Gently, gently into autumn – GBBD October 2016

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. 

No August slump in my garden - GBBD

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.

Colourful July flowers - GBBD

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!

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.

June roses - GBBD 2016

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.

Topsy-turvy weather in London – GBBD May-16

May is a month with all sorts of weather here in Britain – from really nice and warm during the day to night frost if you are in a more rural spot. It is hard to keep up with which plants are allowed to stay out and which are too tender so in my previous garden where I had no greenhouse, shed or even a garage I just had two choices: outside - or not at all. Here in my new garden I also have a third option; a shed, but I am pretty fed up dragging plants in and out of the shed so now I have stopped. Last week a tray of begonia seedlings died during a cold night. Oh well, not a big loss, didn’t cost me anything as the cormlets were free, but it was a bit annoying. But everything else has toughened up and looks fine and I assume this is it for cold nights – surely, this MUST be it?! The weirdest, coldest spring I can ever remember here in London.

Naming my garden - GBBD April 2016

As a foreigner living in Britain, English is a language I am still learning – even after 17 years here in London. I still bump into words I have absolutely no idea what means and I love looking them up and see their meaning and history. Some words just jump up and down and do a little dance for me when I see them, some words are just hilarious whilst others give me a lump in my throat. Have you heard the word ‘Discombobulate’ before? What a lovely word! And what about haberdashery?? I absolutely love that word too. OK, so the title of this post is naming my garden. I have thought about doing that for a while. Well, to be honest, I have thought about it for many years, but I never really found a good name. I know it is quite common here in Britain to name your house, at least if you live in a countryside cottage or in a somewhat grand house. Naming your house in a council terraced 2-up-2-down in East London would probably have raised some eyebrows, so that was never on my agenda. But my garden? The most important room in my house? Sure! ....But what?

Glorious days, chilly at night - March GBBD

The warm winter weather we had in December and January is long forgotten, it has been a very long spell of night temperatures down to almost freezing for ages - more or less the last 6 weeks. As soon as the sun goes down it gets cold very quickly and it will typically be min. 2-5 C at night. The day temperatures are not bad though, 8-12 C (46 – 53 F) and the sun is getting stronger every day. But I am fed up with dragging tender plants in and out of my shed so a few more degrees at night would make all the difference. In my garden I have only had 3 proper frost nights this winter, one in November, one in February and one so far in March – each night the temperature went down to -1 C for a few hours just before sunrise, and by the time the sun was up the temp was well into plus again. Winter in London isn’t much to write home about really! And I have had no snow this winter either....hope I don’t jinx it by saying that, I certainly don’t need any snow this late – but the latest I have seen snow here in London is actually 8th April! It didn’t lay long of course, was gone after a few hours, but even so, no thank you, I am more than ready for nice warm weather now.

GBBD in London, February -16

Last time I wrote a post was 2 weeks ago, I wrote about the stormy season here in Britain and that we are not really that affected here in the south east. Looks like I spoke too soon....every now and then we get a storm that hits us right in the face, and Imogene was a storm like that. Last Saturday I had water streaming in through the ceiling light in my living room from water coming in through the roof and loft. Water and electricity doesn’t really go well together....and there were too high winds for the council to get a man on the roof to fix the leak so it was Wednesday morning before my roof was fixed. Oh well, at least my garden is fine, never mind my living room floor!! The only problem I had in my garden was that my solar light tree tried to take off like a rocket a couple of times because the soil is so wet and loose so the short anchor stakes provided was not enough to keep it in place. In the end I had to find some longer stakes to anchor the light with and now it will take a triple hurricane for the solar light to launch should it want to emigrate somewhere else.

GBBD from a cold January London

Did anyone think we could have summer temperatures to last us all winter?? Well, one can only hope – but alas, all good things come to an end and the last week it has been cold in Britain, bitterly cold. Not just low temperatures but the bone chilling wind here in London makes the around 5 plus Celsius feel like well below zero. To be honest I would rather have proper cold winter weather like in Norway than this raw, cold wind in London. Or, at least your average winter weather in Norway. Mind you, the other day I spoke to a friend who lives in Northern Norway where I used to live from I was 7 until I was 16, that day it was minus 27C there (-16.6F) - ordinary winter weather for January for that area. I suppose everything’s relative! I remember what that kind of weather was like, the coldest I ever experienced was a winter when I was 11 or 12 or so when we had 5 days of minus 40-43 degrees C (43 C is 45.4F). We all went to school, people went to work, life went on pretty much as normal. It was winter. Here in Britain they have huge warning campaigns on TV and radio every time it is about to rain more than a few mm and if there is even the slightest hint of a snow flurry, the amber and red warning signs are flagged up everywhere. I think people get desensitised to all the warnings. They should be used when there is an unusual or dangerous weather event, not just because it will snow or rain. Anyway, that was my way of telling myself that perhaps it hasn’t been so cold after all. Who am I kidding, yesterday it was sooooo cold I didn’t even go outside, I filmed and took photos of the birds in the garden through my kitchen window despite beautiful sunny weather!

Springtime feeling in December

A lot of people are still struggling with the aftereffects of storm Desmond, especially those that were flooded. Here in the quiet corner of the South-East where I live, we didn’t notice the storm so much apart from very windy weather. Spare a thought though for those over 6000 people who got flooded and are now having to spend the next 6-9 months in temporary accommodation while their houses are cleaned out and renovated. Winter storms are a yearly occurrence here in Britain and flooding is quite common, some even get flooded over and over again only years apart. I am fortunate to live on the sheltered side of Britain – we are too dry in the summer but we are also spared the enormous rainfalls in the winter.

Colourful October in London

Today has been yet another fine October day with lots of crisp sunshine and that slight chill in the air where you are not really sure if you need a jacket or not. I have been outside for a couple of hours and I must have taken my cardigan on and off about 10 times. Towards the end we got a slight drizzle and my cat jumped down from the bench where he had been sleeping and came up to me looking rather indignantly as if it was me who had started the rain. He convinced me to pack up and go inside with him, most likely so that he could get fed slightly earlier than usual. Since my last post I haven’t done much in the garden, to be honest I have hardly been out here as I have been recovering from yet another operation. I am better now, but taking my eye off things for a short while, even just for 10 days, can make a huge difference in my garden.

Autumn flowers in my new garden

Yesterday the weather threw at us just about anything you can think of apart from snow and hail - just like the weather in August and September has been really. Taking photos was a real challenge, it started out just fine after the morning showers, but as the day went on, the wind increased and I finally had to give up any more close-ups - so some of the photos were taken today in a much less windy and more sunny garden. But tomorrow it will be back to more severe rain and more wind. Autumn has really started!

How to tackle Red Lily Beetles

Today’s post is mainly going to be about a topic I have had questions about many times, how to tackle Red Lily Beetles. I absolutely adore lilies and can’t get enough of them, and when I moved house earlier this year I lifted as many bulbs I could find and ended up with 164 lilies in pots – the rest I left to the new tenant, probably nearly 100 of various size. Over the years I have tackled a lot of pest and diseases in my garden, some more frustrating than other, but lily beetles are not really a big problem to me despite the fact that I live in London where the problem with lily beetles is very common.

GBBD - 2 months in my new garden

I don’t really know where the last 2 months have gone, in any case they have gone very quickly! Since moving house I have tried to keep up with all the things that comes with switching address, and despite only moving 2.3 miles down the road, it is an astonishing amount of work involved. Add to that all the things this house has thrown at me since moving in – currently I have no working shower as the pump isn't working properly and I am waiting for a plumber/electrician to fix it, last week the sewer was blocked for the whole street and Thames Water had to come out in the evening and unblock it. What will be next....I just want a shower and a hair wash. Soon.

June flowers in my new garden

I can’t believe I have lived in my new house for over a month, time seems to fly and I have been so busy – and I still have boxes to unpack. Downsizing isn’t easy and I must admit I don’t really know where to put everything even though I have sold, given away and thrown away stuff already. In the garden I have been mostly pruning and tidying up. Every time I look under a new bush I find stuff, just old pieces of wood, broken plant pots and rubbish really so clearing the garden is going to be a long process. In the mean time I am watering my nearly 700 pots and hoping the plants will survive, the hot and windy weather we have had was hard, luckily it has cooled down a bit and now that we got low 20s C for a while it makes it easier with the watering. A good few days with rain would have helped but there is no rain in sight for the next 10 days and beyond.

In my new garden - GBBD May

Anyone following my blog will have noticed I have been preparing to move the last couple of months. I can now report I have moved and spent 4 days at my new house! I wasn’t sure what I would be able to show you for this month’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day but I went out yesterday to take some photos – in pouring rain. For once I don’t mind the odd days with rain as most of my previous garden has come with me and is now in pots and containers needing a lot of water. The free stuff from above is most welcome :-)

Moving house - and garden

Today’s Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day post will be a bit different than all the other I have made before. I am still waiting to hear if I have got the bungalow I have applied for, but it now seems likely that I will get it so I am continuing to prepare for a move. The most important thing I will take with me? My garden of course! Yes, most of my garden is coming with me, at least the plants.

March flowers in London – GBBD

Winter is well and truly over here in London and we have had spring for a good while now. Last year everything was incredibly early, this year most things are just about normal – if such things exist. Perhaps I should use the word average instead, as every of the 16 winters I have been in London seem to have been different. The first year I was here we had an amazing summer just like last summer and a mild winter just like last year’s winter. I foolishly thought that this was how the climate was in London. How wrong I was. But even though it varies, the two really cold winters I have experienced here were nothing compared to what I was used to from Norway and I really appreciate what I am able to grow here and the early spring we get.

Spring arrival – February GBBD

The last 3-4 weeks have been cold here in London, cold, windy and with very few days with sunshine. The weather has finally turned milder lately, but with the rain we have had this week I am pretty desperate for some sunshine. I was trying to dodge the showers today while taking my photos for the February Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post, but after going inside 4 times I just stayed outside in the rain to get finished. February is the month where it is most likely to get snow here in London, we are now half-way through and still haven’t had any snow at all – let’s hope we can finish this month without any. Last time I had snow in my garden was February 2013, but that snow only lasted a few hours on the ground.

January flowers - GBBD

It’s mid-January, the Christmas decoration is back in its boxes, the crocuses and snowdrops are flowering and it is 6 weeks and 3 days till we officially have spring here in London. Yay! As usual, in my garden we start a bit earlier with things, the first hellebores and snowdrops have been flowering since before Christmas and the first crocus started flowering last week. I have daffodils in bud and Iris reticularis well above ground. And my two camellias are continuing to give me the occasional flower. Yes, everything is normal in my January garden. The temperature has been more ‘normal’ so far this winter compared to last year, but last winter was unusually mild. Despite that, so far I have only had two nights just about below freezing and this week’s ‘very cold’ weather here in UK is probably not going to bring my garden below freezing – although it will be close.