GBBD – November 2009 – a last few delicacies

 

Well here we are at another Garden Bloggers Bloom Day – where does the time go.  It is becoming a real challenge now to find flowers in the garden and after the strong winds and rain we have had the last few days anything that was looking good is looking pretty miserable.  I was going to include my Rudbeckias and Dahlias but the flowers are just soggy brown bundles now.

However, on exploring the garden I did find one or two little treasures secreted away.  The Doronicum paradalianches above is one of the plants I grew from seed this year.  This plant is sitting in the nursery bed and I presume that as it is packed in with other plants it hasnt noticed the change in weather.

In fact I noticed that most of the flowers that were still out were quite delicate and I wondered if this was because they needed to be small to withstand the weather whether as the big dahlias etc have been battered.  The Bidens above has only just come into flower.  I bought it at last year’s Malvern Autumn show when I met VP.  The plant is about 6 weeks later to flower this year and is much shorter than last year when VP will remember I was nearly taking people’s eyes out with it.

This scabious is probably the hardest working plant in my garden.  It seems to flower almost all year round just stopping for a couple of months when it gets really cold.  I cut it back from time to time and it soon bursts back into flower. I notice that in last year’s November GBBD post Scabious was one of the few flowers putting on a show but its interesting that I didnt mention roses which have been having a last flush this year.

The roses I mentioned about a week ago are still hanging onto their flowers and this white one has just come into bud.  It’s not an especially good rose; it was a freebie from a newspaper for some reason, and I have more less decided that it is on the exit list and is to be replaced with something else but until I decide what it might as well stay put.

So those are the few treasures still flowering in my garden this blustery November GBBD.  For other GBBD posts visit Carol at May Dream Gardens

My first watercolour effort

Yesterday I went back to my botanical drawing course having missed the last 2 weeks.  I nly started back in October so am still really out of my depth and havent used watercolour before.

This week I finished off a painting I had started 3 weeks ago.  It was so my tutor could demonstrate wet on wet.  But for me it was a chance to get to grips with using watercolour.  After the first 45 mins I finally relaxed and started to enjoy it again.

I am really pleased with my result (above) – obviously the one I painted is much larged than the real leaf but its a start.  Next week I have to take an interesting piece of fruit or veg so he can show me how to make things appear 3D. 

 

 

Blogging can make you a better gardener

Garden blogging for the last 18 months has really expanded my knowledge without me really realising that I was absorbing so much information.  However, I realised today that my knowledge has recently expanded even more since I started writing a week post on gardening for Yell.com.

I hadn’t really thought about how I would find things to write about  each week.  I suppose I just assumed that it would be like writing my own blog.  But when someone is paying you, you start to think that maybe you should make a bit more of an effort to write something coherent and useful.  On top of this I have to find photos to accompany my posts and they have to be my photos or ones I have permission to use.  This wasn’t so bad when I started back in the summer but with winter fast approaching I am beginning to struggle to come up with ideas. 

So my gardening books have been dusted off especially those that take you through the year and I suspect my garden is going to be the better for this.  This week I was at a loss what to write about. I had already done berries, autumn colour, grasses, planting bulbs etc.  So there I was leafing through one of my books and I came across tidying up the wildlife pond for winter.

Now I wouldn’t say that I don’t tidy up my pond but it is something that that gets neglected and I put off especially on a cold damp day.  But a photo was required so I set to taking a before photo of my congested pond.  I have some water forget-me-not which had taken over.  After an hour I was very pleased with how much better the pond looked despite the muddy churned up water.

Pond after tidy up

On top of this beneficial hour of industry both for me and the pond I also learnt from the book that I could overwinter my water hyacinths.  I hadn’t thought of this before but it makes perfect sense.  So I fished them out of the pond, washed the duck weed off and put them in a tub of water.  For some reason the book said there needed to be a layer of earth at the bottom but didn’t say why so I dutiful followed instructions.  The tub is now in my frost free greenhouse and I am really pleased with the idea that my water hyacinth will overwinter.

So garden blogging is actually improving my gardening knowledge which is quite funny as I am meant to be providing hints and tips – talk about learning on the job!!!!!.

You can access mine and other Yell.com gardening blogs here

A late flush

I have been really pleased over the last week to see that my climbing rose, Handel, has decided to treat me with a last flush of flowers before the winter arrives.  A spray of about 6 buds has appeared and hopefully the weather will remain mild enough over the next week for the other 5 buds to have a chance to come into flower like the one above.

Another rose having a last fling is this dainty yellow rose which was in the garden when we moved in.  It isnt the most prepossessing plant in appearance but the flowers are quite nice.

 

Wordless Wednesday 4/11/09

End of month view

What with one thing and another over the last month my garden has become somewhat neglected.  It has been driving me mad as I need to garden in order to ground myself but havent been able to get out so not only have I been seeing a garden that desperately needs some work done on it but I have also been struggling to cope without my therapy!!!

Today I managed to get outside this afternoon and start tidying up.  There is just so much to do that I found myself flitting from one job to another so nothing actually got finished but looking at the garden is does now seem to appear abit more care for.

I am becoming strangely attached to my old oven that has been sitting in the back garden for the last couple of weeks.  Found myself thinking it would make an interesting feature!!!!  Must ask my eldest to remove it asap!

You can see last month’s end of month views here

Sis

Thank you for all your kind words and thoughts.  Sadly my sister left us yesterday afternoon after a valiant effort on everyones part which lasted 5 days. 

I have cried, screamed and shouted and now I feel numb.  Its so hard to believe that this has happened and especially as the person lying in the bed didn’t look like my sister.  But now we have to move on.  We have to get each other through the funeral and we have to be particularly strong for my brother-in-law and my 5 year old niece. There will be tough times ahead but also we will have to remember the happier times.

I wont be responding to any comments and will probably not say anymore on the subject but I just wanted people to know what has happened and to thank you all again for your support over the last week.

Why????

Forgive me this post but I have to unload my feelings at the moment.  I am writing this purely for myself to help me deal with things. 

My sister is in hospital fighting for her life at the moment.  I know that sounds dramatic and maybe over the top but that is the fact of the matter.  I tell the relatives and friends I have to update that she is stable and holding her own, it sounds so much better and helps them deal with a situation that they are distant from and feel helpless about.  But the truth is that she is lying in a bed, with tubes coming out of her and all sorts of weird and wonderful (I pray) machines around her beeping and whirring.

There is no one to blame – I have no one to focus my anger on, no one to rant at, to wish horrible things on.  She has meningitus.  It got into her blood stream and brought on septic shock causing her body to shut down.  It came from no where, one minute she had an upset stomach and then a couple of hours later she was being airlifted to hospital. 

She is only 37, m y little sis and mother to my adorable niece.  She infuritates me at times – we are six years apart and have different view points – but I love her to bits and I can’t bear to think of life without her.

I have heard people say they saw so and so age before them but never really understood until I watched my parents take in the news that she might not pull through.  My Dad is a shell, he looks old, he is struggling to find ways of coping, he is used to organising and sorting things out for us but now he cant do anything but wait.  My Mother has gone through shock and is now rooted to my sister’s bed, only leaving when the medical staff have to do something.  My brother in law has turned inwards and paces the corridors and roams the car park.  Me – well I put on a brave face, trying to be positive, hold hands, talk rubbish to my sister and then drive home and cry my eyes out.  We all try to cope differently but I dont think any of us is actually coping. 

I am now waiting for my uncle from Australia to phone for an update and then I have to go to bed to get some sleep before driving back down the motorway (an hour and half).  This morning the phone went at 6:30 and my Dad told me I had to come now as she was deteriorating.  The boys and I drove down, how I managed it I dont know – thankfully what I was anticipating to be waiting for me wasnt the case and she is stable and holding her own now again 15 hours later but who knows what tonight will bring.  I have always believed that if I take an umbrella to something it wont rain so my bag is packed and ready by the door so the phone wont ring in the early hours and I wont be fumbling around like I was this morning.

I dont want to go back to that hospital, I dont want to sit in that room, I dont want to pretend everything will be OK but I have no choice and through all this I ask myself over and over again Why?

Wordless Wednesday 21/10/09 – Super Dahlia!

Delights of Autumn

Finally managed to get out into the garden this weekend and start the big autumn clean up.  I have been getting increasingly fustrated as due to the weather and major work in the house I haven’t been able to get on and I could see the garden descending into even more chaos then normal.  Saturday was a glorious autumn day with the sun shining and filtering through the overhead coppery leaves, like stained glass.

Prunus incisa 'Kojo-no-mai'

It struck me as I raked up leaves that some of the shrubs that I had bought for their spring flowers were equally as attractive in the autumn when their leaves changed colour.  All around the garden there are patches of bonfire colours.   Some people say that you should leave the fallen leaves on the borders to act as a mulch and I can see the logic in this.  However, apart from under the shrubs, I like to collect the leaves up.  Many of my small perennials get swamped with all the leaves that fall on my garden and it seems a pity for them to disappear from view especially as many of them are evergreen and much valued in the winter.

Amelanchier canadensis 'Snowy Mespilus'

The Amelanchier is finally beginning to earn its keep.  I bought the shrub a couple of years ago from Woolworths – it was literally a stick at the time and cost me the princely sum of £2.  I do believe that it is best to buy plants small not just because they are cheaper but because they establish better and soon catch up and overtake others which have been planted at a more advanced stage.  This spring for the first time the Amelanchier had dainty white flowers along with the coppery new shoots and I was thrilled to see how attractive its fading leaves are this weekend.

Circumfuga

I was also taken with the foilage on the Circumfuga.  It appears in late spring very dark and dramatic but in the last week its as though the colour has been completely washed out of some of the leaves, with just a dark fringe around the edges.  I love this plant it has wonderful foilage, dainty flowers and a heady scent and comes up year after year.  I just need to be successful in propogating it and I will be really happy.