Well it hasn’t been very warm this August and we have had quite a bit of rain. There is even more slug damage – the echinacea have all suffered. I just have little spikes instead of leaves, and any leaves that did manage to grow got snail damage! I caught the culprits in action so no question of who did what. I did think that the hairy leaves might just put the critters off eating them – oh how wrong I was. I tried them in the garden, then in pots on the patio, then in pots on the patio table.
There is still plenty of colour about, still in flower are: roses, Japanese anemones, verbena, selinum wallichinum, nepeta, erigeron, fuchsia, persicaria, gaura, astrantia, cyclamen, agastache, viburnum, water lilies, and even some foxgloves are still flowering. Going over now are the purple loosestrife, oregano and lavender. There are little carpets of purple flowers of cyclamen in various places in the garden.
As autumn approaches (rather quickly) there is colour in the berries of the rowan, holly, enkianthus and honeysuckle. The foliage of the enkianthus is turning a lovely purply/bronze colour that looks great with the heuchera solar eclipse.
The fern here has purple ribs and purple tinges on the frond ends that go well with the deep purple foliage of the heuchera next to it. There are still young bronze coloured fronds popping up in some ferns in the stumpery.
It is almost time to plant the narcissi and crocus so I did a quick check on the stored ones and found that some of the narcissi had some mold on them so they had to be chucked. The little oxalis palmifrons bulbs had very long shoots already and were becoming a bit soft so I chucked most of them out and planted the few best looking ones (ever hopeful). The cactus in the conservatory had another gorgeous flower on it just for one day – the fragrance was fabulous! Also in the conservatory I started to water the indoor cyclamen after their summer rest and the leaves are coming through now. There is moss growing at the base of the tree fern in the conservatory and as I was spraying the fern I thought the droplets looked good on the moss sporophytes.
I have made a few decisions about the ground cover plants in the stumpery: the sweet woodruff is rather rampant and is covering up other plants so that will be coming out (perhaps I can leave some behind a large log and just keep it in check), the violets are getting every where so some of them will just get ripped out, the same goes for the bugle. The lovely little creeping fern. Blechnum penna-marina, is becoming a bit of a thug and it’s rhizomes are intermingling with other plant roots so I will keep some in a large pot. It has got all tangled up in amongst the saxifrage and it has taken a while to untangle it all.
The dogwood that has been struggling in the damp corner beside the ramp has been moved to the stumpery where it should have more space. The large fern just kept flattening it where it was. The jobs for the weekend are putting some Blanket Answer in the pond as for the fist time ever we have blanket weed. Horrid stuff! Plus the usual cutting back, dead-heading and keeping up with the weeding. I suppose I ought to do some work in the front garden too.