Into September

Where did August go and July for that matter? The summer holidays have gone by so quickly. I was looking forward to leisurely days, pottering about in the garden, catching up with a few jobs and not watching the clock for school pick ups. Well I didn't have to watch the clock, and my days were probably leisurely but not in the way I'd planned. We had some lovely days out with the grandchildren. We had family to stay and more days out with more grandchildren. We've done garden visits, been to the seaside, explored historic houses and walked a lot. It seems to have been a whirl of activity but lovely too.

So here we are in September. There's a quieter feel to the days now the grandchildren are back at school. And things are different with the eldest now at high school. There are a lot of changes to our routine.

September brings changes to the garden and the countryside as everything changes colour and berries appear. I feel I need to go out and pick blackberries even though there are some in the freezer from last year. And after last year discovering a secret place where we found sloe berries I want to return to pick more, make more sloe gin.

The garden has been very good at looking after itself these last few weeks, but I know there is much to be done. The allotment  is producing plenty, but our work on the two plots we have at the moment is of sorting stuff out and making more storage space as we prepare to give up one of them at the end of the year.
It's like moving house.

We are looking forward to some time away later this month, time to slow down, to rest, to walk, to enjoy new scenery.

 

Back from the holidays

Whenever I return from holiday, although I always look forward to getting back to the garden and allotment, I'm usually a bit worried as to what sort of state they are going to be in. We've recently returned from two weeks away and I was quite pleased that everything looked quite good on our return. 

Before we went away I had a good weed and cut back in the garden and all that hard work seems to have paid off.  I was expecting to see plants flopping all over the place and lots of dead heading needing to be done.  Instead everything was looking quite perky, some of the plants I had cut back had bounced back to produce more flowers and the borders were full of late summer colour from the rudbekias, heleniums, sedums and phlox.

Down at the allotments the vegetables were growing well. The tomatoes are now ripening daily, the courgettes are growing faster than we can pick them and the french beans are growing fast too.  There are cabbages, cauliflowers, swede, kale, leeks and raspberries all ready for picking. And lots of flowers too.  Everything seems to be ready all at once.

The sweet peas which we had not expected to do well have been flowering for weeks now and had grown so big that they had toppled over.  We hoisted them up,  fixed some more canes in place and tied them all up with thick string. I'm hoping they will sort themselves out, at the moment they look a bit trussed up, but they are still producing flowers so it seems a shame to pull them up yet.

The rest of the allotment just needed a good weed and we started with plot 10b doing all the raised beds and the paths during the week. This weekend Helen and I started weeding plot 8.  We didn't finish but it's all looking much better.

Coming home

We've just returned from a week away in North Devon and the garden has grown amazingly in that time.  In fact when we arrived home, as we trundled our holiday stuff from the car (in the rain) through the back garden up to the house, I was partly overjoyed to see it all again, with flowers which hadn't been there before we went away, and partly overwhelmed by the work I would need to do to sort it out. It looked like a jungle. There seemed to be too many plants crowded into the borders. I really should remember how big plants grow to.

The following day I saw things differently.  There was no rain, the sun was shining and my husband cut the lawn. The borders looked so much better once the grass was a decent length. Then a neighbour came round and exclaimed how beautiful the garden was looking.  I looked again with fresh eyes and decided  it did look quite good.

The poppies are now flowering. The lovely deep pink 'Raspberry Queen' is my favourite.  The paler pink is 'Victoria Louise'. 'Patty's Plum' has lots of buds but is yet to flower.

 The hardy geraniums are now out. 

Lots of pale pink in the front garden.

 

More blue in the back garden

Also lots of blue from the Iris

It was all so lovely that I cut some flowers for the house.