It was a grey, blustery morning when I woke up, promising rain later. I know I wrote recently that I'd read somewhere that you should never start a novel with the weather, but the weather outlook is extremely important to how you plan your day, when you're a keen gardener. And anyway, I can't remember who said it, and they were wrong, since Jane Eyre starts with rain, and Bleak House with implacable November weather, mud and drizzle. Peter Ackroyd's theory is that damp pervades our national character. And this is a blog, not a novel.
It was not actually raining, or at least not very much, so I collected up the bags of weedy waste scattered across the top lawn, that marked the point at which work interrupted my last gardening session, emptied the big bucket of prunings left over from last time into the trailer, and resumed my progress through the top rose bed.
There is too much Campanula lactiflora. What started off as one or two small purchased plants of 'Loddon Anna' has seeded itself joyously about, and some of the self-sown plants are threatening to overwhelm the smaller roses, or blocking the route of a planned maintenance path. Campanula lactiflora is a big old thing. It can reach 1.5 metres on our miserable soil, so on good loam and in a higher rainfall area I should think it would get larger still. 'Loddon Anna' is pale pink, while some of her offspring are light blue, a drawback of self-seeding. All are pretty, but you can have too much of a good thing. The roots of Campanula lactiflora are thick, tough, deep, difficult to dig out, but then break when levered with a border fork, so established plants are not easy to remove.
The planned path is merely a line of slabs, laid straight on to the soil. In the 1950s this was considered a reasonable method of proceeding, and Margery Fish wrote about it enthusiastically in one of her books. I rather think she even cast her own slabs, Geoff Hamilton style. By the time I went to Writtle it was deeply frowned upon. Paths were supposed to be properly laid on rubble and sand or cement, and bunging a few slabs down on the ground was not the done thing. However, I only want my path to indicate a way through the back of the bed. As much as anything, it is intended to act as an aide memoire, and prevent me from planting anything large across the line of it, in a moment of absent mindedness when I forget there is supposed to be a path, and see only a tempting, unexploited planting space. And I agree with Margery Fish, that the beauty of loose slabs in a bed is that you can move them to reroute the path, as things grow, or die.
The Ceanothus x delilianus 'Gloire de Versailles' is flowering prolifically. I don't remember it normally doing this well in the autumn. Indeed, I don't remember it usually flowering this much at all. I have just checked in Graham Stuart Thomas' Ornamental Shrubs, Climbers and Bamboos, and it is supposed to flower from summer into autumn, so something about the conditions this year must have suited it, and it is performing closer to its potential than it sometimes does. The powder blue flowers are individually small, held in fluffy-looking clusters.
As I wrote that, I realised that while the phrase 'powder blue' to me clearly denotes a particular pale, greyish blue, I had not idea where the term came from. It certainly doesn't describe any kind of powder with which I am personally familiar. Google has not been as helpful on this question as it often is, and I haven't found an online dictionary to give me a definitive answer. Quite a few entries say that it derives from the colour of smalt, powdered cobalt which was used in ceramics and glass making to colour objects blue, but other entries describe smalt as being darker blue and purplish, and say that the phrase 'powder blue' can refer either to smalt colour, or to a paler, greyer blue. According to Wikipedia, the first recorded use to mean pale blue was in 1774.
Anyway, the flowers of 'Gloire de Versailles' are extremely pretty, and I was pleased to see them. I fear my shrub is too much shaded by the surrounding roses, and the house which keeps the sun off the entire bed for the first part of the day. Maybe if it saw more sun it would flower this generously with more regularity. On the other hand, many writers say that ceanothus are particularly vulnerable to wind rock, and that the damage caused to their roots by the top growth rocking in the wind can kill the plant. Certainly, they are a treacherous group of shrubs for dying suddenly and for no apparent cause, often just as they have grown to fill the space or do the job they were intended for. I grow comparatively few, having been caught out by random ceanothus suicides enough times for one gardening lifetime, and at least 'Gloire de Versailles' is well sheltered where it is, and has not died yet.
By half past twelve the slight rain had morphed into fairly heavy rain, which it was impossible to ignore. I packed up my tools, and went inside to cook some of this year's apples, prior to freezing. The Systems Administrator stared in horrified fascination at my mud-encrusted trousers, and remarked that I smelt a bit ripe, and had better get changed before the double glazing salesman came round to quote for the windows. We have given up with the local merchant, who was so miserably ill-informed about the building regulations concerning replacement windows and would only give us a five year guarantee, and decided to go with the market leaders. It will cost twice as much, but is guaranteed for life, underpinned by an industry bond.
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