Pumpkin time

The allotment pumpkins aren't huge this year, but hopefully they'll prove to be enough for us.

I started using the smaller pumpkin this week, and so far we've had two meals - soup and chilli - from it, and I've not used half.

Once they're chopped of course, they have to be eaten quite soon, so I shan't be carving them for Halloween, as if I do the flesh never gets eaten quickly enough.

I might just draw scary patterns on them.

Autumn Flowers

 I've neglected this blog again over summer, and autumn feels like an odd time to pick up a gardening blog. There are still flowers to be seen though - an advantage a perennial garden can have over a 'summer bedding' style planting.

This white Michaelmas daisy, the orange violas and a couple of still-flowering dianthus are all 'rescues' from the garden centre clearance racks. I'm fond of a bargain (who isn't?) and with perennials a little care will see them flourish for years.






































Michaelmas daisies are the mainstay of my autumn flowers with these long established plants now forming good-sized clumps.
I just wish I last year's rudbeckias had survived to add a splash of bright yellow to the garden.

Blossom time

One wonderful thing about spring is blossom bursting out all around (even though I occasionally suffer with hay fever from it)

Easter weekend brought the first apple tree into full blossom, and three more are racing to catch up.

Two are 'proper' purchased trees, though I've forgotten what sort (!), the other two grew from pips, so their fruit is, at first, a surprise.

And to turn the garden completely pink, the ornamental cherry has flowered.

A plague of maples

A large tree grows just the other side of my back garden fence.
For years I've believed it to be a sycamore, because of its 'helicopter' seeds, but having looked more closely at its flowers I think it may be a Norway maple.

In summer and early autumn it shades our side a little too well, hiding the sun from most of the lawned area.

But the greatest problem with it is propagation. Each autumn those 'helicopter' seeds come whizzing over the fence, and each spring those seeds take root.

These little seedlings are an absolute nightmare this year.

I'm sure they'd take over completely if left to their own devices!

I started off with a plan of pulling up half a dozen of them each time I went in the garden. 

It wasn't enough!

I moved on to a dozen, then two, but more seem to keep springing up wherever I look.

Clearing open areas like the vegetable patches isn't so difficult - turn the top few inches of soil, and the roots will shrivel - but they always find a place under a prickly rose bush, or hidden by daffodil stalks, and, before I realise, they're too big to be easily pulled out.

This one escaped last year's cull, though, and is shaping up as an attractive bonsai!

Camellia

Only one flower on my camellias this year but it looks beautiful - even in the rain

New beginnings

I've sadly neglected this blog over the last year, but if there's a time to pick it up again it's now when the garden is coming back to life after the winter. Yes, I'm too late for snowdrops, the first sign of spring; the year has moved on too quickly, and this year hasn't brought the late snow of 2018.

Here's a pictorial round up of what's in flower at the moment



weird and wonderful snake's head fritillaries












early blossom - forsythia, flowering currants, the dwarf peach tree (which rather oddly has flowers in two shades of pink this year), and the over-the-fence bird cherry

and polyanthus in various colours from purple and deep red to these pale pinks