Happy Birthday Cat

November is the month my cat has birthday, I am not exactly sure what date, but it is probably in the second half so I thought I would mark it here with another post about him – and some photos. Today’s post is part following up on repeat posts from 2011 and part new, as some of the info here had to be updated.

Wordless Wednesday

Early morning dew.

Half full or half empty – repeat

It’s late November and even though I am outside in my garden every day and I still have lots of plants in flower, it is definitely a quiet time of the year in terms of gardening. I have been blogging for almost 3 years and in my first year of blogging I didn’t have that many visitors. I have therefore decided to recycle a few of my posts from the first year and hope you enjoy them again even if you might have read them before. Here is the first repeat post.

November splendour

November in the northern hemisphere is usually thought of as a time where we endure cold, rain, the occasional storm, perhaps frost or even snow – and for most people it is a definite end to the gardening year, if the trowels and secateurs haven’t been put away already. In my London garden I’ve certainly had my fair share of rain and the occasional storm, but my garden year never ends, I just change to a different gear. I put on layers of clothes and my insulated wellies and spend shorter time in the garden, and I work for the most, no sitting down enjoying the weather and the view – too cold!

After the storm

The storm a week ago swept through my London garden with ferocious winds and it rained buckets for about 18 hours. I had prepared my garden for the storm, but you can’t really plan for any possible event, no one knew where the storm would hit hardest. It turned out I was lucky. I had put all my pots on the ground and had lied down the magnolia growing in a container, and hoped for the best. It went better than I had hoped.

A monster for Halloween

I suppose it is rather fitting to have a monster plant presented on a day like today - in a bright orange colour, my monster will be known to a lot of people as something they initially put in their garden as a nice, small plant they picked up at a nursery - and then forever regretting doing that.

Blogging can lead to....

I started blogging almost 3 years ago and went ahead really on a whim, as a progression from writing on my website about my garden and presenting things I make on my computer. In the beginning I didn’t have any response at all, no comments from anyone, for almost a whole year. I could see that I had visitors from my statistics, but didn’t know if people stayed and read or just skipped past to next blog. I joined Blotanical in December 2011 and that’s when my visitor statistics started picking up and comments began to appear.

October in London

October is a funny month here in London, it goes from one extreme to another. We had 10 days of nice, warm weather well into 20 degrees C during the day and even if the evenings are colder and it gets darker sooner, it still felt like summer and often nicer than many days we had in August. And suddenly it all changed, the temperature fell to barely above 10 degrees and that bone chilling wind you get here in London set in and we skipped from summer to feeling like winter in just a few days. It is Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day today, and it might be autumn, cold and windy and you might think that there can’t possibly be much to see in flower in a garden in London, but as usual I have lots to show you.