Since I arrived home from my visit to Washington I’ve had just one excursion into my soggy garden – almost afraid to find many plants ruined. Instead, the garden was slumbering gently…and displaying a few hopeful signs of plant life yet to come.
Seeing the first shoots of next year’s flowers is always exciting. Iris reticulata ‘Purple Hill’ is a bit early, but it’s reassuring to know the bulbs are alive!
Continue reading “Wishing You a Joyful Christmas”
I hope no one objects, especially our host, Jim, but I’m combining two weeks of six photos this week. One should have been posted last weekend, but in life, things happen. With me, it was a recurrence of a neck problem. Photos were ready, but I wasn’t.
I’m combining both because this will be my last week of Six on Saturday posts until next year, either in late winter or early spring, I expect what happens in the garden might decide. I hope to continue to post when I have anything worthwhile to show and say, you never know – I might even manage to get a few more photography posts online. That category has needed attention for a long time.
I have a growing number of projects to complete at home over the next few weeks, then during the October school holidays one of my daughters and her family will be arriving for a visit and finally during November through early December, I’ll be flying off for a few weeks, visiting another of our daughters and her family in the US.
Continue reading “Autumn Glory”
Autumn has arrived for those who mark their gardening season by the meteorological calendar. Despite the appearance of autumn in my garden since the end of July, I’m loving the sunshine and warmth that have unexpectedly arrived in my little corner of the planet. After all my complaints about the awful summer, I’m making the most of these five days of gloriously warm sunshine (24C/75F today!), appreciating the change and leaving my cosy scarves and gloves firmly in the drawer.
It’s Six on Saturday today and here we have six garden subjects that I’ve selected from the garden’s dwindling supply of plants.
Continue reading “Autumn Sun”
A small island close to where I live attracts many home-grown tourists and those from further afield. The favourite activity for visitors is to hire bikes from one of the cycle hire shops and cycle around the island. This can be achieved in about an hour, though most folk take longer as they stop to admire the scenery and enjoy some ice cream or cake from a local cafe. A few days ago official figures were released for the rainfall during August (keep in mind that we still had a few days of August left) and those figures showed that rainfall for August was 240% higher than average. I can’t argue with that, the rain this month has been relentless.
One of our teenage grandsons was visiting recently and it was a challenge to find enough indoor places of interest to take him to. He thoughtfully said he was happy to be in a cooler climate since his home town in the US was having a very hot and humid summer. He hasn’t been discouraged though, as he plans to come back next year, probably in the hope that it will be a rain and wind-free visit!
Continue reading “240%”
I opened the blinds early one morning this week and looked down on the garden. ‘Autumn has definitely arrived’, I thought, before remembering that it was only the 5th of August. The garden still has plenty of flowers, but that morning the garden looked defeated as the rain hammered down and the wind howled. I kind of felt a bit like that myself.
The explanation from the experts is that Scotland has either been under, or on the cold side of the jet stream that has stubbornly refused to move out of the way to allow warm air to flow up from the south. I think most of us here have accepted that all hope of a real summer has vanished. My mind is now starting to turn to late winter and spring flowering bulbs and plants. There’s always something else to cheer up home gardeners, isn’t there.
Here is my contribution to this week’s Six on Saturday.
Continue reading “Late Summer Gardening: What’s Growing in Week Two of August”
Notes From My Garden 