It was still windy today. I took refuge on the top lawn, weeding and tidying the rose beds, as that is a relatively sheltered part of the garden, and less uncomfortable to work in than the more exposed parts. In high winds I am slightly cautious about lingering beneath our larger trees. Every winter one or two do fall down, or shed limbs, and while the chances of being underneath at the time are pretty slim, I'd rather reduce the odds still further by not being there than push my luck. In the front garden the entire top blew off the recently planted Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum'. It must have thrashed about in the wind until the single stem just broke. I'll repot the roots and see if they sprout from ground level, and I expect there'll still be some plants left at work next Monday, the way trade is, but it was a disappointing moment when I looked at the blank space where I'd planted it and realised that something was missing from the scene.
In the back garden the texensis form of clematis 'Gravetye Beauty' is still flowering prolifically. It has deep, four petalled flowers in a luxurious shade of dark red, and scrambles down a bank and over a prostrate cotoneaster and a golden yew. The soil in which it is planted is unpleasant stuff, being the spoil from when the conservatory was built, largely clay subsoil, and poor old 'Gravetye Beauty' doesn't get full sun because it is shaded by the house for the first part of the day. If you want an autumn flowering clematis and have a less than propitious site this has to be one to try.
I've been chopping down the Baptisia australis, even though large parts of it are still green. This has blue flowers in the summer, and at this time of year black seed pods generously filled with seeds. They are viable, and I have to weed out unwanted seedlings. It goes against the grain to put them on the bonfire, but I don't need more plants and I don't have room in the greenhouse for speculative seedlings. I've been cutting down the herbaceous peonies too, even those that have gone a vaguely attractive shade of pinkish brown. As soon as the roses have dropped their leaves I'm starting on those. I just want this part of the garden tidied and mulched. The combination of drought and now days of wind mean it is not turning into a good year for autumn colour, and the boss at work was grumbling about the state of the arboretum. It is a very good year for many fruits, but they are displayed for the most part against a background of scrunched brown leaves instead of glorious reds and golds. The path across the lawn has practically disappeared under encroaching grass, but it will be easier to cut neat rectangles around the slabs when we've had some rain, the ground is so hard.
The Systems Administrator didn't let the chickens out, as it was really too windy to want to sit in the front garden with them, and they don't like coming out in the wind anyway. The cats don't like it either, and hang around the house annoying each other. How much we are all influenced by the wind, living where we do. Spending the day in the office I barely noticed it, except maybe for the wind tunnel effect around the base of some of the higher buildings, walking to and from Liverpool Street station.
No comments:
Post a Comment