it gives me a new freedom when I am for example at my many hospital appointments – giving me for example the ability to get to the toilet on my own without needing help from anyone to get there. Yep, small things like that gives me great pleasure to manage on my own :-) My wheelchair is parked in my shed as bungalows for wheelchair users are like gold dust here in London, few and far between – I looked for 2 years for a bungalow when I moved from my previous house, just to get a house without stairs. If I was going to look for a wheelchair friendly bungalow I would probably still have been in my old house – looking! </div>
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So instead I have asked the council to make this bungalow as suitable as possible for me, and they have started with making a step-free path from the shed all the way out to the pavement so I can get out on my own, without any help. A small thing of independence maybe – but a huge thing to me. I don’t need a wheelchair indoors, or in the garden at the moment - I need it when out of the property and keeping it in the shed is therefore OK. However, the work making the path involved taking apart half of my lovely garden....so perhaps it is time to show you some photos? Hold on to your chair, you are in for a small shock I am afraid. </div>
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This was my garden in the middle of October....</div>
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.....and here 2 weeks later on the first day of work. Before this I had to dig up 26 plants already in the ground in this area - and I had good help of my 2 garden helpers doing this. We also had to move all the pots that were here and effectively clear away everything. The around 200 pots are stacked in between all the other pots around the garden. </div>
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The work lasted 4 days, with a small additional job on the 5th day. All the adaptations had been agreed with the council beforehand – a surveyor came to my garden and wrote down everything together with my occupational therapist, but as things often are – by the time the work started, the plan had changed, some of it considerably and the ‘same-level paved path from shed door to pavement’ I had been promised turned out to be rather different....for financial and practical reasons I was explained. </div>
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OK, so I am really grateful that the council is adapting the house for me so I can live an independent life here, but the disadvantage of having the council doing it for me rather than me hiring a builder company to do the work (and pay for it myself with money I don’t have) is that the council is the customer – not me. And one council office doesn’t know what the other is doing, there is no communication between departments and no one is inspecting the final work. That’s the council for you.</div>
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The noise and dust from the work was pretty bad at times.</div>
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My poor garden!</div>
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The concrete dust settled on everything and even a few days with rain hasn’t managed to rinse off everything. It’s good it is winter soon, many of these plants will shed their leaves and the rest will have to get a good scrub eventually.</div>
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And here is the garden the day they finished, this is 2 ½ weeks ago and just a few days after I had torn my chest muscle. The garden is ready for me to plant everything back again and carry all the pots back where they were....</div>
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All the paving is back in place and now straight with no dips or steps, and there are several concrete patches both here and in the front garden to make up for the difference in the height that was here previously. There is also a drain to take away rain water since everything now is concreted. Before, this part of the garden was just bedded in with sand like everything else, and drainage was not a problem – with concrete to make it as sturdy as possible the need for drainage turned up. Once you do one thing it often leads to another and another....</div>
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So am I happy with the work? </div>
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I am REALLY happy with the fact that the council has agreed to do the adaptations free of charge – the fact that it is free kind of comes with living in a council property, it isn’t my house, I am just renting it. If they deem the work necessary to me then they will also pay for having it done. You can’t just ask for whatever you want though, it is a long application process which involves assessments, lots of paperwork, phone calls, emails - and lots and lots of waiting. Patience is the most important quality to have if you ever need to get involved with your council’s adaptations office. But at the end you might be lucky to get a yes and get adaptations done free of charge to the property you are renting. </div>
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So what about the work? The fact that I am not the client/customer or the one paying the bills makes it more difficult. If I had been the client I would not been happy with some of the work. Look here for example, this is the step up to the Shade Garden. On the left side they have cut the edging so it fits snug to the paving slab, but on the right side there is a good inch gap. Why? And someone has had an ooops-moment on the edging stone to the left under the step and has started to cut it too low. Instead of cutting that bit off and using the rest somewhere else, they have just finished cutting it and used it regardless of the long, visible cut. I would not have done that if it was me doing the work, and a simple tape measure would have avoided that gap on the right side.</div>
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Some more clumsy work? Now, I am not a bricklayer, but I think I could have done this concreting better....I will never be able to cover this with soil as the soil level here is already too high and need to be levelled out before topped up with bark. And that edging is not exactly pretty either. I can cover things with plants, at least in the spring and summer, but seriously, why should I have to resort to that, why not do it properly and looking professionally instead, they were professional bricklayers....</div>
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I told both bricklayers how important my garden is to me and I asked them to make the edges towards the flowerbeds as neat as possible so I could plant all the way to the edge of the paving slabs – and they said that was no problem. This is what the beds look like now – all the beds they have worked around. There is an unbelievable amount of concrete dropped everywhere in the beds, just randomly it seems, and not connected to anything. It comes off with a trowel and a bit of digging so it has no bearing on the paving slabs, but sitting on my stool trying to scrape and lift this has proved impossible with my torn muscle and bulging disc in my back. I tried a little bit last week on one of the other beds and made the pain worse so that was me told....</div>
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So my garden is just fending for itself for now. It’s amazing how quickly the beds have filled up with dead leaves. We have finally had some rain so at least I don’t need to water anymore, I hope we will have a steady supply of rain from now on and the lower temperatures helps so even if it only rains once a week or so it should be enough. My garden helpers haven’t been back yet and it is a busy time for everyone now so I am not sure if I can hope for any more help until after Christmas.</div>
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Despite 3 weeks with neglect, many plants are still in flower. I have lots of cosmos left, a good round of dead-heading would have been ideal but is probably not going to happen. Both Lobelia cardinalis’ to the left are in flower too.</div>
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I took these photos a couple of days ago and the late afternoon sun in the front garden gives everything a golden hue.</div>
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Just don’t look too closely over the fence, where the leaves have started to come down. This is my path out with the wheelchair and there are tons more to come down from the trees before it’s all finished. Last year I filled 8 rubbish bags with leaves here in my front garden so I could safely walk out on my crutches, and when all the leaves had come down the council came and picked up the rest from the carpark and outside everyone else’s house. They only sweep once, after it’s all come down. That can take many weeks and is a bit of a long wait if you can’t come out with your wheelchair because the pavement is too slippery with wet leaves. No sweeping for me this year I think - sweeping was specifically mentioned several places I found information, as it is such a specific movement engaging specific muscles. </div>
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Let me show you some nice flowers instead, here is one you haven’t seen for many years, as mildew took it both last year and the year before – this year I was a bit more vigilant with spraying during the hot part of the summer and it has paid off. This is Aster 'Newstars Fantasy' and the poor thing is still in a pot, desperate for a place in the ground after at least 5 years in a pot. The colours are amazing and such a treat for November and December. </div>
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Here’s another one you have never seen before, and neither have I. It is Hibiscus grandiflorus 'Fireball' and I have been very close to throwing this plant in the compost bin several times. I can’t remember how many years I have had it, but perhaps 4 or 5, and when I bought it as a dormant little plant I thought in my naivety that it would flower that summer. How stupid of me. Anyway, the little plant grew, a bit every year and this year it grew to almost 2 ft tall, but still no sign of flowers. Not until late September – a bit late to turn up with a bud, ONE bud. I am not sure if this one is going to open but it has survived several nights with temperatures down to 4-5C and much colder than that is unlikely for the foreseeable future. The flowers are 20-25cm in diameter, absolutely huge, so it would have been nice if I could have seen just this one open. Since buying my plant I have read that Hibiscus grandiflorus are difficult to get to flower outside in UK. This one was sold as a garden plant and there was no mention that it needed to be grown in a greenhouse. I will give it another year and see what happens, I have had it for so many years now and it is still a happy plant - and one bud this year might mean more next year :-)</div>
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Do you remember the brugmansia I wrote about in October’s post? It is now safely stored for hibernation in my shed, it has been there for almost a month – and it is still flowering there in my shed. I have taken a couple of cuttings and brought inside as safety, if we get a very cold winter (like 2009/10), this plant might not survive and then at least I will have the cuttings.</div>
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This is Malva sylvestris 'Mystic Merlin', and my photo is not doing it a good favour as this amazing plant is 5 ft tall and covered in flowers, but by the time I got to this corner it was too dark to get the rest of the plant. I got this one as a tiny seedling in a plant swap and it is a keeper, at the moment it is in a pot, but this perennial will get a permanent space somewhere soon.</div>
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Time for some roses? Most of my roses are in flower but some of them suffer from blackspot and some need treatment for thrips. I know they will be fine eventually even if they get neglected for now, but it’s hard just watching my garden from the window and not get stuck in! This rose is 'Susan Williams-Ellis' – or ‘Messy Susan’ as she is known as in my garden. A lovely rose anyhow. </div>
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And this is 'Wildeve', I absolutely love the colour of this rose in the late autumn and winter – as with most roses the temperature has an effect on the colour and 'Wildeve' loses the strawberry pink colour it normally has and instead it gets this porcelain pink look. Exquisite.</div>
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Oh, but who is this?! </div>
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I have got a lodger - an uninvited lodger in my garden. I am not sure if it is a male or a female, but most likely it is a female, a vixen, looking for somewhere to nest and have cubs. She might already be pregnant, if so it’s rather early. Or she might just suss out the garden and area before she accepts one of the many male foxes roaming around here. She is often behind my shed in that blind space between the wall and the shed and I can hear her rummaging around back there when I am in the shed. I am not looking forward to this if she has chosen my garden to have her family as I have been through that twice before in my old house. It is a lot of mess for a whole year until they all disperse in the late autumn next year.</div>
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But at the moment it is just one fox, she is not particularly afraid of me and is OK with seeing me through the windows and doors without getting scared. If I open the door and come out, she will walk away – but walk, not run. And she will often stop and turn around and look at me as she walks away. Not in a ‘I am scared you might be following me’ – kind of way. No, it is more a kind of a sulky teenager ‘Arghhh....do I HAVE to move??!!’ kind of look. People who are not used to urban foxes ask if they are dangerous and the answer is no, they are pretty harmless although there are stories where foxes have walked inside houses and attacked small children and people sleeping. That’s very unusual though. I have also heard and seen filmed foxes waiting outside big supermarkets and following people home just to attack their shopping bags to get their groceries! Yes, it sounds like something from a horror story, but this is behaviour not unheard of. </div>
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Foxes would not get into a fight with a human, or try hunting them, and neither do they try to hunt grown up cats or dogs, but on rare occasions there have been reported that foxes have taken kittens and chickens from people’s gardens. Foxes are scavengers and live off rubbish that humans leave like meat, bones, bread and bird food. Half eaten McDonald meals and sandwiches are said to be top of the food list for foxes in London. Wild mammals, birds and invertebrates are also common food source.</div>
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And foxes are very curious and playful, the mess here on my garden table is largely down to the squirrels helping themselves to some of my newly planted spring bulbs (Arghhhh!!!) – but Ms Fox here is checking out if there’s anything left to either play with or eat – or both. A few weeks back she took one of my garden gloves and hid it somewhere after I forgot to put the gloves back in the shed. Just one glove – the other one was left on the table. I wonder what she has done with it. Is it behind the shed or has she dug a hole in the ground for it? Next year when I am planting the rest of the plants, perhaps my missing glove will turn up?!</div>
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Here are my tulips for next year, all planted up weeks ago, with a layer of chicken wire under the bark to stop the squirrels from digging. But it didn’t stop Ms Fox from digging here, spot the paper bag in container number 5.</div>
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She had left a half-eaten bacon and bread roll complete with ketchup, wrapped up in a Gregg’s paper bag. It was properly rolled up before she hid it under the bark, it wasn’t until I uncovered it and opened the paper bag I realised what was in my tulip container! Sorry, but it went in my bin, she will have to get her breakfast from somewhere else tomorrow!</div>
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Having a fox family in your garden can be a huge challenge, they don’t cover over when they have been to the toilet like cats do so there’s mess everywhere. The opportunity to take lots of cute photos are of course there when the cubs first emerge in late March or April, but they grow up very quickly and by the time you get to around September they are the same size as their parents. This fox has been here every day for the last 3-4 weeks so I am pretty sure it is here to stay for the winter and from past experience I would not be surprised if it turns out to be a pregnant vixen. She spends most of the time sleeping and it’s strange to see her lying there in the sunshine, on the exact same spot my cat used to lay – where the sunshine would warm up the wall of the shed and the paving.</div>
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Almost finished now, just got to show you that even though it might say 17th of November on the calendar, my garden is still in full swing and it is still producing strawberries! Next year I will have to design some sort of cages with netting for my two raised strawberry beds so the fruit doesn’t get stolen before it is ready to be eaten. I guess the squirrels will have to fight the birds and the pigeons for these – and the fox will happily eat these strawberries too – and so would I, but I would like them to be a bit red first so I am pretty sure they will end up in a different stomach than mine :-)</div>
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And all the hype about the super moon made me go out and take a photo on the kitchen steps. Not sure if the moon is any bigger than last time we had a super moon and that’s not so long ago – but I haven’t measured :-)</div>
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Final photo - from an autumnal looking front. This is what I see from my bedroom window, not a bad view to wake up to every morning :-) I must admit I see more of this view than most of my neighbours as I spend a lot of my time in bed so having a nice front garden and being able to see flowers from this side of the house too has always been a priority to me.<br />
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It has been a gentle autumn weather the last month with temperatures of 4-8 C at
night (39-46 F) and 8-14 C (46-57 F) during the day, sometimes even higher. The next 2 weeks are set to be the same, with some showers here
and there so no problems with the few frost-tender plants I have. I keep
hearing threats about this winter being predicted to be the coldest in
many years. That’s what they predicted last year too. And the year
before. And neither was true, quite the opposite - so I have stopped
listening. I’ll deal with frost if and when it turns up, until then both
my garden and I appreciate a frost-free winter and hope for yet another
one :-) </div>
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Next month I have been blogging for 6 years, can’t really believe it has been that long – I won’t stop, I really want to continue and I would truly like to keep in touch with everyone, but for now I just have to take a break. I will be back as soon as I can, and in any case I will be posting short updates on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/helene.u.taylor" target="_blank"><u><b>my Facebook Page</b></u></a> so if you haven’t signed up yet perhaps it would be a good time to do so now? I will try to write a post for Christmas and see how things go in the new year. Hopefully I feel better by then. </div>
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Thank you again to everyone who has been in touch, I love to hear from you all and I so appreciate all your comments – they are little treasures of gold and I read every one of them, often more than once. See you all next time for a Christmas post.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-76478430039153393272016-10-15T21:42:00.000+01:002016-10-15T22:01:27.110+01:00Gently, gently into autumn – GBBD October 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
Autumn has arrived in my garden, the nights are getting colder with 8-12 degrees C and the day temperatures are around 14-18 degrees C (46-53/57-64 F). My garden has had to mostly take care of itself the last 2 weeks as I have been battling a very persistent cold that just doesn’t want to go away. I have neglected my garden, my blog and just about everything else I should have done, but I have managed to pull myself outside to water a few times. My goodness I look forward to when it starts raining again!! Two weeks ago I treated all my plants to wine weevil nematodes as yes....I got vine weevils in many pots yet again. A bane of container gardening and with over 500 pots and containers it just seems to be unavoidable. I missed the spring treatment as that coincided with when I had my slipped disks in my back so it is a whole year since last treatment and probably my own fault for the return of the yucky grubs. Once the nematodes are applied, the pots have to be kept moist at all times for the next 3 weeks until the nematodes have done their deed, or they will die. The day after I watered in the nematodes I got the cold. Sods law. I hope the pots have had enough water, another week and I can tip out some of the pots and see if the grubs are dead or still alive. Each treatment cost about £25 so it’s of course vital to not have to repeat it more than necessary. I have joined a subscription scheme so I will be sent nematodes twice a year from now on, a good reminder to get it done once in early spring and once in the autumn. </div>
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We have had some rain the last 2 weeks, more a tease than anything useful, but tomorrow we are promised sunshine and showers for most of the day. Well, I have seen forecasts like that many times before, it just doesn’t add up to much in the end, my soil is hard as concrete and I still can’t get a spade in to plant anything. Most of the plants you see here are in pots and have been watered, the trees are mature and coping fairly well.</div>
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The roses are in the ground and are green, but not flowering as much as they should at this time of year, I am putting it down to lack of water. The roses in the containers are doing much better as they are being watered. I have used the sprinkler a few times but would probably need to water the ground at least once a week to make a difference. I hope to get an automatic watering system down in the ground during the winter so this problem will be a thing of the past by next summer.</div>
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The Japanese Bed is taking on an autumnal feel, everything here is in containers except the impressive Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’.</div>
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I have made short process with the plumtree....at first I just shortened all the branches in an attempt to get better access around the tree, but that made everything worse. I kept getting stabbed and poked on lethal branches and finally I just chopped off all the branches, leaving the main structure in place. I will try to find a short climber that can climb up this tree stump, preferably one with Japanese origin. It would have been nice with lovely, fragrant flowers – a Japanese honeysuckle would have been ideal, but they grow way too tall for this 2m tall tree stump. Any suggestions from my readers? The plumtree is of course still alive so for all I know it could decide to produce masses of new branches the next 2 years and become a full size tree again. I might end up removing the whole thing and place a container with something tall growing there instead. At the moment the tallest feature is a South American immigrant to the Japanese Bed, my Fuchsia boliviana – which will be taller than the tree stump by next year so maybe it will get this place permanently. </div>
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I am eating fuchsia fruit every time I go out, and there are still lots more to come. They are not as sweet anymore, possibly because of the cooler weather and lack of sunshine, but a fun feature in the garden anyway. I am just amazed it is still flowering!</div>
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The Callicarpa dichotoma has become a lovely, arching bush, just the right size for my small garden. Next spring I will give it a bigger container as it keeps drying out too quickly. It will grow a bit bigger and wider, but not much more than this.</div>
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The berries are beautiful and with my plum coloured fence as a backdrop it makes a gorgeous feature here in the Japanese Bed. I was wondering if I would get any berries at all since many callicarpas require another bush for cross pollination, but I needed have worried – there must be hundreds and hundreds of those tiny berries.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_08.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Also in the Japanese Bed is Rhododendron 'Princess Anne' which is evergreen and flowers in the spring like all rhododendrons, but this particular rhododendron turns flaming red in the autumn without losing its leaves, and goes back to green again in the spring. Amazing!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_09.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The dry, hot summer we have had was not to my roses’ liking and ‘Ingrid Bergman’ is one of my roses that go on holiday during the summer heat. I am pleased to see she is back in full vigour.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_10.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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One of my inherited roses, ‘Gaujard’ is also back flowering.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_11.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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And ‘Rob Roy’, still living in a way too small container is flowering again. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_12.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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This is one of my miniatures, ‘Abigaile’, a very lovely rose.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_13.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The pot roses have been flowering non-stop since last November when I got them, it’s very difficult to photograph this one as my camera does not like the bright magenta colour.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_14.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The soft-pink pot rose is easier to photograph, all in all I have 28 roses.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_15.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Most of the alstroemerias are still in flower too, this is Alstroemeria 'Inticancha Sunday'.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_16.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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And this is Alstroemeria 'Princess Theresa'.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_17.jpg" height="800" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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A quick look down the path along the shed, the cosmos I planted in the window baskets have grown to giant size, they must be well over 2.5 meter tall and they are only possible to deadhead because the stems are so flexible so I can bend them down to me to snip off the spent flowers. In the foreground to the left is one of my tomato plants still producing flowers and fruit. I am not sure how many tomatoes I will get from now on, but as long as the plant is still alive I will leave it growing.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_18.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The green tomatoes I took inside 2 weeks ago are ripening well, I have eaten some already and keep picking out as I need. I eat tomatoes every day and I will have my own tomatoes well into November - it will be strange when I have to start buying tomatoes again.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_19.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Let me share with you some of the extra work the wildlife in London is adding to my workload. This is what greeted me yesterday when I got out in the garden. This little bed next to the Woodland Bed is filled with arisaema amurense, primroses and Saxifraga stolonifera and a fox had in its wisdom decided to dig a hole in the middle of it. The hole is almost a foot deep although it was difficult to take a photo showing the whole depth of it. Under all that soil and bark are lots of buried plants and uprooted arisaema bulbs. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_20.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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And in my nursery area I found 3 chewed plant labels....thanks to a squirrel I guess. If they don’t nick the labels they try to eat them! Somewhere in the neighbourhood there must be close to 100 of plant labels with my handwriting, taken out of the pots and out of the garden for what reason?? Beats me! It creates a headache for me when the labels are taken out of pots that are out of season as bulbs and plants are not visible so I have no idea what was in the pots. I have a good few pots around the garden with labels saying ‘What’s This?’ or ‘No Idea’ or ‘Check in the Summer’. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_21.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I carefully cleared up the little bed, put the arisaema bulbs back in the ground and put some fresh bark on. Foxes usually come back to the same place to continue the job, over and over, night after night and it can end up almost a like a game seeing who gives up first. In the middle of the bed I placed a tall, heavy Euonymus europaeus ‘Red Cascade’ I have growing in a large container. Let me see you dig here now Mrs Fox!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_22.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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While we are here anyway, let me show you my tropical corner – not that we have tropical temperatures anymore, but the cannas are still flowering! This is the first year mine are flowering and I had no idea they would just go on and on like this.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_23.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Lobelia 'Compton Pink' is still flowering too, I absolutely love this lobelia, much more compact than its cousin Lobelia cardinalis.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_24.jpg" height="800" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Also here in the tropical corner is an outdoor Strelitzia reginae, it is a young plant and have yet to flower, but have lived all its life outdoors only having some trips into my shed when the temperatures have gone down towards freezing. And next to it is a newcomer to my garden that I have wanted for years – an abutilon!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_25.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I buy all my plants online and I carefully sourced this one as I wanted a red flowering abutilon to go with my colour scheme. I was rather disappointed when I received it as I would not call this red, more like dark orange. The nursery agreed with me and credited me for the few quid I paid for it on the end of season sale – but they didn’t want the plant back. I have placed it here together with Rosa ‘Compassion’ which is apricot-salmon coloured – not sure if they will look good together but the strelitzia has orange flowers so I hope all 3 will be a good combination. If not I might just give away the abutilon and try again to find a red one!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_26.jpg" height="800" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I got another new plant I have wanted for ages. It was my birthday last Sunday and I got some birthday money to spend on plants, one of them is a Brugmansia. OK, I know what you might think now. No greenhouse, no conservatory and living in London – growing Brugmansia? But I want to try! This impressive size plant was delivered a couple of days ago buy courier and I think I got a lot of plant for £20 – it even has 3 buds.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_27.jpg" height="800" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The flowers are absolutely huge and when fully open they will smell amazing in the evening. My brugmansia will be permanently growing in a container so I can move it to my shed when the temperature falls below 6-7 degrees, at the moment it is placed next to the wall so it gets some warmth from my living room and I have put other plants around it to shelter it. Once it is finished flowering I will take some cuttings and bring indoors just as a safety, but fingers crossed the main plant will survive. Does anyone else of my visitors from UK grow brugmansia outdoors?</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_28.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let’s take a quick tour of the front garden and out here, the cosmos are still in flower although I didn’t put as many plants in the window baskets so it doesn’t look as full as those by the shed. Something to have in mind for next year. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_29.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The little piece of grass is just as yellow as it was in August, but if you go really close there are signs of green coming up. Grass is tough, it recovers the most incredible drought – as opposed to flowering plants. I wonder how many hours I have spent holding the hose, watering my pots and containers this year....</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_30.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most of the pelargoniums are still flowering, ‘Rosebud’ is the most impressive as usual, and I have had to prune all of them as they were all so big that branches were breaking off. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_31.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I haven’t showed you my indoor plants for a long time, my collection has grown this year and it is not just outside there are pots everywhere – indoors I have plants in every room including the bathroom. I had a count today and I have 62 plants indoors, this is my bedroom.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_32.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
And here is my living room collection.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_33.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is an avocado plant I have grown from an avocado. I simply bought a normal avocado in the supermarket and ate the avocado first, then planted the stone inside and this is the plant I got :-) OK, so there is a bit more to it, the stone has to stay in water for a while until it has rooted, but it is easily done and if you want to do the same there are lots of info online how to do it. You won’t be able to get any fruit when growing it indoors, there isn’t enough light for that, but you will get a nice plant.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/10_october/Graphicality-UK_151016_34.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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These are also plants, although they don’t look like it! They are called Living Stones – Lithops and they are succulents. They need no water at all between September and May and only a little water the rest of the year. They will grow a new ‘stone’ inside the crack every year and shed the old one, and if they get enough light they can flower every August. Aren’t they cute?!</div>
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I have a Strelitzia reginae indoors too, a bit more mature than the one outdoors, but it hasn’t flowered yet. Hopefully it will next year.</div>
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I have also bought a more unusual strelitiza – a Strelitzia Nicolai, and on the nursery website this one was advertised as a houseplant along with Strelitzia reginae. The unusual thing with this one is that instead of orange and blue flowers it has white and blue flowers. Oh, and one more unusual thing which the nursery website didn’t mention but I have discovered after I got it....it grows much bigger. MUCH BIGGER. Strelitzia Nicolai can be up to 6m tall. How can they call that a houseplant? I might have to find a company or organisation with an atrium or something similar and donate this plant when it has outgrown my bungalow living room, but I hope I will get to see it flower before then.</div>
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I have plants in my kitchen too – there are plants everywhere there is light enough....</div>
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The African violet on my kitchen table has been flowering non-stop since March.</div>
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Just a quick trip out in the garden before rounding up this post, the begonias have not been happy with the dry, hot summer, but they have finally started flowering. Begonia ‘Primadonna’ is not as big as she was last year but the flowers are just as impressive.</div>
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And finally, I am pleased to report that Mr Robin is back in the garden from wherever he has spent the summer. He is such a sociable bird and not scared at all. I am sorry for the poor quality photo, but it was hastily taken with my phone and after this bit of posing he decided to spend the rest of the day flying around me every time I lifted my phone. He wasn’t camera shy in the spring so I am sure I will get new opportunities :-)</div>
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That was the roundtrip of my garden, I have lots more in flower but I have just made a selection for you for today. Tomorrow I will try to reply to all the lovely comments I had to my previous post 2 weeks ago which I am afraid I still haven’t been able to give a response to. For now I will creep back to bed and nurse my cold. </div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
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I am linking today’s post to <a href="http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/2016/10/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-october-2016.html" target="_blank"><u><b>Carol at May Dreams Gardens</b></u></a>, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts from around the world.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-46002514613862822202016-09-30T23:50:00.000+01:002016-10-01T00:40:19.191+01:00Goodbye summer – EOMV September 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here in London we have had a lovely September and a great end to an amazing summer. The late, cold spring and early summer is now a bleak memory and hardly worth thinking of - everything after 16th July has more than made up for the cold period before. Tomorrow we are promised a whole day of rain and showers. Yippy! That will do my garden good. There is no rain on the forecast for the next 10 days after tomorrow so I hope it rains buckets.</div>
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The Woodland Bed in late afternoon sun.</div>
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One of my inherited roses – and I have a possible name for it now, it might be Rosa ‘Gaujard’, at least it looks very much like it on all the photos I have seen online – and it has very distinctive colours from bud to fully open flower so I think perhaps I will call it ‘Gaujard’ from now on. It’s the best suggestion I have had so far :-)</div>
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Rosa ‘Ingrid Bergman’ is happy again after the hot summer, she doesn’t like too much sun like many dark red roses and is now making a comeback in the garden.</div>
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And look what I found the other day! My new wisteria has produced its first few flowers! I didn’t really expect any until next year as this is a very young plant, but here they are, the first ones. You might perhaps remember I was asking fellow bloggers for the scent of this American type wisteria in my previous post – I am none the wiser as despite sticking my nose completely into the flowers I can’t detect any scent at all. Perhaps it will be more detectable when the whole plant is covered in flowers. Next year perhaps?</div>
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The garden is still lush and green and only a faint yellow tint on the large cherry tree next door is hinting that autumn is approaching.</div>
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Oh, and my plumtree is looking very autumnal but that’s more down to lots of broken branches from very heavy fruiting. I have decided to remove the plumtree so I am not so bothered about the damage. I haven’t decided whether to remove the whole thing or keep the tree trunk for a climber. Still thinking about that. One of the sunflowers behind the plumtree has grown so tall I am worried it will break every time we have a bit of wind.</div>
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I can no longer deadhead the sunflowers as I need help of someone up a ladder to reach. The squirrels have broken off two of the shorter sunflowers making unsightly gaps in my nicely made row. The squirrels sit in the cherry tree and jump onto my sunflowers before making their way down into my garden. The smallest sunflowers buckled and broke from this repeated trapeze artistry. Grrrr!</div>
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The sunflowers I could rescue are now on the table in my garden so at least I get to enjoy them for a while.</div>
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The cosmos I sowed from seed are amazingly tall too, much taller than the shed. In the foreground you can see I still have tomatoes. </div>
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The remaining green tomatoes would possibly have ripened, but to be sure I won’t lose them I cut off all of them this afternoon.</div>
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Today’s ready to eat harvest in the small box - all the green ones in the big box are now safely tucked up in my airing cupboard and will ripen over the next couple of weeks. It is amazing that green tomatoes like this can ripen in the dark off the plants without any water, soil or fertiliser – but they do, they taste just as good. I need to check them now and then just to make sure none of them go rotten, but apart from that all I need to do is pick them out when they are ready. I picked the first tomatoes in the second half of July and I will have my own tomatoes till end of October. I eat tomatoes every day and I have frozen absolutely loads and given away lots too. Not bad harvest, it will be strange having to buy tomatoes again!</div>
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The Japanese inspired bed is getting difficult to photograph, I simply can’t get properly on a distance to show you everything in one photo. I try to keep the path clear so I can walk here and all the plants are still in containers.</div>
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Fuchsia boliviana is still flowering beautifully, it has now got two side branches also with flowers – a bit difficult to see here as it is tucked up against the plumtree. </div>
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And the fruit is ready to eat, I have been munching it all week! My fuchsia is flowering for the first time so my harvest isn’t that big yet, but I get a handful like this every day. </div>
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The fruit tastes a bit like kiwis, just not as sweet – just like I read online. This is what it looks like inside. Those seeds are quite soft and you don’t really feel them when eating the fruit – or technically they are berries. Next year I hope to have lots more, I think they will be delicious together with some raspberries and strawberries with some yoghurt. Yum!</div>
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Just across the fuchsia is my beautyberries and I wondered in the spring if I would get any berries since I only have one bush.</div>
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Look how lovely they are! They are not fully ripe yet, the berries will be a bit darker, and just a shade lighter than the plum coloured fence in the background. </div>
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My little desert corner is doing well, the plants have had optimal conditions the last 3 months. Soon I will be tucking them away along the wall of the house so they don’t get too much autumn rain – well, when we finally get it.</div>
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Salvia x jamensis 'Nachtvlinder' is still flowering, the leaves of this salvia smells like blackberries when you bruise them and I can’t pass it without having a sniff. Absolutely amazing!</div>
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Salvia greggii 'Icing Sugar' is also still flowering, but very difficult to get a good photo of, this is my umpteen attempt and the flowers still look very washed out. I hope both plants will come back next year.</div>
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Here is a newcomer to my garden, I got it last year but this is the first year it is flowering. It is Mahonia nitens 'Cabaret' and normally mahonias flower in the winter or early spring. This variety flowers in the autumn and it is a very small variety, perfect for a container.</div>
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I bought some fountain grass last month on a sale – even though they are not fully hardy, but I will try to overwinter them in my shed if necessary. I have lined the containers with bubble wrap and I will move them to the shed if the temperature gets down towards freezing. This is Pennisetum setaceum 'Fireworks' and if they survive and come again next year they could be 4-5 ft tall, although possibly not that tall growing in containers. The grass tails are so soft it is like stroking a cat's tail :-)</div>
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And finally, just as a reminder that summer definitely is over – the cyclamens are here, and the first flowers have started to peek above the foliage. It’s been a good summer. It feels easier meeting the winter after a summer like we have just had.</div>
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I have made a movie for today’s End of Month View, I hope I have managed to capture the feeling of serene calm and summery overall look, despite a bit autumnal windy weather when I was filming. </div>
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The music was Johann Sebastian Bach - Cantata No. 208 - Sheep May Safely Graze.</div>
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That was it for today, next post will be on the 15th October for the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. I am linking today’s post to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog for End of Month View.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-69500383874065737492016-09-15T23:45:00.001+01:002016-09-21T23:28:02.226+01:00What to do with a plum glut – GBBD Sept-16<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here in the South-East of England we have now clocked in exactly 2 months of amazing summer weather. I know it hasn’t been the same all over Britain, but here in my little corner it seems like we have been living in our own little bubble in terms of the weather. The yellow strip of dead lawn outside in the car parking area is a testament to how little rain we have had and I have had to water my garden practically every evening for the last 2 months. The amount of days we have had any rain at all can be counted on one hand – with spare fingers, and often the rain coming down has been very sparse. I can’t wait for a week of good, old British downpour!</div>
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Before I start my post today I have to give you all a big apology for being so absent in the blogosphere, I so appreciate all your comments and I read and treasure everything you write on my blog. In an ideal world I would have liked to visit all of you and commented back on all your posts too, as I know how much of an encouragement commenting is for blogging. Since I had my slipped disks back in May I have been struggling with recovery and I can’t sit with my computer for as long as I used to. In addition I have been battling the joy of getting adaptations done to my new house in order to get the house better suited to me – I have finally got approval for everything I need but it has taken since moving in last year to get there. Now phase 2 starts – getting the work done by the council, which probably isn’t going to be any easier or speedier from past experience. So between all this and watering my garden every evening to keep it alive it simply hasn’t been time to visit you all. I haven’t forgotten you, and some of you I have contact with on Facebook which for me is a quicker and easier way to make a short update. Please send me a friend request if you would like to keep in touch that way too, link to Facebook is right here on the left side.</div>
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And now to today’s photos, the first one is probably speaking for itself, but outdoor temperature is in bottom left corner, indoor temperature in the middle, photo taken Tuesday this week. And 33.8 degrees C is 92.8 F and 27.7 is 81.8 F - British houses don’t come with air condition normally, heatwaves like these lasts a few days or a week and then it is back to more manageable temperatures. We have had quite a few of these this summer though and I have really missed my old, Victorian house which had a very nice, cool downstairs all through the summer. It was 30 degrees this <span style="text-align: start;">afternoon and almost the same indoors – living in a bungalow means there is no escaping the heat - the sun heats up the loft and acts like a duvet keeping the heat inside the house and I basically get almost the same temperature indoors as outside.</span></div>
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The garden has been thriving in the nice weather (thanks to all the watering), and after a quick look at my GBBD post a month ago I can see that it looks almost the same – most of the plants in flower are the same. The lilies and agapanthus are finished and there are fewer roses, apart from that everything else from last month is still in flower. There are a few yellow leaves on the big tree next door, but that’s probably due to lack of water, apart from that, autumn has not started here.</div>
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The few times we have had any rain at all it has been a disappointing event, I took this photo Saturday 10 days ago, the last time we had any rain. This was the forecasted ‘A Whole Day Of Rain’ that I had looked so forward to. The photo is after 8 hours of on and off drizzly rain and you can see that it is still dry under the tree to the left and around the containers, not exactly bucketing-down-kind-of-rain! Maybe Friday’s forecasted rain will be any better? It is supposed to rain for 12 hours, some of it on the heavier side....but I don’t know, I have seen so many forecasts like that this summer and it just fizzles out before the actual day. We’ll see....but it is finally set to cool down a bit from now on, I am ready for some gardening work so I am fine with that!</div>
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OK, enough about the weather, I’m not really complaining, the last 2 months have been really good and I feel after a long, nice summer that I can meet the winter months in a better way and although the winter is short here, I am better prepared for whatever it throws at us. But first we are having a 3 months long autumn and the dahlias are the star of that.</div>
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The few dahlias that survived thanks to me being slow to get plants in the ground are looking good, these are all called ‘Happy Days’ and are bedding dahlias – meant to last one season and then thrown away. I am not very good at throwing out plants so I just kept them and they came back the following year. That’s 4 years ago and they are still happy in the pots.</div>
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I have finally got some echinaceas too - after failing spectacularly with the bare-root plants I bought in February I gave up and bought 2 pots in flower. They are still in pots (along with lots of other plants), but I hope to get them in the ground and fingers crossed, they might come back next year. Growing echinaceas in Britain is not easy, the winters are too wet and too mild.</div>
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These are ‘White Swan’ and ‘Magnus’ – the swan is a bit tatty at the moment but I am sure they just want to get their roots in the ground.</div>
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My experiment with cosmos in window baskets has gone very well, I grew them from seed and they are now much taller than me. Some are just growing and growing and haven’t started flowering yet, whilst the shorter varieties have been flowering for about 6 weeks. In front of them is my absolute favourite dahlia which returning visitors probably will remember from my previous garden.</div>
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This is Dahlia ‘Mary Eveline’. They used to be much taller in my previous garden, but there they grew in the ground. I will give them bigger containers for next year and hopefully that will make them a bit happier and make them less prone to drying out.</div>
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The 2 begonias I have are just starting to flower, they have been really slow this year and living up to their name ‘Primadonna’! I expect them to go on flowering until we get any frost, if we get any.</div>
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I have harvested the last of the plums, I don’t eat them myself because although I like plums it seriously upsets my stomach. Instead I have given the plums away to friends and neighbours and lately to anyone passing by in the street. I have had so many plums this year it has been unbelievable. I should have thinned out the fruit in June and July, but at that time I was mostly cooped up in bed in pain with my slipped disks so thinning plums was the last of my priorities. The result was loads of fruit, smaller than they should, but absolutely loads. (By the way....if you wonder....I haven’t forgotten how to spell my name, I sometimes write my name like that just to make things simple as this is what people here know me as – you see, although I usually write my name the Norwegian way, living here in Britain it is easier for everyone that I call myself Helen as no one can pronounce my name the Norwegian way anyway....so now you know ;-)</div>
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Seeing all the plums still left on the tree a couple of weeks ago, I got this idea that even though I can’t eat the plums, maybe I can DRINK them?? I don’t drink wine as I get migraine from any kind of wine, but I can drink liqueur and similar things – even though I must admit I rarely drink any alcohol at all and whenever I am asked about alcohol consumption when I go to hospital and doctors I usually have to think if I have actually had any alcohol at all the last year - and the answer is often no. Anyway, I did some research on the Internet trying to find a good recipe for plum liqueur and like most things there were many, widely different ones.</div>
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I chose a combination of several recipes and for the first time in my life I bought a bottle of Vodka – 1 ½ litres and a small bottle of dark rum, and the sugar I chose is light muscovado sugar. I thought this combination sounded nice, the result will be a long wait!</div>
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All the recipes I found said to leave the plums to ripen properly before picking them so I tried to do that. Big mistake. I am not sure what has happened with these last plums but I picked 5 kg plums and almost half of them were rotten on one side even though many of them were still slightly green on the other side. I am rather new to growing plums, but the ones harvested earlier on I picked while they were more orange than dark red and they were all fine. Perhaps they were supposed to be orangy-red then? Not sure what kind of plumtree I have as I inherited this tree. Or maybe it is because most of the last plums were all the small ones?</div>
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No idea, but the earlier ones were beautiful and looked like this and I tested several batches before giving them out to see that the stone slipped easy out – and I gave to family and friends who would have been honest and told me if they had not been good.</div>
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Anyway, from those 5 kg I managed to get the 4 kiln jars filled with OK plums, and I was happy with that. I made 2 kiln jars with just Vodka, one with Vodka and a bit Rum and one with Vodka, Rum, a cinnamon stick and 2 star anise. The kiln jars are stored in my larder and needs a shake every day for the next week until the sugar has dissolved. Then it’s just a matter of patience. After 2-3 months the plums can be strained off and discarded and the liquid tasted to see if it needs more sugar, and then bottled. The liqueur will apparently change in flavour over time, 3-6 months after straining it will be drinkable, but will possibly be better after a year. Considering how little alcohol I normally drink I might have plum liqueur for the next 10 years! Or alternatively – this might be another thing to dish out to friends and neighbours if my stomach fails the taste test....</div>
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OK, back to the garden photos – here are my incredible sunflowers, they look like they have been fed with steroids, but they haven’t actually been fed at all, and the watering has been minimal so I have no idea why especially one of them is so tall. One of my garden helpers climbed up a step ladder and attached some extra bamboo poles for me as I was afraid it would break and we measured it to just over 4m tall. That was 2 weeks ago. I have no idea how I am going to deadhead it until he comes back next time as I can’t reach it with any tool from the ground.</div>
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The sunflowers have lots of buds further down and I think I will simply ask my garden helper next time to cut the tops off so the rest can develop into flowers – although it would have been nice to see how tall it could grow into!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/09_september/Graphicality-UK_150916_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/09_september/Graphicality-UK_150916_18.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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In the same corner of the garden is my Fuchsia boliviana and it is now developing fruit. I can’t wait to taste it for the first time, it is said to taste a bit like kiwis, just not as sweet.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/09_september/Graphicality-UK_150916_19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/09_september/Graphicality-UK_150916_19.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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I am still harvesting tomatoes, this is what I got today and there are still lots left to ripen. It has been a good year for tomatoes and I have many bags in the freezer and have given away heaps too.</div>
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Here is a photo from my front garden in late afternoon and I have still not decided what to do here so it is a bit of a pot-jungle.</div>
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Inside the fence there’s only one thing planted, a rose I inherited with the house. This will be a project to get started with when we have had rain for a while and the ground has got softer. I had another count of pots today as I haven’t done that since last winter. Since then I thought I had planted loads, but it turns out I have an incredible 504 pots and containers counting everything not in the ground – from the smallest cutting pot to the largest container. I wonder if my pots have found a way of making offspring on their own?? No wonder it takes such a long time to water every evening!</div>
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Back in the main garden there are still lots of things in flower, this is the pretty Alstroemeria 'Duchess Louise'.</div>
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The Cannas 'Magic Pink' has been the most pleasant surprise this summer, flowering for the first time. I have only seen cannas on TV, in magazines and online so having my own and realising that they just go on and on flowering has been just amazing – I didn’t know! They throw out these stalks with really big, blowsy flowers and before you can cut off the last of the flowers there is another set of flowers on the same stalk. These are the last of the flowers I think, but 2 months of flowers is really good - happy with that!</div>
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Also here in my tropical corner is my Zantedeschia aethiopica, which is enormously big and I cut off its last flower just a week ago. I think that was it for this year, but compared to last year it has flowered for much longer, I have never had flowers in September before. It might be a combination of the plant getting more mature and the good, warm weather. My Zantedeschia keeps most of its leaves over winter and just looks a bit tatty for a couple of months. Come March it will start to produce new leaves and by May it will be in flower again.</div>
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The tropical corner is next to the Woodland Bed which is rather green at the moment, but come next spring it will burst into action again in the flower department.</div>
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Only exception to that is the hardy fuchsia which was here when I moved in. It has been flowering since June and is a welcome addition to my garden which otherwise has no other fuchsias apart from the miniatures and the boliviana. Next year I will start to build a new collection of large flowered fuchsias and fingers crossed, I hope to avoid the dreaded Fuchsia Gall Mite.</div>
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Also in the Woodland Bed I have an absolutely fantastic aster. I have never been able to grow asters successfully, they just end up with mildew, but this Aster ageratoides 'Ashvi' does not get this issue. It thrives even in dry shade and I grew it in a pot in my previous garden. Here on the edge of my woodland garden I have planted it in the ground and it has really taken off, probably doubled in size from previous years.</div>
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Those pretty, white flowers are like little lanterns in amongst the otherwise green foliage in the Woodland Bed.</div>
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I have always wanted a wisteria. Yep, I know – you need a big house to grow a wisteria against, preferably a mansion or at least a 2 storey big house. Not a tiny bungalow. Failing that you could always have a really big, walled garden and grow the wisteria along the whole wall. I do have a wall, but it is not big and not long. But I really, really want a wisteria. I have never seen one, or smelled one in real life – as with so many things I have just seen them on TV or online. But I want one. So when I finally read about the American wisteria I thought; Eureka! That’s the wisteria for me!</div>
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So I bought one, and a nice plastic container to plant it in. Yes, a container! The American wisteria, Wisteria frutescens 'Amethyst Falls' grows very differently to the Japanese and the Chinese wisteria, slower and with less invasive root system, and crucially – it doesn’t grow for miles on end. It is apparently suitable for container growing. I have seen photos online of this wisteria growing in containers, but I don’t know how old those plants were when the photos were taken. I dithered for a long time before buying the container. Not too small, not too big.</div>
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I just have to show you this photo of the daughter of a friend of mine, testing out the size of the wisteria container. Perfect size for a toddler! Her name is Jetta and she is so cute standing in it, I just had to include this photo :-)</div>
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And here is the wisteria after I planted it, this plant was £19.99 and I felt I got a lot of plant for my money.</div>
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However, it was growing on a trellis, twined up and down and all around it – and I wanted to grow a straight stemmed wisteria tree like I had seen online.</div>
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I carefully cut away the trellis – and the result was this. I counted 7 stems, most of them quite long. How do I turn this mess into an upright tree?</div>
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By being brutal! It will never get a nice shape unless it starts out right.</div>
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I couldn’t get myself to cut away everything down to a single stem so I left the 3 nicest stems and twined them around a garden pole I already had. It is a plastic coated metal pole meant for plants and I might get a new one just a bit taller. Or I might just leave it at this height, not sure yet. It needs a cross at the top to carry the canopy because once the desired height is reached, whatever grows afterwards can be trained outwards to make an umbrella shape and from that, the flowers will form and hang down. That’s the idea at least. Once the umbrella is formed, all the leaves on the stems can be removed.</div>
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This type of wisteria flowers on new wood, and usually flowers twice a year from a very young age, mine has a couple of buds and hopefully I might get to see some flowers this year. This is also a very nice feature as opposed to the Chinese and Japanese wisteria, which apparently need to be a good few years old before you can have any hope of seeing flowers. However, after having received my wisteria I have dived into reading more about it and I realise there is some contention about the scent of the flowers. Some places it says they smell beautifully, some places it says they smell very little whilst other places it says they smell like male cat wee! I would really like to hear from anyone growing this particular type of wisteria to hear your view on the flower scent, just so I can mentally prepare myself for it!!</div>
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Here is the wisteria in place in my front garden, in the sunniest spot, next to my not-yet-flowering bottlebrush. Maybe the bottlebrush can pick up a trick or two from the wisteria and get on with flowering, it is about time!</div>
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I haven’t showed you any roses yet so maybe it’s about time? This is one of my £1 pot roses from ASDA, I think all the soses have been suffering from lack of water lately – or for the containers perhaps more the constant drying out and watering. Watering once a day is simply not enough to get them through to the next. At least I hope that’s the reason for the brownish outer petals on many of the roses, it’s certainly not rain damage. Hopefully when we get cooler weather and the plants get a more constant supply of water the roses will look better again.</div>
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I haven’t really had a big second flush of roses like I normally have, I am blaming that too on the low water table. I have prioritised water to all the pots and containers and even though I have given the roses in the ground some water I probably haven’t given them enough. This one is gorgeous as always though, ‘Scepter'd Isle’.</div>
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This is the unknown rose growing through the apple tree, still throwing out new buds.</div>
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And this is another pot rose, with larger flowers. This one is also suffering from brownish outer petals.</div>
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And finally, another photo of Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’ – with a little visitor. The bees really love these flowers and I can just sit down on my stool at any time I want to get a ‘bee on a flower photo’ – they will turn up in minutes.</div>
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That was the end of the tour for today, thanks for hanging in there, I know this was a really long post :-) My next post will be on the 30th September, with a movie from the garden.</div>
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I am linking today’s post to <b><u><a href="http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/2016/09/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-september-2016.html" target="_blank">Carol at May Dreams Gardens</a></u></b>, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts from around the world. I am off to try to reply to some of the comments you made to my previous post 2 weeks ago and I will try my best to make a round to you all this time.</div>
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Until next time, take care.<br />
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<u>UPDATE:</u><br />
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Just to let you know, we got rain last night and today….and after a week of hot weather and the hottest day of September in 105 years last Tuesday, the build-up ended with post-heatwave storm which brought flash floods causing widespread disruption many places. I heard the rumble of thunder early this morning, but the thunder never came over my house. It has rained quite a lot, but not enough to cause any flooding or problem around here.<br />
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I placed my washing-up tray that I use for deadheading around the garden in the middle of the patio last night to see how much rain we might get, and as you can see we got a nice amount, there is almost 2 cm in the tray. More than we have had in any rainfall since June. I can see from the news that there are flooding problems many places with roads, schools and underground stations closed. The very dry conditions here makes rainfall like this a huge problem as the rain doesn’t seep into the ground, it just stays on the surface and has nowhere to go. It has stopped raining now and the sun is shining again. No more rain on the forecast for the next 10 days for my area. </div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-75874068715876861942016-08-31T23:50:00.000+01:002016-09-16T16:38:03.383+01:00Endless London summer – EOMV 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
It’s the last day of August, the last day of summer and autumn is officially starting tomorrow – but here in London the summer is far from over. We have had the best summer for years, once it finally got going, and the reminiscences of the unusually cold spring and early part of the summer is now a bleak memory. The good weather started on 16th July and today, nearly 7 weeks later I can look back on several short heatwaves with well over 30 degrees and the rest has been in the mid to high 20s. Last week we had 34 degrees a couple of days and for me that’s a bit too high, I am happier in the garden with around 25 degrees C. Despite having had some rain forecasted a couple of times we have only had proper rain once and it was a welcome 24 hours of rain – but that was back in July. Everything is really dry and the ghost of mildew is hovering over my garden, threatening to invade. So far I have managed to stay clear but all the watering is taking its toll. I wouldn’t mind 3-4 days of non-stop rain....<br />
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....but that’s not going to happen yet because the good weather is just continuing. The forecast says one afternoon with showers the next 2 weeks, but…promises, promises....I’ll believe it when I see it. We have had forecasts like that many times and usually end up with 5 minutes of a light drizzle. Hardly useful at all for the garden so I guess I will be watering Saturday evening as usual.</div>
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The garden is still green and full of flowers, but all the trees are a bit sad and droopy and the big cherry trees are already getting the odd yellow leaves because of the dry weather.</div>
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My plum tree looks like some sort of weeping kind of tree, a bit difficult to see in this photo with full sunshine but I just could not manage to get a photo taken without blazing sunshine. The plumtree is so full of plums it must have 3 times as much fruit as last year! I should have thinned out the plums, but I was recovering from my slipped disks in June and July when I should have done this and I never got around doing it afterwards. Some of the branches has broken and will need to come off once the fruit is off, but I am not so worried about it – I am still considering getting rid of the tree and I am dithering about what to do. The tree really is too big for that space and I have to squeeze past it to get to the plants behind it and especially when the branches are bent downwards in the summer the whole tree is just a nuisance. I can’t eat plums anyway (although I have tasted a few even though I really shouldn’t!), so the fruit is just being given away to anyone willing to take it. I will think about it for next year. Perhaps I will just have it taken out and put another obelisk with a nice climber there instead.</div>
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Some of the plants in my garden haven’t been so happy about the prolonged period of sunny dry weather, but this Lewisia cotyledon has been flowering for ages, I have had it for about 5 years and I can’t remember it flowering for 3 months solid ever before. Many years ago I had a peach coloured Lewisia which I think is a more common colour, but I love this white one, such a cheery little plant right at the front of my rose bed.</div>
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The roses should have been in their second flush right now, but although all of them are flowering it is a bit sparse. I have probably not given them enough water, especially those in the ground and I have seen signs here and there of mildew. The organic spray I use for mildew isn’t terribly effective, the best way to prevent mildew is to give them enough water. But I find all the watering hard work and I am determined to get a soaker hose down in all the flowerbeds during the winter, ready for next summer. I will still need to water the containers but it will save a lot of work. This is 'Scepter'd Isle – still beautiful albeit not as plentiful as earlier in the summer.</div>
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And this is 'Wildeve'. Both of these two roses have grown incredibly big since being planted in the ground last winter. They lived a container life in my previous garden and they have never been able to stretch their roots like they can now. They probably like the clay soil here better than most of the plants too so with a bit more water they should have really good conditions.</div>
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This is 'The Generous Gardener' - and I must admit I am struggling a bit with what to do with this rose – it grows like MAD! There aren’t that many flowers, but every time I look at it there is another new, waist high cane. I am trying to train it up the wall and along the trellis and was aiming for a fan shaped base structure. But this gardener seems to have other plans, generous plans. It is just a mess at the moment and I am letting it do its own thing for now.</div>
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Come January I will take charge though and be ruthless, cutting down and training and try to get a structure. I say ‘try’ with some trepidation as my goodness how this rose grows. If it could just use all that energy to produce flowers instead then it could be amazing as the flowers are lovely, even the new buds are really pretty.</div>
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The last of the roses today is a bit of a surprise flower. It is another rose I inherited with the garden and I had decided to remove this one as it is in a very narrow bed, half growing under the tall hardy fuchsia. I just haven’t had anyone to dig it out for me yet so up until now I have just removed every branch it produced. And suddenly last week I realised I had missed one branch and the rose had managed to grow a 5 ft tall branch inside the fuchsia that I had not even seen – with flowers on. And here are the flowers – really pretty. I think I will try to salvage the rose and move it out to the front garden. Sometimes the garden takes charge and makes the decisions for you if you are a bit late getting things done :-)</div>
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Want to see something exciting? My Fuchsia boliviana ‘Alba’ is flowering – and producing fruit! I can’t wait for my first harvest, I have no idea what they will taste like but I have read they taste a bit like kiwis, just not as sweet. The fruits of Fuchsia boliviana are apparently in sale everywhere in markets in South America, but they don’t store very well so that’s probably why we don’t see them in the supermarkets here.</div>
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The sunflowers are basking in the sun, I have 5 along the tall wall, but the sunflower to the far right is either a wrong seed in the bag I bought, or it suffers from gigantism – it is a monster! One of my garden helpers had to climb a stepladder and extend the bamboo stake to support it as I was worried it would break. I measured it today and it was 3.56m tall, but only last Saturday it was 3.32m tall so it grows fast. It hasn’t started flowering yet so by the time it stops reaching for the skies it will be much taller.</div>
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The sunflowers are a nice burnt orange and yellow, really gorgeous. There’s something about sunflowers that makes me smile whenever I look at them.</div>
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A few harvest photos – the plums first – some are already picked and some are weeks away from being ripe, a plumtree needs to be picked every few days and sifting through the plums to get the ripe ones is a bit of a chore. Next weekend I have invited people around to come and pick what they want - saving me from having to pick lots of fallen fruit from the ground.</div>
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The tomatoes are still going strong, I have lots in the freezer and I have given away several bags already. I like roasted tomatoes and they are also good to just pop into soups and omelettes – once they have been frozen they don’t look like a fresh tomato anymore but can be used to lots of different things.</div>
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Some of the tomatoes come with their own personality, like this one with a distinctive nose.</div>
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And I grow only cherry tomatoes, but this one to the left was apparently aspiring to be something bigger than that.</div>
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I have grown Lobelia cardinalis 'Queen Victoria' for many years, the red one to the left, it has now got company by a princess – the pink one to the right is called Lobelia x speciosa 'Russian Princess' and although they are totally clashing in colour I think they look good together.</div>
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Here are some other newcomers, I am trying Echinacea again, for the umpteen time. But here in my new garden they should be happier, more sun and drier conditions. Fingers crossed they will come back next year. This is Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus' and ‘White Swan’.</div>
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Yet another newcomer, Malva sylvestris 'Mystic Merlin' – a perennial plant currently in a pot but it will join the queue of plants that will be planted hopefully during the winter and early spring.</div>
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This gerbera is no newcomer, I bought the plant for £1 in Ikea in 2002 or 2003 and it has lived outdoors ever since. It usually flowers from autumn right through the winter until late spring but this year it has decided to do the sensible thing and flower in the summer. Perhaps getting a new, bigger pot for the first time in almost 10 years helped it to get its act together. Or maybe the gerbera will flower non-stop until next year, I have no idea – I don’t get to enjoy the flowers much because the local squirrel population has worked up an appetite for the flowers and they break them off and eat the whole lot as soon as they open up leaving me with just crumbs on the side. Having two whole flowers at the same time is a rare treat.</div>
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The cannas in my tropical corner are doing remarkably well, I bought them as bare-root last February and this is the first year they are flowering. I am amazed at how they flower, I didn’t really know that they would produce new flower buds over and over from the same stalk. As soon as one is finished, the next one is ready to take over as you can see in the photo to the left. On the top photo you can see the two plants together, quite sizeable by now, and to the left of the cannas, on the ground is my absolutely huge Zantedeschia aethiopica.</div>
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I gave the Zantedeschia a really big container this spring and deliberately made the drainage holes rather small. The container is huge, big enough to bath a small child in and every evening I give the plant a bath – I fill up the container with water until it reaches the rim. I just lay the hose between the leaves and leave it to go and do something else. It takes a good 5 minutes to fill up the container and I do this every time I water the garden – most evenings. The Zantedeschia loves it and is lush and green and has been producing flowers since early June. Look at the size of that flower!</div>
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The dahlias are in full flower, they would probably prefer to be given bigger containers so that’s the aim for them all, in my garden there won’t be any dahlias in the ground, only container dahlias as the soil is not suitable. This is ‘Happy Days’ in a mix of colours.</div>
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Do you remember my Dregea sinensis, the vine I had over the big arch in my previous garden? I have a new one! It is still a baby, but I have now got it planted in the ground and it will grow up this fence. I need to get a trellis soon!</div>
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The woodland bed is lacking a bit in the flower department, I need to get some early autumn flowers for this area, everything is just shades of green here. Later on there will be primulas and cyclamens here, but in my garden the cyclamens doesn’t start to flower until around November when it gets cooler and wetter. The bare patch at the front had 3 lovely tricyrtis from my previous garden, none of them came up, I don’t really know why as the soil here is not too bad. Maybe the pH is so high they just gave up, or maybe it was too dry. I miss the tricyrtis, they are so lovely late in the autumn.</div>
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And here is a photo of what’s meeting me every day when I come out in the garden – this is what the squirrels do to my pots and containers. The rose here can tolerate a bit of digging, but some of my plants have been killed by all the destruction and in my cutting area there is complete havoc every day with uprooted plants and compost everywhere. Apart from destroying a lot of things, the squirrels create a lot of work for me. Did you know that squirrels were originally brought over to the country in 1876 in the Cheshire area by the Victorians, it is thought that they were introduced because the Victorians wanted to liven up the woodland and make it more interesting to look at. They were completely unaware of the destruction they can cause and their negative effect on the native red squirrel. Say no more......</div>
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But the birds are a joy and I so appreciate being able to sit and watch them. I never thought I would have so much entertainment from having birds in the garden, and although I tried to feed the birds in my previous garden I never succeeded getting them down in the garden, they just flew over. Here in my new garden they are right next to me and they seem to get more used to me too, I am allowed to film them outside now, I don’t have to stand in the kitchen anymore and do it through the window. Even the sparrows allow me to come quite close to film and take photos which they didn’t do last year. The pigeons are literally walking between my legs, not scared at all.</div>
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I have made two movies for today’s post, one is my usual garden movie and one is of the birds in the garden. The bird movie is centred around one of the bird feeders and the day I was filming it was mainly sparrows visiting, although I see the odd blue tit and great tit still too. I suspect there will be more of them in the winter again. Well, I say birds on the feeder, but one of the visitors to the feeder in the movie is definitely no bird, you’ll see....</div>
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If you don’t usually view my movies in full screen you should probably take the trouble to do so today for both the movies, just use the buttons in the bottom right corner - and please change the setting to 720p or 1080p as the quality will be too grainy unless you watch them in HD.</div>
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The music for this movie was: Slow Waltz from the Suite 'Fancy Dress' by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs</div>
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The second movie is my usual end of month movie, and in the middle of the movie I have included some night shots from the garden. I so wish I had a really expensive camera so I could show you all the night lighting I have, but my little camcorder was not up for the task. I was however able to film some of the lights I have, and I also filmed my chimenea which features in the film.</div>
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If you are not sure what a chimenea is, here is a photo of it, the metal burner in the corner here. It usually stands here when not in use, but I can pull it out when I want to use it and I think it gives a really nice ambience and it is rather mesmerising to sit and watch the flames.<br />
The chimenea can be used with charcoal or wood and with such fuel it can also be used as a barbeque, but I usually use biofuel as I don’t cook on it, I just use it for a cosy fire.</div>
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The music was: The Banks of Green Willow by by George Butterworth</div>
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That was it for today, next post will be on the 15th September for the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. I am linking today’s post to <b><u><a href="https://patientgardener.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/warts-and-all-tour-2016/" target="_blank">Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog for End of Month View</a></u></b>.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-39104957801655393282016-08-15T03:38:00.000+01:002016-08-15T12:54:01.035+01:00No August slump in my garden - GBBD<div style="text-align: justify;">
I started last post by saying summers are a bit hit and miss here in Britain – but here in the South East we can’t complain about the weather the last 4 weeks, it has been just warm enough to be called summer, not too hot and with plenty of sunshine. Only thing missing would be rain for a few hours every night so I wouldn’t have to do all the watering – but I am being picky now! It has actually rained only once the last 4 weeks, it was a good rainfall of almost 24 hours, but being nearly 4 weeks ago it is now a bleak memory for my garden. The clay soil is bone dry and like concrete and I have given up getting anything more planted a long time ago, it will have to wait until the winter when we get proper, prolonged rain again.</div>
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The good weather makes everything grow like mad though, and with the variety I have of plants there is no August slump in my garden – I have plants in flower in all directions just as I have the rest of the year. I have much wider paths here in my new garden than I had in my old garden – but even so – you can still see the resemblance by now. Once I get everything planted it will be jungle every summer in this garden too!</div>
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I struggled a bit to take the photos for today’s post as it was too sunny both yesterday and today. A bit of a luxury problem I am sure certain bloggers from northern parts of the country will grit between their teeth when they read this – nevertheless, I was playing cat and mouse with the sun trying to capture at least the long shots out of the sun....</div>
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....because just see what a difference it makes getting rid of the harsh contrasts the sun makes and being able to see all the finer details in the shade. The sun was coming and going all the time from a puff-cloudy sky.</div>
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Let me show you my sunflowers, the first one is flowering and there will be many more to come. I have chosen a mix of orange and brown toned sunflowers this year, a bit unusual colours and they are so beautiful.</div>
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The bees and bumblebees love them and the squirrels have already had a few attempts at nibbling on them, I assume it is just a question before I find a squirrel sitting on top of each of the sunflowers.</div>
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I just had to take a photo of the leaves, look at the size of this leaf next to my quite large hand!</div>
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Also in here next to the fence is my incredible Fuchsia boliviana. Since last post the flowers has become much bigger, but they haven’t opened yet. I think I will need to repot it before the winter as it dries out too quickly. That’s going to be a delicate operation getting the plant out of that pot and into another pot! Not sure if I should risk it but if it dries out too many times it might throw the flowers and I won’t get any fruit.</div>
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Next to the fuchsia is one of the new anemones, this is Anemone x hybrida 'September Charm'.</div>
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Moving on in the garden, the roses are now well into their second flush and many of them will go on flowering on and off until January when I cut the roses down.</div>
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The Hibiscus syricaus I inherited with the house is in full flower too.</div>
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The colour of these flowers is my favourite hardy hibiscus, and although the flowers are quite small I really like them. But I am planning to try some much bigger hibiscuses too – think dinner plate size flowers – 10 inches wide :-)</div>
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And right here at the front, in the red container on the right side is exactly a hibiscus like that, I have had it for 3 years but it is still just a baby, I was hoping it would flower this year but it seems I will have to be patient for another year.</div>
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One plant that isn’t a baby anymore is this Lobelia cardinalis ‘Queen Victoria’ – I spent a few years trying to find out how to grow these plants. I killed the first one and this is the second which has been happy in a container for 4 years. And that’s been the key to growing Lobelia cardinalis in my garden – by growing them in containers I can swamp them with as much water as they like without annoying any neighbouring plants.</div>
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Just behind the Lobelia are some of my tomatoes – I have so many tomatoes at the moment that I am freezing any I can’t eat or give away. They won’t be like fresh once out of the freezer again but will be fine for popping into soups or stews or in an omelette or anything cooked.</div>
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And on the other side of this path is another tomato plant, this is a different type and a bit later so I hope it will still give me tomatoes when the others have finished. Behind, the dahlias have started flowering and the cosmos are still going strong.</div>
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I have 5 different cosmos and they are all in pink hues plus white.</div>
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At the very bottom of this path the Goliath lilies are still in flower, although in a week or two it will all be over and a whole year till next time I have any lilies. In my previous garden I used to have Goliath lilies well into September every year, but it was a much shadier garden so here in my new garden they have gone off quicker.</div>
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If I could find a shadier spot I would try to plant some of them, but I must admit there isn’t much shade in this garden except for right under the big cenaothus trees and it is a pain to dig there with lots of big roots. All the Goliath lilies are still in big pots spread around the garden – they would all like a space in the ground this winter, a LOT of digging....</div>
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A little update on the beautyberry bush – the question was if it was a self-pollinating type or not – and if I would need to buy another bush to get berries. Well, I have never had a beautyberry bush before, but from what I can see, there are berries! In this photo you can see the whole process, from unopened flowers to the left, through flowers and to the small berries on the right side. I am a bit surprised about the berries though, but I have only seen this variety online, never in real life, but if this is the berries they will be very small. I have seen other beautyberries in Kew Garden and the berries were much bigger. It is early days though, I’ll keep you posted :-)</div>
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And now to something completely different; I was given a plant in a plant swap in April and back then it was just a tiny seedling. The plant is called Althaea cannabina and I was told it would be quite tall and have pink flowers. We laughed a bit about the cannabina part of the name, and I was told it was perhaps because it had a resemblance to cannabis. I have later found out though that cannabina simply means hemp in Latin and as this plant is called hemp-leaved Hollyhock or Palm-leaf Marshmallow it explains the name. I must admit I had no idea what a cannabis plant looked like so curious as I am I looked it up – and now I know a lot more about cannabis too and that it is also used for hemp (among other things....) Hah, what do you know – all the things you can find by asking Google!</div>
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But back to my plant, it didn’t look much when I got it, and it grew a thin stem that still didn’t look much so I just placed it under my apple tree where the squirrels unfortunately broke off half of it.</div>
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But look what has happened to that feeble little plant – it is flowering! I have given it a bigger pot and it will possibly grow a bit bigger this year, but being a perennial I will try to find a permanent space for it for next year. Mature height is up to 2m tall so a back of the border plant. This is a keeper, the bees already love it and so do I!</div>
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While we are here at my apple tree let me just show you this planter with bacoupa – I do get the feeling they will outgrow their boots before the end of the season!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_24.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Lots of things are growing well at this time of year and I don’t really have an August slump to complain about – some plants take a short breather and then come back, but for most it is just full on the whole time. Like this pelargonium for example.</div>
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Let me take it out of the bed so you can see the size of it because it is massive! This is ‘Apple Blossom’ and possibly the hardiest of my pelargoniums. They don’t stop growing during the winter so as long as it is not too cold they just go on and on. My pelargoniums spend all winter outside as I don’t have a greenhouse, they just have a few nights in the shed when the night temperature dips just below freezing and that’s it – outdoors the rest of the time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_26.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The flowers of ‘Apple Blossom’ are just exquisite.</div>
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And just next to this is another exquisite plant, the two cannas that started flowering a few weeks ago for the first time. I planted them as bare root in March 2015 and I am amazed to see how big they are now. I think I need to split them up as both pots are full of plants.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_28.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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The coral flowers are very difficult to photograph, my camera goes absolutely crazy with colours like this and even trying to adjust a bit in Photoshop doesn’t really give a true colour, not on my screen at least.</div>
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A bit easier to photograph is the plant next to the canna then, another Lobelia – this one is called ‘Compton Pink’ and I treat it exactly the same way as Lobelia cardinalis – with lots of water.</div>
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Have I not showed you any roses yet? About time then! This is my inherited one, growing inside the apple tree in a very awkward place to prune and care for it. Even growing like that is not really ideal as many of the flowers just get broken from rubbing up the apple tree. But I can’t see this rose being dug up any time soon so I guess it will be staying where it is, it is such a lovely rose so it is a keeper for me :-)</div>
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This is the very first photo I have shown of my new rose ‘New Dawn’ – I have high hopes for this rose but for now it is a very small plant and will need a few years to get properly established. It is an....oh, I hate to repeat myself, but....it is an exquisite rose!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/08_august/Graphicality-UK_150816_32.jpg" height="800" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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And so is 'Rob Roy'! He has been growing in a container for more than 10 years and is still looking amazing. I hope to let him loose this winter, if I can get some help with planting.</div>
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And this is a 1970’s-lipstick coloured rose that I got from a nursery with a wrong label – I ordered something completely different. I have never found out what this rose is called, the nursery could not help me. It has also been growing in a container for nearly 10 years, I think it will probably be happy to be let loose.</div>
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And here in my front garden is where both these two last roses are going, together with a rose that was here from before and another rose I have in a container. I also have 6 mature penstemons to plant here and a good size hydrangea cutting from the big, dark-pink hydrangea in my old garden. And I was a bit afraid it wasn’t enough plants for my front garden so I made some penstemons cuttings in the spring. I might be a bit too good at taking penstemons cuttings because they all survived. All 20. Do you think I have possibly got too many penstemon plants for this front garden? Surely not?! I am planning to have another plant swap day in late September and I will try to swap and sell some of the plants I don’t need. Some of the penstemons are going :-)</div>
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While we are here I can show you one of my less successful projects – my raspberries. These are autumn raspberries and I bought them in November last year as two sticks with some roots on. I planted them in pots and have later potted them on twice until they ended up in these big containers. The idea was that they would hopefully have enough space here for a couple of years until I could sort out where to grow them permanently. I have had raspberries many places I have lived before, but I have never actually planted them before, only inherited mature bushes. I had no idea what to expect but I did think they would grow up and produce berries the first year. Perhaps it was just wrong of me to assume that – I can’t really find any information about how long it takes. They started growing leaves in May and as you can see – there probably won’t be any berries this year! There is no risk of pot bound containers either, with such a small growth I just hope it will be berries next year. Or is it something wrong with the plants? Should I have had my first good crop ready soon? The raspberries are called Bakker’s Jewel, they are perpetual autumn raspberries and should flower and fruit from July into October.</div>
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Here is a newcomer to my garden, Amaranthus tricolour ‘Red Army’ - one of those I sowed earlier in the year and although it is an annual I will probably have it again next year. I love the colour of the leaves and the dark tufts in the middle. And you can eat the leaves – that is if you can bear to eat them, they look so pretty I just have to let them stay on the plant so I can enjoy them for as long as possible.</div>
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And here is another lovely plant I sowed from seed, Limonium suworowii – described as pipe-cleaner-like flowers. And that is a good description – that is, if you know what a pipe cleaner is :-)</div>
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My primulas are starting to flower – and I have LOTS of them. I know this always causes a bit of a stir on my blog when I say this – but here in southern England, Primula vulgaris are plants that start to flower in early autumn and they go on to flower the whole winter all the way to early summer. Then they take a short break during the height of the summer and start again in August or September. Hardworking plants in my garden! The fact that the first ones are in flower is just a reminder that we are going towards autumn. Not sure I want to follow!</div>
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But before we get to autumn I have dahlias in flower and they have just started. I used to have many more but most of those I planted sadly died as they didn’t like the clay soil here in my new garden. Thanks to my slow progress in the garden I didn’t manage to plant all my dahlias, and those still in pots are now starting to flower and look good. They all need bigger pots if they are to stay in pots permanently, but I think that’s the way to grow dahlias here. This is ‘Happy Days’ – there will be more dahlia photos next time.</div>
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I am ending today’s post with one of my lovely Regal Pelargoniums, it has gorgeous colours and is called ‘Ada Green’. Regal pelargoniums are called Martha Washington geraniums in US, but they are not actually geraniums they are pelargoniums. Whatever you call them, like the ‘Apple Blossom’ pelargonium above, I am keeping them outside all year except for those possible few nights with frost.</div>
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I am linking today’s post to Carol at May Dreams Gardens, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts from around the world.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
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HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-90326186548528984142016-07-31T15:29:00.000+01:002016-08-07T23:19:43.875+01:00Summer weather in London<div style="text-align: justify;">
Summers in Britain is a bit hit and miss, some are nice and warm with just about the right amount of rain – and some are cool and never seem to get started. We had an unusually cold spring and early summer this year, but 2 weeks ago we got a mini heatwave which I suppose could make up for the missing summer – but it doesn’t really work like that! We are not used to such high temperatures, and neither are the plants in our gardens – we all suffer a bit in 33-35 degrees C (91- 95F), and I have now quite a few plants with sunburned leaves and a couple of hydrangeas were burned to a crisp. The heatwave didn’t last long, we have been back to 22-25 degrees C this week and both garden and gardener is much happier with that kind of temperatures.</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">I don’t mind weather like this if I can stay horizontal on a sun chair and do nothing, but the garden still doesn’t water, tidy and deadhead itself and it was painfully hot working in the blazing sun so I ended up waiting till about 8pm before starting any gardening work that week.</span><br />
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We are now back to more typical British summer weather and here in the South-East it is quite nice and warm but not too hot. Not as much sun as I would prefer but hey – we can’t have everything here in Britain....I didn’t think I would say this after all the rain we previously had, but we could do with a couple of days with rain! The ground is very dry and by now it is impossible to get a spade in it thanks to the clay soil I have.</div>
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It is still lily time in my garden – some lilies are finished flowering while others are just starting, with so many and different lilies I have it usually takes into September before the last ones are finished flowering. Here in the corner behind the plumtree are some of my Goliath lilies, some are taller than me and I am 5ft 9” (175cm). The white lilies at the front are 'Casablanca'.</div>
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One of the most gorgeous of the Goliath lilies are ‘Black Beauty’ – still in a container from my previous garden so it hasn’t grown very tall yet, but if I plant it in the ground it will take off within a couple of years. Look at that colour!</div>
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Here it is next to rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – a lovely combination, I think I will plant the lily right here.</div>
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Let me show you my tomatoes....last year I almost didn’t get any tomatoes, the company I bought plug plants from had delivery problems and only delivered my 2 plugs in beginning of July, which gave me a too short harvesting season. I have had problems with tomato plant deliveries before so this year I decided to make sure I would have tomatoes. I ordered 2 plug plants from one company and 1 plug plant from a different company. My thought was at least I should have some tomatoes! But of course, this year there were no problem at all, one delivery came late April, the other came mid-May and I am growing 1 tumbler tomato on the left side and 2 tumbler tomatoes on the right side of the path in this photo. And they are growing like MAD and are taking over the space for the strawberries and I will have so many tomatoes I can give away to my neighbours every day and still have tomatoes until early November!</div>
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I have started eating the first ones already, yummy cherry tomatoes, perfect for salad.</div>
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Just in front of the tomatoes I have my agapanthus’, I have 3 different plants but this is the oldest one and it flowers best of them all. It is called ‘Navy Blue’ and the flowers last for a very long time.</div>
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I don’t have much proper blue in my garden so agapanthus is a welcome plant.</div>
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Speaking of blue, I have window baskets with frothy blue lobelia flowers out in the front. I had these window baskets straight on the ground at first, but I find it difficult to bend down to tend to them on the ground and dragging my garden stool all the way out here wasn’t something I’d do very often.</div>
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I got some cheap apple crates on E-Bay and 2 pieces of wood from a hardware store and when I get around to painting the fence I will paint this bench white too and it will blend in better.</div>
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Among the lobelias are some of my experiments with sowing seeds this year, this is Limonium suworowii, a beautiful annual with soft pipe-cleaner looking flowers. They have been slow to get off, only flowering now in late July.</div>
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Two of the five containers here have cosmos, also sown from seed in early spring and I will do this again next year but I think I will start later so I can chuck them outside sooner. The first batch I sowed was not happy indoors and got very straggly so I had to throw away most of them and sow again in early May. The result is that they are only starting to flower now, but the alternative was to buy plug plants.</div>
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The 4 cosmos on these two photos are all Cosmos bipinnatus, the deep red above is 'Rubenza' and the white is 'Dwarf Sensation White', above is 'Dazzler' and the soft pink is one from a 'Dwarf Sonata Mixed'.</div>
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My tropical corner has just become a bit more tropical – the canna lilies I have had growing in containers next to the tomatoes have just got bigger size containers and had to move as they were too big to stay so I thought they could move in with the two Leptospermum (manuka honey), the Strelitzia reginae (bird of paradise flower) and the Zantedeschia (calla lilies). And look! The cannas are flowering for the first time! I bought them as bare root in November 2014 and had them indoors the first winter in my previous house.</div>
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Since last spring they have been outside apart from a few nights in my shed last winter when the temperature was dipping just below freezing. I will continue to grow them in containers so popping them into the shed a few nights every winter won’t be too much trouble. I bought these because of the unusual flower colour, I had only seen orange, yellow and red cannas before, these were advertised as pink and are called ‘Pink Magic’ – but I am not sure I will call this colour pink, it is more coral. They are not too tall and easy to manage in containers. All I need now is a banana palm to complement my tropical corner – and yes, you can grow bananas in London, just not the edible ones you buy in the grocery store, but ornamental bananas are perfectly fine in a sheltered garden like mine.</div>
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A banana palm takes up a lot of space so for now I have opted for smaller plants here in this corner, like this cute Lobelia called 'Compton Pink'. I treat it just like my Lobelia cardinalis – with copious amount of water.</div>
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Another new plant in my garden is this Liatris spicata 'Alba', rather unusual looking spikes with tufts of fluff and I love this one among other plants. It is still in a pot but I can’t get anything more planted until the ground softens up again so all the rest of the plants I have will just have to sit it out.</div>
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Here is another newcomer in my garden – I have finally got a beautyberry shrub! I have seen them on other people’s blogs for years and so wanted one myself, but they take up a lot of space and you are advised to have more than one bush or at least make sure there is a beautyberry bush next door. I found this Callicarpa dichotoma that only grows to around 4 ft so I bought it last winter, but here in London they are not exactly common so I can’t rely on neighbours to help with pollination. If I don’t get any berries I will just have to buy another one same size, but some of these callicarpas are happy self-pollinators so time will tell.</div>
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And finally, can you remember from my previous post I was writing about my Fuchsia boliviana? The one I am growing for fruit production? It has just started flowering for the first time, it is soooo exciting! This fuchsia will eventually become a 7-10 ft tall tree, but at the moment it is about 4 ft. It has been herbaceous so far and died down completely every winter but I expect it to turn woodier as it matures and only loose its leaves in the winter. In mild winters it might even keep its leaves. I hope it sets fruit this year!</div>
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This month’s video of the garden is a walk in the garden – literarily. I usually stand with a tripod and film from different angles and then put the bits and pieces together with some close-ups in between, but this time I decided I would try to do an actual walk. It wasn’t easy with camera in one hand and a crutch in the other hand, but I have tried to show you what you would see if you walked the paths. I had already picked the music for this movie before I started filming and I knew I had 4 minutes and 57 seconds. Plenty of time to show off my small garden I thought – but once I started filming I realised walking around and trying to capture everything actually took a lot longer than almost 5 minutes so I had to cut off bits here and there to fit the music. Just shows how much I have going on in my garden!</div>
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As usual, if you have connection for it, my movies are best viewed on the HD setting in full screen, you can change the settings in the bottom right corner of the video.</div>
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The music was Summertime from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.</div>
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That was it for today, next post will be Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day on the 15th August, but you can see short updates about my garden <b><u><a href="https://www.facebook.com/helene.u.taylor" target="_blank">on my Facebook page</a></u></b>, just send me a friend request to see all my posts.</div>
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I am linking today’s post to <b><u><a href="https://patientgardener.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/end-of-month-view-july-2016/" target="_blank">Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog for End of Month View</a></u></b>.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-72530488746574387742016-07-15T09:05:00.000+01:002016-07-16T17:02:03.691+01:00Colourful July flowers - GBBD<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is the middle of the month and Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day - and I have been pondering about what to call today’s post. I named the previous post ‘From a rainy London’ and I am afraid that title is still just as appropriate despite that we have been repeatedly promised better weather. OK, so we have had one day here and there without rain, today was such a day and it was brilliant the few moments when the sun was shining. We might be in for a week of better weather starting from tomorrow, but we have been promised hot summer weather so many times now so I am taking one day at the time. Yesterday I had my iPad with me out in the garden where I can see BBC weather for my postcode hour by hour and for every hour it said sunny intervals – while the rain kept coming and going and I had to seek shelter in the shed together with my camera. So much for local weather forecast!</div>
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I have so much in flower right now that I can't possibly show you everything, and even just one photo of each plant would have been way too many photos so today I have used the mosaic feature extensively. Fill up a mug of your favourite brew and come for a walk with me in my July Garden.</div>
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All the rain might make people miserable and longing for sunshine, but the garden is coping remarkably well with the extra water even though sunshine has been in short supply for months. Do you remember my previous garden and the ‘Jungle feel’ it had during the summer with the garden filled to the rafters with plants? I am not quite there yet with this garden but I am working towards it!</div>
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Look at the sky in the background…incoming heavy downpour!</div>
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Some of the roses are still flowering, but most are pausing just for a little moment after having had a great first flush. Soon they will all be flowering again. In the mean time I have alstroemerias and lilies dotted around the garden.</div>
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In the Japanese inspired garden the Salix integra ‘Haukoro Nishiki’ has ended up enormously big, even though I pruned it hard in early March. Or maybe it is so big because I pruned it hard? It will take a few years to learn how to take care of this mature tree, I think the trial and error method will be most useful – and after having read so many conflicting ways of how to prune these lovely trees I am more inclined to use a method I found on an American website. They simply recommended pollarding, chopping all the branches off every early spring.</div>
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This is how much I pruned it in early March. Maybe I pollard instead next year. It seems vigorous enough…but if I start to pollard it every year, maybe it will just grow even bigger every summer? Oh, I don’t know. Trial and error.</div>
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It is getting difficult to photograph inside the Japanese inspired garden, the plumtree is taking up a lot of space too, but here are some of the plants along the fence.</div>
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On the other side of the plumtree, along the wall is a quite sunny spot – well, that is of course when the sun is shining! But it’s quite a bright spot and here along the wall are my sunflowers and some goliath lilies – and I have planted some Digitalis purpurea 'Camelot Cream' that I sowed in early spring.</div>
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Only problem is that I don’t think this is 'Camelot Cream', they were supposed to be white with dark purple blotches…not pink!</div>
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I have something growing in a pot next to the plumtree that I don’t think I have shown you before. Remember all the fuchsias I had to get rid of due to Fuchsia Gall Mite? Well, some of the fuchsias didn’t have to be destroyed as they are not affected by the mites and one of them is this extraordinary fuchsia called Fuchsia boliviana ‘Alba'. I have had it a few years, but it hasn’t flowered yet. It thrives in cool, shady conditions and will be evergreen and flower almost 12 months a year in conditions with no frost. If we get winters like we have had lately I could possibly manage to keep it evergreen but it won’t die if exposed to a bit of frost, just loose its leaves. The reason why people grow Fuchsia boliviana is not for the flowers, although they are quite spectacular – but it is for the fruit which is said to be quite nice and can be found in markets in South America. I can’t wait to taste the berries for the first time, I have eaten many fuchsia berries over the years and some taste very little whilst others are quite OK. Boliviana is said to be the best fuchsia berries you can eat. Now I just need the plant to be big enough to flower and set fruit. Not sure if it will be this year but it is quite exiting! <b><u><a href="http://www.strangewonderfulthings.com/109.htm" target="_blank">Here is what it will look like in a few years’ time.</a></u></b> </div>
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Let’s move out to the front garden for a moment as I have had help to finally get on with things here. All the beds that were in my new garden originally had gravel and grit with broken, rotten liners under, and over the last year all of it has been removed so planting could take place. All except the front garden beds, I never got around to start on them and didn’t have anyone to help me with it. But now it is done and ready mulched with bark. Doesn’t it look great!</div>
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Two weeks ago I had a visit from Rita, Alva and Nore, here in the photo - and Ingrid and Steinar, they all helped me to get the front garden cleared and ready for planting.</div>
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All the grit and gravel was filled in the white bags ready to be driven off to the recycling station. Thank you to all of you for very good help!</div>
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The roses to the left are going to be planted here in this bed, but that will be a winter job for someone strong to do as the ground is too hard to dig big holes in now.</div>
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One of the roses are already in the ground, I inherited it with the house and don’t know what it is called.</div>
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Another waiting to go in here is this gorgeous ‘Chandos Beauty.</div>
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On the outside of the front garden I have window boxes with lobelia and lavender growing. My front garden has not been a priority yet so I hope to prioritise it next year. There is just too much to do still in the main garden, but getting the front garden ready for planting was a huge step in the right direction.</div>
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Back in the main garden the pot roses I bought from ASDA (Walmart) last November are still flowering – they haven’t stopped flowering since I got them.</div>
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The trick is to not take them inside – not here in UK at least, just pot them up in a twice as big pot as the one they arrive in and then put them outside. The same day is not too soon as every day they spend indoors they will deteriorate. I still have pot roses I bought for £1 - more than 10 years ago and they flower for longer than any David Austin rose!</div>
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When they have outgrown their pot, just keep potting up - to a container size, feed like normal roses and the result will be like these in 6-8 months.</div>
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These 2 pot roses can hardly be called pot roses anymore, but they behave just like any miniature roses do. A very inexpensive way of getting roses in a small garden. And now over to the daylilies!</div>
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I have of course lilies too, lots and lots of them - this is probably the most fascinating lily in flower right now, ‘Blueberry Crush’.</div>
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This is ‘Prescott’, an enormously big flower!</div>
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And this lily doesn’t flower a lot yet, but my goodness is she pretty – ‘Lankoon’ is an interesting new hybrid, still a baby in my garden at around 1m tall, but apparently it can grow to over 2m tall. I hope it will be a bit bigger than now because the downward facing flowers make it difficult to photograph so a metre more would make it much easier.</div>
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This lily is greeting me every time I go in or out of my backdoor, beautiful ‘Guardia’ with a heavenly scent.</div>
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And these two are also right next to my backdoor so I can enjoy the lovely scent. I don’t think there is any better scent in the garden than lilies and with all the different lilies I have, I get lilies in bloom from June to end of September.</div>
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The path to the tool shed is just about negotiable, any bigger plants and I will need a machete to get through.</div>
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In the lilac bed there are lots of hot colours right now, with daylilies, alstroemerias and a red miniature rose – mixed with asters. Never thought I would put bog standard asters with daylilies but I had 2 pots with asters and they needed to go somewhere sunny so I just put them down here between the daylilies. And now I like them so much here that I will get them planted here once the daylilies are finished flowering. Sometimes the garden just decides for you :-)</div>
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Another combination that just happened is just across from the asters, over here with orange and yellow daylilies, dark leaved Lobelia cardinalis and colourful zantedeschias.</div>
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And just behind that combo are two types of agapanthus, just about to flower. Yes, things are REALLY late this year.</div>
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Aren’t these two together just amazingly zingy?!</div>
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Moving a bit further down towards the tool shed you can see my second-year old cannas, still without flowers but I haven’t given up hope yet. If I ever get to see these flowers they will be PINK, which is a bit different to the usual orange or red. Behind the cannas you can see my ENORMEOUS size tomatoes.</div>
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They have even started to grow into the strawberry bed. All this rain and cool weather has made the tomato plants grow much bigger than any year before instead of concentrating on producing tomatoes. There are some tomatoes, but by mid-July I should have been able to harvest the first ones soon.</div>
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The third tomato plant I have is also growing out of all proportions, this one called ‘Lizzano’ is usually a nice tumbler draped over the edge of the black container. At this rate I will have to start doing some pruning soon, even if that’s not really considered necessary with tumbler tomatoes. But I can’t have them growing into tree size!</div>
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Let’s move back to some more flowers, this is miniature rose ‘George Best’.</div>
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The non-hardy zantedeschias has been a bit hit and miss, some didn’t even emerge, some are just leaves and some are flowering really beautifully. </div>
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I don’t think the difference is down to me as all the corms were planted in 2 identical containers and treated the same way.</div>
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The apple tree is loaded with fruit, most of the branches have bent down due to the weight of the fruit, only two are still facing upwards giving the tree these ‘horns’.</div>
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Under the tree are still pots and pots and more pots. I have so many plants still to get in the ground and some of them are suffering from having been in pots for such a long time since moving last year.</div>
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The pelargoniums are happy as long as they get watered enough.</div>
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The pink boots are filled with Bacopa.</div>
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Down at the seating area the hardy Zantedeschia aethiopica is in flower again – I think it must like the new container I gave it earlier this year, the container is so big you could give a child a bath in it!</div>
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The Bonsais on the table has got an overhaul – new compost and a haircut for all of them. These are all quite old, the one to the left is made from Virginia creeper and was started in 2004 – it is much smaller than normal right now as I have cut it down, but it will grow back again over the next year or so. The two on the top-right are made from Jasminum officinale – ordinary jasmine, and they were started in 2006. They flower a bit every year but in order to keep them small I have to prune off new growth which means flowering is rather sparse. The bottom right Bonsai is made from a honeysuckle and was started in 2005, it flowers every spring, but again to keep it in check I don’t let it grow too big.</div>
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Turning around from the seating area, the hardy fuchsia to the left is growing like MAD – I must have pruned it 3 times already and I will probably have to cut it several times more. Next spring I will cut it to the ground and see if I can get a better shape and growth.</div>
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Here in the woodland bed are the last of the Lilium regale, they are almost done. It is a brief but oh so spectacular flowering when they all open at the same time.</div>
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I usually let all the last flowers on each stalk set seed and I sow lily seed every year. It takes up to 8 years for each lily to flower like this, so now you know why Lilium regale bulbs usually cost a bit to buy. You can make them absolutely for free if you have a few bulbs already - all you need is time and patience!</div>
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This is a beautiful clematis I inherited, slow to get started so quite likely it is pruning group 3 – which is good, I like that, easy to deal with. Next to it on the left is the same honeysuckle I had a Bonsai of, this honeysuckle is made from an offcut from the Bonsai a few years ago! I had it as a mature big plant in my previous garden but it was impossible to take with me. This small plant will soon grow up to be a big plant – although the Bonsai will never get bigger. On the other side of the clematis is a new rose, 'New Dawn’ still very much a baby, but it does produce flowers already. I am expecting big things of this rose in the years to come.</div>
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Can you remember the plants I had over the arch in my previous garden? The one with small scented flowers called Dregea sinensis? I tried to dig them out and I took with me one plant and gave the other one away. That one is now living happily on Isle of Wight, but my part didn’t get planted and was not happy with container life so it died last autumn. But look – I got a new baby Dregea! I got it as a present from Hayloft nursery because they asked if they could use my YouTube movie for their month long promotion of this plant back in April. I said yes to that and got a free plant in return. Now I just need to think carefully where to plant it – I know how big it gets eventually, I had the 2 on my arch for 10 years so I know exactly how big it gets! But for now it is just a baby, more than happy to hang in a pot on the wall :-)</div>
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Last photo today – of my succulent collection which despite all the rain seems to be still alive. I suppose this could be a good way to round up today’s post, just as a reminder that the garden seems to cope with whatever is thrown at it in terms of the weather. It might be a bit slow this year, but nothing gets left out, we just have to be patient. Oh, and let’s not dwell too long over the 22 Dahlias that never emerged, they are the only casualties of the wet spring and summer as far as I can see. I think I know by now that my new garden is not going to be an ideal place to grow dahlias in the ground. Container dahlias it is then!</div>
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I am linking today’s post to <b><u><a href="http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/2016/06/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-june-2016.html" target="_blank">Carol at May Dreams Gardens</a></u></b>, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts from around the world.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-65244008142658450692016-06-30T03:43:00.001+01:002016-07-01T02:20:34.180+01:00EOMV June 2016 from a rainy London<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is End of Month View again and I usually open to say something about the weather the last month, but what can I say this time to describe the miserable summer weather we have had, except call it…....MISERABLE! An afternoon or morning here and there without rain doesn’t in any way make up for the next 3, 4 or 5 days of rain. And that’s how it has been for ages now. I did water my garden a bit in May, but I haven’t touched the hose for a very long time, it hasn’t been necessary, not even for the pots and containers and they usually dry out even when it rains. But the kind of rain we have had lately has been buckets at the time so even the containers have been happy. In fact, the garden is mostly very happy with the weather – lots of rain and rather chilly, with max day temp of 16-22 degrees (60-71 F) – perfect for most of my plants. I am the only one not happy with a summer like that. Oh, and my dahlias, they are not happy either. Here in my new garden the soil is very different to my previous one, much more clay, so the soil, combined with heavily saturated ground made the dahlias rot, all of them – all the ones I planted. Those few I didn’t get around to plant are still fine growing in pots, but all 20-22 or so that I planted in the ground are lost, never even emerged. Oh well, maybe dahlias won’t be a feature here in my new garden then!</div>
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In today’s post I want to show you how my garden turns into a magical place after dark.</div>
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The photos are rather dark so I hope you will be able to see them - and they will possibly look better in full version depending on what kind of device you are using. </div>
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They are all taken after it got properly dark and I have not used a flash so the only light source is the solar and battery lights you see.</div>
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This is a chain of lights I have in the ceanothus, where the huge branch broke off, the chain looks decorative in daylight too.<br />
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And this is the view from my living room window after dark.</div>
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I am rather pleased with those new snowdrop lights.</div>
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Even the birdbath has got lights for tonight, submersible tea lights.</div>
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The solar blossom tree looks more like a Christmas tree on a distance, but if you go up-close you can see the individual flowers. They look like glass.</div>
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I have several lights on the fence dotted around the garden and I will get a few more, they are not exactly reading light, but that’s not the intention – they give just enough light so I am able to safely walk around without putting the full-beam work light on (reserved for garden work after dark).</div>
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I have two movies for you today, the first one is a short one showing the view from my backdoor the other day when the weather was showing off its bad side again. Mother Nature was even throwing in some thunder while I was filming, just for good measure. If you listen carefully you will be able to hear it, although because it was right above me, the sound was so deafening that the microphone on my camcorder just gave up recording the thunder and the sound is much more quiet as a result. As the rain calms down you can also hear the sparrows squabbling in the background.</div>
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The second movie is filmed on one of those days in between where we actually had an afternoon with nice weather. I have had to plan filming, photography – and garden work carefully to get anything done the last couple of weeks, and even with careful planning I have often gone out - just to find the forecast is wrong and it starts raining after just a little while. But here was a rare day when it was nice, not as hot as you might get the impression of, but it was even sunny now and then!</div>
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The music for this movie is Nocturne from String Quartet no. 2 in D by Alexander Borodin, and this is a movie you absolutely should see and hear in full screen with your speakers on quite loud and at the best resolution your Internet connection will allow, the buttons for changing the quality and screen are down in the bottom right corner.</div>
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The cat next door is making a guest appearance in today’s film, he is keeping me company just about every day when I am outside, but will usually go home after a few hours to get fed as he has learned from experience that it’s no point asking for food at my house.</div>
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Oh, and have a lookout for the leafcutter bee around 1:33 min into the movie, I was filming the rose Gertrude Jekyll and saw this bee kind of in my side vision taking a big bite of a leaf and rolling it up! It was obviously not planned and prepared in terms of filming so it got a bit rushed and out of focus, but I decided to keep it anyway. I have never seen a leafcutter bee before, only the results they are leaving – and the first time I see one I am watching it through my camcorder whilst filming. Amazing! It’s very quick so blink and you’ll miss it :-)</div>
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One final photo from my magical night garden – I have a bowl on my table that comes to life after it gets dark, here with water pearls, submersible tea lights and a single oriental lily.<br />
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That was it for today, next post will be Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day on the 15th July, but you can <b><u><a href="https://www.facebook.com/helene.u.taylor" target="_blank">see short updates about my garden on my Facebook page</a></u></b>, just send me a friend request to see all my posts.</div>
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I am linking today’s post to <b><u><a href="https://patientgardener.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/end-of-month-view-june-2016-hughs-border/" target="_blank">Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog</a></u></b>.</div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-53326407663699061772016-06-16T04:45:00.000+01:002016-06-16T12:49:06.632+01:00June roses - GBBD 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is middle of June and it is 4 weeks since I came out of hospital – no idea where those 4 weeks have gone! Thank you to all well wishes on my previous post, I am getting better and have had help in my garden both from gardening friends and from the Great British Weather – it has rained and rained and rained and....good for my garden - and good for me so I haven’t had to water. The very cold and late spring made everything bloom much later than normal this year, I didn’t have a single rose in April which is very unusual for my garden, now I have roses, lots of roses – many of them presented here, but I thought perhaps showing you all 26 would be a bit too much....oh, yes, I have got a few more roses here in my new garden compared to my previous garden – more space, more roses. I think I might be able to squeeze in possible one or two more eventually! But here are today’s GBBD photos.</div>
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The garden looks so much fuller than just a while ago! That’s not because I have put any more plants in, it’s just because all the plants have leafed out and grown and emerged and so on. Just compare it with the photo below taken exactly 2 months ago, 15th April....</div>
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....and the garden looks so empty! Same amount of plants, a few more pots moved over to this sunny side but that’s all there is – plus all the leaves and flowers out.</div>
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On the shady side where my Japanese themed bed is there really is DEEP shade now, thanks to the enormous growth on the Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki' - Pink Variegated Willow, which is really living up to its name in terms of the colour. I pruned it a bit last summer, and then I pruned it a lot last winter, but I don’t think I will be attempting a winter prune again on this one, I think perhaps a careful summer pruning might be a better solution. I think it looks bigger now than before I started pruning it last summer – if that is even possible! Once it has changed to green later on in the summer I will snip and shape and then I will have to see next year what happens. Trial and error!</div>
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Sorry about the miserable wet photos, but it was raining on and off every day and finally I just had to take the photos. Here is the main rose bed, what you don’t see is that there are new roses planted behind these too, but they are still small and won’t reach up to this level for a few years, but eventually the whole wall will be covered in roses, clematis, and jasmine, and there are roses, lilies and daylilies in this main bed and towards the right along the wall.</div>
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Here is what’s been my absolute favourite rose since I got it in 2012, Scepter'd Isle. The scent is very different to the ‘Old Rose’ scent and possibly why I like it so much, I am not so keen on those ‘Turkish Delight’ smelling roses. But this one has a strong scent of myrrh, which is a fragrant gum resin obtained from certain trees (think Frankincense and myrrh and the 3 wise men....) – I think this rose is absolutely fantastic, but we all have a different experience in terms of smell so what I smell will be different to everyone else. Maybe you think ‘Turkish Delight’ roses are the only true rose scent?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_06.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Someone asked me why I have so many pink roses, they all look the same....and my answer was – but they are all different! This is ‘Wildeve’, with beautiful, large flowers, sadly not so strong scent but if you stick your nose right in then there is a faint scent there.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_07.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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OK, so yes, this one is pink too, but my goodness, this is probably my new favourite!! After a feeble start last year in a container it is now making up for all that after having been planted in the ground and ‘The Generous Gardener’ is destined to cover part of the brick wall. The scent of this rose is out of this world! Again, what I can smell might not be what you smell, but if you like the myrrh scent of Scepter'd Isle then this is that - PLUS more! I would say in addition to the myrrh there is some musk, plus some fruity lemony hints as well which just makes this rose absolutely amazing in terms of scent. The fact that the flowers look like waterlilies and some websites describe this as one of the most fragrant of all English Roses and it is repeat flowering....well, you get a lot out of ‘The Generous Gardener’. I will try to take some photos of fully sprung flowers to show you the waterlily look, the rain had ruined all those already out so this was the best one today.</div>
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Ehrm....another pink rose? This one is slightly different pink, more strawberry pink, but all the rain is not really favourable to its beauty. This is one of my new roses and it is doing well, although still small – ‘Cornelia’.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_09.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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I buy everything I need online and that includes all my plants. So when it comes to buying plants that should match in colour, well, that can be a headache, just try to Google these to beauties; Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ and Clematis 'Warszawska Nike'. If you try this in Google’s image tab you will see how many different colour versions you will get of both plants, and I was trying to find one clematis I could pair with the rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ I already had. I must have looked at hundreds of clematis’ before I finally went for this one – and hoped for the best. I am pleased that the result was so close to what I expected and these two are now growing together on the tall obelisk in the middle of the rose bed.</div>
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Here is another pink rose.... ‘Charles de Mills’ - but that’s a very different one to those above; old rose scent, non-repeat flowering....huh? Not really the kind of rose I would go for, but I got it in a plant swap so I have placed it in the middle of the rose bed and I know it will give a fantastic show every summer while it is flowering, and once it’s all over, there are roses all around it to keep the bed going. Just look at those flowers!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_11.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Here is a newcomer, it is still tiny and this is the second flower, the first one rained away before I could take a photo of it, but it is more cream than white despite what it looks like in my photo. It is Rosa 'Macmillan Nurse', and for anyone outside UK not knowing, Macmillan Nurses are nurses who have specialised in cancer or palliative care and who work either in hospitals or in the community.</div>
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This is a new rose in my garden too, ‘Iceberg’ shrub rose is growing next to 'Macmillan Nurse', and when they both have grown to full size I might have to lift one of them – difficult to say now how much space they will need eventually and I might possibly have tried to squeeze in way too many roses in that bed! ‘Iceberg’ is a well known rose, I grew it in Norway as a climber, but as a shrub it shouldn’t get much taller than just over 1m.</div>
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Another white rose, this one is 'Susan Williams-Ellis', a highly scented rose with gorgeous, small rosette flowers – but an annoying feature when it comes to drizzly petals. This rose must have the most amount of petals in any rose I have ever seen, and it is hard to tell when the flowers are off, one day they are buds about to open, next day they look fine, but oh, bump into them when cutting off the one next to it and ALL the petals will fall to the ground.’ Messy Susan’ is her nickname in my garden. But she is a keeper for now!</div>
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This one is a keeper too, I inherited this rose and I have no idea what it is called, but it is a nice rose with a faint scent. It is currently in my front garden.</div>
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This is one of my many miniatures – these small roses are excellent if you are short of space, or want many roses in a small garden. This gorgeous rose is named ‘George Best’ after the football player, and the rose will be around 50-60cm tall when mature - perfect for containers.</div>
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Another miniature and one of my favourite among the minis – this is Rosa 'Abigaile' and she will be maximum 50cm tall when mature. I have her growing at the front of the rose bed at the moment.</div>
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Here are also some great minis, these two were bought as 2 for 1£ at ASDA (Walmart) in November and I have bought quite a few of these over the years. They usually die very quickly indoors at that time of the year so this time I re-potted them straight away and put them outside. They have been in flower since November!! Sometimes with just one pink bud lasting for ages but even so – a lot for 50 pence each! And in between those two pink (yes I know, pink again!) roses, my lovely lemon tree is standing, looking a bit sad and not much bigger than last year. It is producing new leaves again this year too so it can’t be having that bad time, but I would have thought it would have grown a bit quicker.</div>
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But look here! A flower. ONE flower! There were two flowers, but the other dropped off before it opened. I can’t see any more buds. Maybe I will get ONE lemon? Well, it is a start!</div>
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One more miniature rose? This is my cream pot rose I often took photos of in my previous garden, I couldn’t leave such a lovely rose so I took it with me. It seems just as happy here in my new garden, despite looking rather like a wet cat in this photo.</div>
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Here at the front of the rose bed are things to come, I got 8 new alstroemerias which are just starting to flower, more about them next time I think, and there are lots of daylilies in this bed too, but I had not anticipated how well the two David Austin roses right behind here would do after having been container grown since 2012, they have grown to a size I have never seen before! They obviously like the clay soil here and are now making up for lost growth. If the roses are growing bigger than this I might have to dig up the daylilies if they are to have any chance of getting any sun!</div>
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Here is the rose bed seen from my shed, and you can just get a glimpse of some of the ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ roses in the middle of the black obelisk. Now imagine the whole obelisk covered in that pink rose and the dark clematis I showed earlier on, all the way to the top and cascading down. That’s for next year. Or the year after. Well, that’s the plan anyway!</div>
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While we are standing here on the side, let me show you a couple of heucheras in flower. I usually cut off the flowers as they are not really interesting, but 'Strawberry Candy' to the left here has got really nice flowers – and bright green leaves. I have planted it next to Heuchera 'Miracle', which has pale pink flowers and right now has lime green leaves, but the name ‘miracle’ refers to the fact that this heuchera changes colour 3 times during the year, so come back in the summer it will be green and burnt orange and in the autumn the leaves will be purple!</div>
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The strawberry plants in the raised beds are doing fine, growing into strong plants. I have pinched every flower off as I am supposed to for 1st year plants, but it has been with a heavy heart I have done it. I hope next year’s harvest will be as amazing as described, for it must make up for no berries this year. A long time to wait for berries, but I can be patient when it’s necessary!</div>
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Opposite the raised beds I have containers with some of the plants I sowed as seed earlier this year, here are cosmos – and bacoupa I have bought as plug plants.</div>
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And before we leave this corner, let me just show you this bug hotel I found on Amazon, I should probably have a few more but one is a start at least. I am trying to replace some of the habitat I probably have removed by taking out all the Virginia Creeper from the wall around half the garden. This bug hotel is mainly reserved for Ladybirds, I hope all the other bugs understand that, I want lots of ladybirds and I want them to stay, eat and reproduce. Fast. The Goliath lilies next to it should have been planted in the ground last autumn but I still have lots of pots to plant from my previous garden. The lilies are doing well though, despite how crowded they are in that 15 litre pot!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.graphicality.co.uk/blog/2016/06_june/Graphicality-UK_150616_26.jpg" height="367" width="550" /></a></td></tr>
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Moving a bit further down to the woodland bed, here the lilies have come up too, all these are Lilium regale and they need individual staking as by the time the flowers are big enough to open up, they will be so heavy that each of the stalks will be horizontal so staking is a must, I just have so many to do. I wonder how many lilies I have now, how many have survived and come up this year? I think I need to count one day. Looking at this woodland bed you should think everything is coming along swimmingly....</div>
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....but those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seen these photos from early May of the ceanothus, where one branch simply gave away after 2 days of rain and the branch splintered in pieces and broke. A huge part of the ceanotus that covered the woodland bed like an umbrella simply broke off.</div>
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I have had help to cut off the branches and tidy up a bit, but it is still a huge gap in what was like a dome shape and there is nothing to do with that. Actually, it doesn’t look too bad in this photo, but when you stand next to it and look up it looks bad, awful. You could park a bus in this gap and not touch the sides, that’s how big this hole is. It won’t grow back the way it looked, but it will soften over the years. I made the woodland bed under these two ceanothus having in mind the shade created by this dome and the plants under are selected specifically for this environment.</div>
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With half of the ceanothus gone there is too much sun here and some of the plants are suffering. A couple of my beautiful Arum italicum have simply just crisped up in the sunshine and even here in the rain they haven’t recovered. I never though too much sun in my woodland bed would be a problem!</div>
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Further back in the bed it is still shady, and I am so pleased to see that this exotic looking Arisaema ciliatum liubaense has survived being dug up from my previous garden, lived a whole year in a pot and then planted again in this bed. I had 3 originally, I could only find 2 bulbs when I was looking for them in February last year, the 2 came with me and one has come up now. I hope it makes lots of seeds so it can spread, good to have more than one in case of disasters in the garden. This arisaema gets up to 60-70cm tall, very different to low growing Arisamea amurense which I have many of. The flower is a bit shy on this photo, I will try to get a better one when it isn’t raining.</div>
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Here is the tail-end of the shade garden, where the left side is sunny and the right side is in the shade of the house and has absolutely no sun at all.</div>
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It was therefore an experiment to install this arch with clematis, and I didn’t dare plant them in the ground, I thought best to plant them in containers for a year or two to see if the clematis’ would be happy here in this shady spot.</div>
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And happy they seem! This is Clematis ‘Piilu’, which has received no sun at all since arriving in my garden, after emerging.</div>
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And this is Clematis ‘Mon Amour’ which I had from before and took with me from the previous garden, it receives a bit of sun on one side, but nothing on the other side. I think the flowers on the shady side looks better, with a deeper colour and I am so pleased they both are doing well here. When both are reaching the top they will get sun, but down at the level they are now there will never be much at all.</div>
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And while we are talking of clematis, here is another newcomer I got this spring, I have wanted it for a long time and finally got an ideal spot for this one – it likes shade and here at the outside of the fence it won’t receive any sun until it has reached the top of the fence. However, it looks nothing like all the photos I have seen so I am not so sure I have received what I ordered, this is supposed to be ‘Pink Fantasy’ – it is more like a lavender fantasy. Nice enough, with single and double huge flowers – but I don’t think it is what I ordered.</div>
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Back in the shade garden for a moment again, the huge fuchsia I inherited with the garden has done a comeback after I cut down 2/3 of it. I was afraid of chopping off too much after it has probably not been pruned in 10 years. I probably needed not have worried, it is growing like mad. Next year I will chop it to the ground and pinch and shape it when it comes back, it is still rather straggly and sprawly – but who wouldn’t be after so many years without pruning!</div>
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Did you notice that little square bed in the previous photo? That’s where I have my Arisaema amurense, sorry no photos of them this time, but I also have lots of Saxifraga stolonifera which <b><u><a href="http://www.rustyduck.net/" target="_blank">Jessica at Rusty Duck</a></u></b> kindly sent me. They are doing great and multiplying like......well, like saxifrage usually do, no wonder these plants are called ‘Mother with thousand children’ – but that’s why I planted them in this little bed – to contain them so I wouldn’t get them all over the garden. They are really lovely, but I just want a small area with them!</div>
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Speaking of fuchsias, you might know I don’t have any regular fuchsias anymore, I had to get rid of all mine (all 86!) because of Fuchsia Gall Mite, but I do have miniature fuchsias, as they are not affected by the mites. I have 4 different miniatures and they are all doing great and producing flowers now. Later on they also get black, edible berries, but will continue to produce flowers until frost or around January next year. Troupers in the garden! This is Fuchsia bacillaris 'Cottinghamii'.</div>
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Another plant doing great in the woodland area is this Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’, I used to have Lamium in my previous garden and just ripped up a few pieces of each of the 3 varieties I had and potted them up before moving last year, here is the result of one of those pieces.</div>
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I just need to show you my waiting room – this bench area is where my plants wait to be sorted, usually to get planted or re-potted and if something is really urgent they get to sit on the bench and wait. This bench has not been empty since I moved in here in May last year. There are always plants here that need rescuing!</div>
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I sowed grass earlier this year and they are flowering right now.</div>
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They are so lovely! To the left is Bunny's Tail Grass, Lagurus ovatus and I would bet that if you had it you would be tempted to go stroking it against your chin just like I do! The grass to the right is not properly flowering yet and will look better next time, but it is called Greater quaking grass, Briza maxima and is equally lovely.</div>
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Here is a plant I haven’t showed you before, I have had it for a few years, but every time it is in flower I forget to take a photo, this time I remembered. It is Lewisia cotyledon, and I could swear this one was warm pink/orange last year, certainly not white. I wonder if they change colour each year? Perhaps so they don’t get bored??</div>
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This one is a newcomer to my garden, I was looking for some salvias but I didn’t want anything too big for my relative small garden. And as half the blogosphere seems to have ‘Salvia 'Amistad' I thought perhaps I should choose something different. This is Salvia greggii 'Icing Sugar', an impatient customer on my waiting room bench – hopefully soon she will be in a bigger and more suitable pot!</div>
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But the real positive surprise has been the first salvia I bought, back in February. This is Salvia x jamensis 'Nachtvlinder' and my goodness what a salvia! You don’t even need to bruise the leaves to smell it, it is enough to just stand nearby! The scent is to me....how can I describe the scent.....think of blackcurrants, lightly crushed with more than enough sugar, then put the bowl on a window sill so the sun can shine onto and warm the crushed blackcurrants....and then smell them. That’s probably the closest you get, but this is of course not blackcurrant, it is a salvia, and there is a distinct undertone of something ‘salvia’ there too, in addition to the blackcurrant. I can’t pass this one in the garden without having a good sniff. I can warmly recommend it, but have no idea yet as to how well it will grow as it gets older and woodier. Final height is around 70cm so both of these salvias will be container grown.</div>
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One last rose photo? This is ‘Wildeve’ again, together with my solar powered snowdrop lights. More roses next time!</div>
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I better stop here, even though there are LOTS of more plants in flower I would have liked to show you – but I simply have too many different plants to present them all in one post at this time of year. </div>
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I am linking today’s post to <u><b><a href="http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/2016/06/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-june-2016.html" target="_blank">Carol at May Dreams Gardens</a></b></u>, please visit her for many more Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts. </div>
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Until next time, take care.</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6265213687739263373.post-58338802945789295942016-05-31T08:55:00.000+01:002016-06-07T16:30:14.954+01:00Ill in bed again - a very different EOMV post<div style="text-align: justify;">
I don’t normally write much about my many different conditions, illnesses and disabilities – I have from time to time written a bit, mainly to explain why I can’t work in my garden like other people do – or at the same pace as most people do. But I have deliberately kept my health problems away from my blog. You see, my gardening blog is my way of escaping my real life. Here no one knows me, no one sees me, no one sees my pain and I can pretend I am almost normal. I can be a completely different person than I actually am. I can be the person I would HAVE LIKED TO BE – if life had been different.</div>
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Life has just given me yet another blow and I could have just told you all that I needed a blogging break right now and just vanished for a while like other bloggers has done, but I think perhaps it is time I reveal a bit about myself. </div>
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I came out of hospital 10 days ago after yet another admission – I have lost count how many admissions I have had over the years. At the moment I am mostly in bed because of 3 slipped disks in my lower back and 2 more disks further up with problems. I LOATHE being in hospital and would rather be home alone so I stayed in for just a few days. Hospitals are so noisy and every time you ask for something it takes an hour before you get it – including medication you are supposed to have at certain times. I am better here at home. </div>
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The slipped disks came on because my back is like that. I have had slipped disks in my back on 5 different times over the years in the past - and 2 times in my neck. The last year after moving house has been hard, very hard and I have had to do a lot more than I normally do and over time my back has just given up. The straw that broke the camel’s back was that I painted that little fence on the left side of my garden where the Japanese bed is. Yes, of course it was STUPID, but I don’t get anything done in my garden if I don’t do it myself, and normally I work like this: I do an hour or so in the garden, then I spend a few days in bed to recover then an hour or so in the garden and then a few days in bed….well, you get the picture. Normally that works. This time it didn’t, even though I divided the paint job in two and it was a whole week between the two parts. But it wasn’t really the painting as such - it could have been just about anything else. It could have been me washing the kitchen floor. Anything really.</div>
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I have a very long list of conditions and disabilities, too many to mention here and most of them you probably haven’t heard of but my main condition is <b>Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome</b> which I was born with. Feel free to just skip the whole next bit if you want to, but if you are interested, the links I am putting here will explain much better than I can what I am dealing with. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndrome" target="_blank"><u><b>Wikipedia has a great article with information about EDS</b></u></a>, I am sorry it is of course full of medical terms, but you might get the gist of it anyway. Of the list of signs and symptoms I have almost all of them.</div>
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As a result of EDS <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoarthritis" target="_blank"><u><b>I developed osteoarthritis</b></u></a> at a very early age and now, at the age of 51, I am quite severely affected. </div>
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The list goes on and here are some of the other things I am diagnosed with…..</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_orthostatic_tachycardia_syndrome" target="_blank"><u><b>PoTS - Postural Tachycardia Syndrome</b></u></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiphospholipid_syndrome" target="_blank"><u><b>APS – which has given me numerous blood clots </b></u></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia" target="_blank"><u><b>Fibromyalgia </b></u></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine" target="_blank"><b>Chronic migraine</b> </a></div>
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As for my spine/back and neck I have previously had 5 slipped disks in my lower back and 2 in my neck. I have had 2 operations to my lower back and one to my neck where they took bone from my hip and removed the whole disk and I still have metal plates in my neck. And now I have 3 new slipped disks which I still don’t know what we are going to do with – surgery or just leave it. Leaving it means of course that I can have new prolapses at any time. Next month, next year or not at all. Who knows.</div>
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And then it’s my hips – which most of you might have heard of. Because of EDS and arthritis I have had 3 operations to my left hip in an attempt to make it less painful. The last operation was a hip replacement – which was not successful so it is unstable. I have dislocated twice, once in 2012 and once last year in April – whilst packing up my house to move here to this bungalow to get an easier life without stairs. If I am VERY careful I might not dislocate again, but if I am careless I could dislocate my left hip every single day. It is only because I go around thinking about how to move ALL the time that I don’t dislocate it. And dislocating your hip whilst standing up – like I did both times, feels like someone is ripping off your leg. Literarily. </div>
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And if all this wasn’t enough I am what’s called opioid resistant so there is no painkiller that works on me. You can give me the strongest morphine at the highest dose, it won’t make diddly squat to me. I have tried all the different pain medications there is, and there are a lot of synthetic opioids, but nothing works, they don’t take away pain. Some makes me constipated and others give me horrible itchy rash – but they don’t take away any pain. My brain is apparently not wired the right way. So every time something happens or I have an operation there is nothing to give me after I wake up from general anaesthetic. Nothing. Nada.</div>
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I have a very long list of conditions and illnesses, I am not going to bore you with all of them – and my family don’t know all of them either so this should not be the way to let them know – some of my family members read my blog. I am normally quite cautious about talking about my health problems - that comes from having been ill all my life. People don’t want to hear that I am in pain, that I am not better, that I am actually worse than last time they met me and that my prospects year on year is just that everything will get worse. That’s not me being pessimistic. That’s me repeating my doctors’ very realistic prognoses. </div>
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I have a ‘ME PERSON’ that I show the people I meet and that I use when I write online. That person is optimistic, happy, bubbly, smile a lot and takes a keen interest in other people, is helpful and like to help, is a typical half-full glass person, is creative and colourful. That’s the person I would like to be if life had been normal. I have created that person and the few times I have visitors here at home I can pretend to be that person for a few hours, but I can’t keep it up for very long so people who visit me are instructed beforehand that they can only come and see me for a few hours. Afterwards, when they have left, I fall to pieces and become the real me again. In pain, exhausted – and no more smiling. One of my biggest wishes I have is to feel that I can LIVE, not just exist. I don’t normally talk about my pains and conditions. I often just say I am tired instead of saying I am in pain. Everyone is tired now and then, it’s easier to understand and relate to. But today I felt like sharing a bit of my life with you that none of you know anything about. You can’t do anything about it, and I don’t expect you to – no one can do anything to make me better. But I am just trying to share a bit, not keep it all to myself as I usually do. What could be more SHARING than write a little bit about it on my blog, huh?!!! </div>
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OK, enough about my health issue list, I want to tell you why my garden is so important to me. My garden is my world. My WHOLE world. The only time I leave my house is when I go to hospital and doctor appointments and they come and collect me with hospital transport. I get to see a bit of the outside through the windows while we drive, but I usually use my wheelchair when going to hospital so I sit in the middle of the ambulance and can’t see much out of the windows. When I am in my garden I can move around on crutches and sometimes even just by holding on to furniture and walls and things. I feel free, I am outside in my own space. My own beautiful garden.</div>
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Two days ago my son came here and he helped me out in the garden so I could see it, I had not been in the garden for almost 10 days and what a transformation in those 10 days! All the planning I have done the last year is now happening, just like I wanted it. When I saw all the roses flowering everywhere I could not hold back the tears, they looked so beautiful.</div>
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For me, part of experiencing things is to take a picture or film it – and to be honest, I don’t really feel I have experienced something properly until I have taken a photo or filmed it. I know that might sound weird to some people, but I have had a camera since I was about 10 years old and it is as natural to me to take photos as breathing. </div>
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So today I took my camcorder, my tripod and my gardening stool and placed myself in the middle of the garden - and I filmed the garden, despite how painful it was to sit. It is not the usual film I normally make because all the close-ups I just had to skip, I could not do them. But my camcorder has a very good zoom so I managed to make a few close-ups from where I was sitting – but they are not as good as they usually are. But I did it! I filmed my garden. I didn’t go out in the front garden to film, I thought perhaps me, bare-feet in my nighty and on crutches, clutching my camcorder on a tripod would raise a few eyebrows – or perhaps someone would call the old people home down the road and ask if they were missing one of their dementia patients. Anyway, inside my garden no one can see me, so I can be dressed in whatever I like. Who cares - I don’t. But there is a lot of people coming and going at the front of the house so I don’t want to create an issue. So I filmed just the main garden– and tonight I have edited it down on the computer to a manageable size, not too long I hope.</div>
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The music is by a Scottish composer called Stuart Mitchell, he made it in 2001 and it is a piece from the Seven Wonder Suite called The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Just proves you don’t have to be a composer dead for 300 years to make amazing music!! The piece is a bit longer so I had to cut the end, but I didn’t want to make the movie too long, I thought this post was MORE than long enough already. But please go on YouTube and listen to the rest of the Seven Wonders Suite by Stuart Mitchell, it is so beautiful.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="1" height="309" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jwA5ThwAjm0?rel=0" width="550"></iframe><br />
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As I am writing this I am still not sure if this post will ever be posted or not – I feel I have written too much, too personal, too much information and too much about things I should continue to keep to myself. If I feel brave enough tomorrow I might post this. I will still be my usual positive, energetic, creative person in my future posts, but now you know that it’s not REALLY me, just what I would like to be.<br />
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You have no idea how much you all mean to me, you are my social life and every comment I get here I treasure like gold dust. I find it hard to get around to you all and read and comment back to you as you all seem to write much more often than I manage to do, but I try my best. Every comment I get from you all is like a hug, so please let me give you all a big hug back :-)</div>
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I would like to end this post with a very well written story by Christine Miserandino, it explains how it is living with a chronic condition. The woman who wrote this story has lupus, but everything she says applies to most people in situations like mine and millions of other people. Maybe you know someone who could also need to hear about <a href="http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/" target="_blank"><u><b>The Spoon Theory.</b></u></a> </div>
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The Spoon Theory is now so famous it has even got <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory" target="_blank"><u><b>its own page on Wikipedia!</b></u></a><br />
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I told you this was going to be a very different blog post, thank you for still reading, it means a lot to me.<br />
Take care</div>
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Helene</div>
HELENEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16112289914239038835noreply@blogger.com28