the September garden

After a flurry of activity in Spring and early Summer, I have neglected the garden. This is rather typical and usually at this time of year the garden would be in a right mess. But this year it is still nice, probably because I have been quite obsessive at the beginning of the year. It has been enjoyable to sit in the garden and watch the insects buzzing to and from. There was such a variety of flowers, it was amazing. Best of all, there didn't seem any need for me to weed or water very much, everything was thriving. There are still plenty of flowers now.

But the summer is clearly over, there are fewer flowers and more seed pods and heads. I had no idea that there was such a variety of seed containers! Well, I did really but I have never taken photos of them before and somehow the action of capturing the variety "on film" made me appreciate this life stage of flowering plants more. Aren't these just beautiful?

 

We also planted some vegetables, peas mostly and courgettes. We had more courgettes than even the biggest courgette lover could possibly eat. I don't think I want to eat another one for a while. The winter vegetables are looking promising (unless I am mistaking weeds for vegetables). The other day, Richard and I shared our first teeny tiny artichoke. It was a simple pleasure to dip the artichoke petals into mayonnaise and scrape the bottom off with my front teeth and finally sharing the small heart with Richard. Can I just say that this was in all likelihood the best ever artichoke I ate? I hope the plants survive the winter and produce more artichokes next year. James' Scotch Bonnet chillies and Hungarian Rhapsody chillies are turning red and will be harvested shortly. His tomato plant is still cropping. It turns out that my south facing living room window sill is as good as any green house. 

Our fruit trees have done ok this year. Not great but ok. We ate all our plums, still have plenty of apples, 5 pears that should be ready to be eaten soon and 3 quinces that are not quite ready either. I usually harvest the quince in October and with the current warm autumn weather, they should be ripe in time. I am not complaining, the pear tree is still young and the quince tree has produced fruit for the first time in three years, after a bumper crop that left me with enough quince jelly for two years. The apples don't seem to disappear from the tree this year, which is good. We have a new milk man, maybe he doesn't like apples.

We have eaten so many plums this year, I think my body is saturated and can't digest another one. The plum jam is delicious and I look forward to eating the honeyed plums later in the year, when  we get fed up with citrus fruit and apples. There was plenty of windfall for all the little creatures, too. I assume it is insects and slugs and maybe small rodents that eat the windfall but I am not sure.

In a few weeks time it will be necessary to clear the garden up for winter. I have little planting planned, just some fresh bulbs maybe and I would like to replace the hellebore that has mysteriously disappeared. I am not sure what happened to it, one week it was here and the next week it was gone.
All in all, our summer garden has been a great success and I am more than pleased. I hope you are equally happy with yours!

Changing subject: I did finally get around to finding a new home for my August socks. I wrote everybody's names on a piece of paper and folded them up, popped them all in a yellow knitted hat and then asked Richard to pull a name out. There must be a more bias proof way using random number generators or something like that but I quite like the old fashioned way. In any case, it wasn't me who picked the winner but my patient husband. The winner of the socks is Leanne from Today's stuff. What a lovely coincidence! Leanne did send me a lovely surprise last week and it only seems right that she should be the winner of my socks. If you could text me your full address, you'll have toasty toes in no time.

Have a great Tuesday! Cx