Autumn Jobs, failures and sucesses!

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At last the heat has gone from the day and it is pleasantly comfortable outside. It also means of course that we have the morning mists, winds and today it’s raining.
The garden has lost lots of its colour, but you can see the structure of the plants plonked in the garden this year and know which ones need to be moved to a better position for next year.
Some of the Achilleas grew much taller than expected and spread much more, that cheap Michealmas Daisy had an insipid flower and grew huge and the pretty Aquilegia was shorter than the others I had in the garden and was swamped by everything else! Must pull up the Thorn Apple before it seeds everywhere, left it to grow out of curiousity and it was HUGE!
We are still in the midst of the extension work, they said (!) 12 weeks which seemed a lot for an extension anyway, but we have reached that and still lots to do. The area around the extension was (I was hoping) going to be planted with some climbers to break up the blank wall and some bulbs/plants etc. The builders have chucked just about every spare brick, tile, concrete waste, plaster and and anything else into the ground so without digging it all out again it looks as if it will have to be plants in containers!
The Begonias which were a bargain reduced price from our visit to Wisley in May have excelled themselves and are still blooming madly, most are lovely, but a couple of small insipid yellow ones. I shall try drying them off and keeping in sawdust for the winter.

One of the pots which had an Acer and small violas in has seeded all over the weedy, dirt filled gravel just to prove they like an open soil to geminate, so will be potting some of those for next year – before the peacocks and rabbits finish eating them as they come through! There are hundreds, just proves I didn’t do much dead-heading.

Thank goodness the twice daily staggering about with watering cans is now over! The new extension is going to have three water butts, plus two stand-pipes so at least next year the water will be closer. The builders were going to dig a soakaway for the rain water – soon put them straight about that!

The Sedum Spectabile, variegated has just come into its own, though it too got swamped and flopped so is just straightening itself up, but the late bees love it, as well as the usual one.

I have cut down many of the dead stalks from the Peony and other perrenials only to find that there were hundreds of ladybirds hiding amongst the stalks, so they can’t go on the bonfire!
Must close now before I bore everyone to death, happy gardening everyone.

• 2 Oct, 2013
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