It is that time of year again; days get shorter, evenings milder, and things need a bit of a tidy up before winter gets here.
Yesterday was the escallonia hedge by the garage/workshop. Virginia Woolf had a fondness for escallonia, I'm not so sure. It has the most annoying habit of sending out great long bushy shoots with bee friendly clusters of flowers right at the very tip. It makes the car jump each time I park it. My preference would be for the hedge to evoke the smooth and rolling Downs, but I haven't yet found a pruning regime that encourages this (the Woolf's gardener at Talland House knew better, but I'll bet bees never frequented those straight tidy hedges). I tolerate the untidiness because oh the bees do love the flowers. My compromise this year is to take off shoots which were tickling the car door and bonnet, but leave those long ones at the top so the bees still have some nectar. I'll take those out once flowering has really finished and tidy it all up.
It does look much neater now, apart from the Fraggle Rock hairdo!
Yesterday the Japanese anemone in the back garden promised me good gardening weather. Today there was less sun, but it was also cooler.
First, another result of being too tolerant. There is a veritable forest of little fennel plants gleefully sprouting in the gravel. They smelt delicious as I plucked them up.
One of my favourite flowers, Love-in-a-Mist, popped themselves here from next door, much to my delight. I love the straight stems and contrast between the soft buff of the seedpods against the dark fence ..... but they really should come down
After that, I created a little bower where cyclamen peep out at the bottom of the tree, and black cats snooze. Can you see him?
Perhaps here?
Definitely here!
Happy cat
