I didn’t think there would be many flowers this month, but it is surprising what I found when I ventured out between the showers of Storm Callum. Some are bravely flowering away as if the wind and rain we have had lately had never happened.
Hydrangeas really suffered during the summer drought, but not this one under the kitchen window, why I wonder?
I’m thoroughly cheesed off with my garden at the moment, I can’t whip up any enthusiasm for doing all that needs doing, so my attention is turning indoors. One of my kitchen windows faces north east and is proving to be just the right spot for my indoor flowering plants. No sun but plenty of light, just what they need. Outside at the moment the wind is howling through the trees and the rain is lashing the windows, leaves are falling everywhere but these plants are nice and cosy indoors.
My first Christmas cactus to flower, I’ve never known it to be so early before.
Trees and shrubs are starting to change into their party clothes before finishing for the year. Colours are emerging so much earlier than they usually do, a good month ahead of the last few years. Some trees and shrubs though are still very green, so hopefully all the lovely colours of autumn will last longer than usual.
My favourite at the moment is my little Acer palmatum disectum which has been purple since spring, now it is the most beautiful pink/red and really stands out in the gravel garden at the back.
Some of the garden is still looking stressed after our really hot, dry summer, but in certain areas there are delights to be found, plants that are doing really well, or even doing much better than usual. The first is my Amelanchier lamarckii which I must have planted at least 20 years ago as a very small tree.
Amelanchier lamarckii, at its best yet.
I decided it was time to mow my mini meadow the other day, but because of its small size, it is a strimmer that is used to cut the grass back. I liked the way it looked with its grass of different lengths, but the flowers had stopped flowering in all the heat and it was time to try and get it back to being a lawn again.
I also like the shapes and shadows formed by the taller grass.
Having spent all summer trying to keep my garden alive, at last I have something positive to write about. It has been difficult carrying water round the garden, so eventually I just watered the pots and any recent planting which I did in May, which I wouldn’t have planted if I’d known what sort of summer we were to have. The garden was left to cope and only plants that were obviously under stress got watered. The result was that some plants coped very well indeed, but most stopped flowering to conserve their energy, which made for a rather boring garden, hence no posts for a while.
Suddenly the woodland floor is covered with masses of Cyclamen hederifolium.
But not yet for a while. Any mowing will be done at the end of August, by which time the grass will be a lot longer and I’ll have had a lot more different flowers in my tiny meadow.
I felt that there wouldn’t be much to photograph for this month’s Bloom Day due to the drought and heat that we have been experiencing for the last few months. Our “green and pleasant land” is only as it is because of all the rain we experience throughout the year. Not this year though, we haven’t had any sizeable showers since the beginning of May and the temperatures have just kept rising to the low 30C which is much hotter than we usually have.
Really, I don’t think they’re reaching any more, they’ve got there! I’m talking about my 2 huge climbing roses, Rosa Mulligani which was planted shortly after we moved here and Rosa Wedding Day which was planted to mark our daughter’s wedding. Last year R. Wedding Day hadn’t quite reached the top of the old ash tree, but this morning I noticed a gleam of white right at the top and there it was, basking in the beautiful morning sunlight with a brilliant blue sky behind it.
Lower down the white flowers seem to glow in the dark shade.
Deb's Garden Blog – Journal
Diary of a Suburban Gardener
