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.

Out with the old, in with…

I used to have an enormous Acanthus spinosus in the middle of my garden, in the left flower bed, just in front of the large camellia. If you don’t know this plant it is one of those you either say ‘ugh’ when you see or you smile and find interesting at first sight. I suppose I belonged to the last group, I really love anything unusual, and it doesn’t come more unusual than Acanthus spinosus!

A flower for Halloween

It’s cold and windy outside, I have just spent 2 hours in the garden clearing up leaves and putting some of my plants to bed for the winter and it was good to get inside again to get warm. In my garden ‘putting plants to bed for the winter’ just means moving pots from the beds up to the nursery area where I can keep an eye on them and water them if necessary – nothing gets lifted or wrapped up in my garden over the winter. My garden has taken on a distinctly wintery look, but thanks to all the evergreen plants I have there are still a lot of greenery. And I do have a lot of plants in flower still. My dahlias are still in flower and I thought I just had to post a photo of my Dahlia ‘Striped Vulcan’ on this Halloween day, what an appropriate colour!

Make your own Bonsai trees

The art of making Bonsai trees is truly a unique and special hobby, but oh so rewarding. Not for the impatient gardener though, as Bonsai trees grow veeeery slowly! Growing Bonsai is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Bonsai can be created from nearly any perennial woody-stemmed tree or shrub species that produces true branches and can be cultivated to remain small through pot confinement with crown and root pruning.

18.11. Crocuses emerging

Hello, it’s been yet another glorious day in my garden, with lovely sunshine and 17 degrees in the early afternoon. There isn’t an awful lot to do in my garden at this time of year, so a bit of tidying up, picking up dead leaves and cutting off herbaceous plants as they die off is just about it. And taking photos of course. There are always something flowering in my garden, even in the darkest part of the winter, so I can always find something to take pictures of :-)

02.08. Another Bonsai

Today has been another warm day, it passed 30 degrees this afternoon, but we had no sun the whole day….imagine how hot it could have been if we had got full sun :-) I spent the day in the garden, pottering about, doing a bit here and a bit there; everywhere I turn there are jobs to be done, after 6 weeks of practically doing no gardening at all. But I did one thing today which I have wanted to do for a while; taking care of the Bonsai trees.

18.04. More Bonsai

Hello, did you read my post yesterday about my Bonsai tree? When I was researching on the Internet trying to find out why all the leaves were falling off, and whether I was doing all the things I could to treat it right, I saw an article about how you could make your own Bonsai trees. The article claimed that in principle, any tree or bush could be turned into a Bonsai tree, if you restricted its growth and pruned it correctly. That might be almost true, but there are trees and bushes that would never do well being treated like this; they would just become too stressed. I got of course very fascinated by this article, and being the kind of person I am, I just had to have a go!! So today I have made a Bonsai garden :-)

17.04. Bonsai disaster

When I had breakfast this morning, two elderly women stopped outside my house and started admiring the flowers in the window baskets on the wall of the front garden. They talked to each other and smiled and stood and pointed and gesticulated and one of the women leaned over and started talking to and smiling towards the plants. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could hear her voice, even though the windows were shut...I live in a Victorian house, I can hear the footsteps of people walking past on the pavement! Anyway, I am all for being nice to your plants, but her behaviour was pretty peculiar. I have blinds in front of my windows, no net curtains; I can’t stand net curtains, so during the day the blinds are down but open so the light can flood in – that gives a bit of privacy, but people can still look in if they really want to. After dark I close the blinds and it blocks everything out. OK, back to these two elderly women. I got up from the sofa and walked to the window, taking care not to get too close as I

23.01. Bonsai

I promised you some news about the foxes in my garden, forgot to tell you about it yesterday so here it comes: last Friday the owner of the house next door came round to do an inspection together with a building contractor; the whole house next door is going to be renovated and they were going through the list of what needs to be done inside as well as outside. I was outside in my garden and couldn’t help overhearing their conversation so I asked which one of them were the owner of the house; the woman confirmed it was her and I told her about the foxes and how they have taken over the whole garden there, partly because her tenant is not