Through the garden gate--November

The garden is slowly settling down for the winter. As I look around there is still colour to be found, from stems, leaves starting to go over and flowers still struggling on. There were some amazing leaf colours from trees which I gazed on briefly only for them to have blown away a few days later.

I have done an autumn tidy up. Just a little one as I like to leave a lot for the wildlife over the winter. But the garden looks better for it. I love to see the seed heads of plants gone over, a reminder of their summer display.

There are still some plants which are making an attempt at flowering again, little flashes of colours amongst the foliage-- a bit of blue lavender and campanula, pink geranium and as for the Rudbekias, well they are still going strong as is the fuchsia in the front garden. The grasses are looking good, this time of year they give some welcome colour and interest to the garden borders.

I'm feeding the birds most days now and they are often to be seen perched on the fence in the morning waiting for their food. In the back garden there are groups of starlings, pigeons, doves and magpies with the occasional blackbird. In the front garden the sparrows and blue tits are active in the shrubs. 

I bought some white hellebores this week to make some Christmas pot displays on the garden bench, they seem to be becoming a popular plant for this time of year. They are lovely.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Garden calling

The garden has been calling me for a week or two now. But I have been neglecting it and giving all the attention to the allotment. Not that this time of year and the current weather conditions are really gardening weather. But a gardener will always find something that needs to be done. Having spent most of January doing jobs around the allotment I decided that I needed to give some time to the garden. The garden does tend to take second place to the allotment, but it's good to see that it can look after itself for a lot of the time.

In the autumn I cut back some of the very messy looking dead plants and left the rest--the grasses and seed heads, to give some interest through the winter and provide homes for insects and food for the birds  I decided that now was the time to finally cut back these plants and get ready for spring. I was glad to cut the grasses down, there were bits of dried grass blowing about all over the garden. Not sure if that was the result of the winter storms or Holly the cat who likes to roll about in them. Holly supervised as I worked and was probably a bit miffed that I had destroyed her playground. The birds might feel a bit more secure now that she can't hide behind clumps of plants as she likes to do, ready to pounce.

The garden looks a bit flat now, but soon new shoots will be appearing and the empty areas of the borders will fill up. As I cut back I discovered some treasures-- snowdrops, narcissi, crocus. I also found a lovely pink hellebore flowering for the first time since I bought it from a charity plant stall two years ago. The  hamamelis, otherwise known as witch hazel is now flowering. It's yellow spidery flowers are a welcome bit of colour at this time of year.  I  potted up some tete a tete narcissi into small pots to display on the garden table.  These can  be seen from the house and look brighter every day as a few more flowers open up.

As I worked on the borders, Richard dug out some compost from the compost bins.  He managed to fill an old dustbin. My next job after I have finished clearing all the borders of debris will be to mulch the borders with compost or leaf mould, but I will need more than a dustbin full of compost for that.

Autumn treasures

When our children were young I always used to take a polythene bag out with us when we went on walks.  This was to collect treasures.  You know the sort of thing, shells and pebbles if we were going to the beach, pine cones, leaves, conkers, etc on country walks. Our children have grown up now and probably outgrown that habit of collecting things. But I don't seem to have, because I still collect things when out walking.  On the other hand maybe it was me all the time who wanted to do the collecting.

I love everything about autumn, the colours, the falling leaves, the spider's webs in the hedges, shiny conkers, walking on crunchy beech nut shells, the seed heads of  summer flowers, berries in the hedgerows. And so I am often to be seen at this time of year, whether it is just strolling back from taking the grandchildren to school, on longer walks, or down at the allotment, clutching a handful of brightly coloured leaves, a bag of conkers, seed heads, rose hips, hawthorne berries.  In fact just about anything which catches my eye and looks interesting.

I press the leaves to preserve them, they can then be used for craft activities with the grandchildren. This year I have decided  to make some Christmas pot pourri so I will have plenty of natural ingredients to hand.  I might spray some of them gold.

They look good also left as they are and simply arranged in a bowl  next to a vase of berried branches for an autumn display. I have a table in the front porch where most of these 'treasures' are displayed. It's like a nature table and it changes with the seasons.

Plans and things

 At this time of year I start to ease up on the gardening and allotment work, move indoors and get busy preparing for Christmas. That means lots of cleaning, cooking, baking and shopping.  For the last two weeks we have been decorating our breakfast room--a job which is taking a lot longer to complete than we anticipated.  But with a house as old as ours you never know what will happen when you start peeling wallpaper off the walls.  And what happened was that a lot of plaster came away with it, so that meant lots of holes to fill.  But we are now nearly finished (I think, I hope).

I have been longing to get down to the allotments to do some work, because there is still much to be done before I can feel happy that all is cleared up and beds manured for the winter. And I really miss not being there.  When I pop down briefly to feed the cat or dig up some leeks I look around, making a mental note of what needs to be done. The place looks very lonely, damp and dreary--"I'll be back soon",  I promise.

Back at home I have made the Christmas cake; I have blackberry, raspberry and rhubarb gins and vodkas maturing in a dark place; in the shed there are pots of white hyacinths  waiting  to be brought out nearer to Christmas and all sorts of twigs and seed heads drying out for my wreaths and flower arrangements. I can't wait to get started on making some twiggy wreaths, I have lots of ideas bubbling away in my head.

This all sounds very organised, but it isn't. I do have plans, lots of them, whether they will happen is another matter.

Autumn tidy up

This week we've had some lovely fine weather and I've been able to get out and do some gardening.  Not allotment work but garden work for a change. The allotment has taken up a lot of my time recently and much as I love being there it's been lovely to get away from it and back to the garden.

I pottered around in the sunshine with the cat and the birds for company, and wrapped up in a thick sweater and scarf with a mug of coffee nearby I was in my element. Fortunately the cat hasn't found out how to catch birds yet!

I find gardening in the autumn really satisfying work. Sweeping up leaves, clearing away debris, weeding. I love the autumn tidying up process.  I cut back any messy plant material, but leave seed heads for the wildlife to feed on during the winter. The astilbe and crocosmia seed heads are quite attractive throughout the winter and look good not just in the garden but also in flower arrangements. I'm not too hasty in cutting back as some foliage takes on some lovely colour through October. The hostas are looking good at the moment as they turn a lovely golden yellow. Soon they will flop and look really messy and that's when I cut them back.

This week I've cleared the raised beds at the top of the garden of vegetables which have finished, leaving the salad stuff which is still growing. I'm now planning what to do in those beds next year. I might use them for any veg we won't have room for at the allotment, or I might grow flowers and have a cutting border.  I will still grow salad crops, it's so easy to just pop down the garden to pick a few leaves just before a meal.

The sweet peas haven't done very well this year, so I cleared them away cutting off the ones still remaining.  I put them  in a jug on the garden table meaning to bring them in the house when I'd finished gardening, but they got left there. They still looked good viewed from the house windows.