ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
There is still plenty of flower in the garden, a pretty good week weather wise has even produced a bit of an improvement on my Dahlias, with Salvias, Fuchsias, Plectranthus and Begonias still going strong. I've been getting stuck into autumn jobs, essentially moving things around, getting things in for winter and chopping things down.…
Cornwall Hardy Plant Society had Fergus Garrett as their speaker on Wednesday and three days later my head is still buzzing. He talked fast and he packed in so much content, all about what he calls layering, the business of building communities of plants growing together such that a piece of ground has something interesting…
Last weekend Sue and I were at the Chelsea Flower Show on Friday and Monday. Most of the time we were helping to man the International Camellia Society stand so we didn't get to see much of the rest of the show, but talking camellias for hours on end is pretty much my idea of…
If you're reading this it's because I've managed to post it on some mobile device while away from home. Routine for many of you no doubt, but not for me. Which is not to say I created it on a mobile device, it was done a few days ago when I was still at home.…
Having finished our garden openings for this summer, I went out with my phone and took a lot of clips of things I thought looked OK, then tried to cobble it together into a video. As with taking photos using film, digital changes everything. You can take hours of appalling footage without it costing you…
This week saw some significant rain, which was very welcome except that most of the paths are now almost impassable. The curtain is beginning to go up on the last act for this year, with Asters opening, Nerine pushing up and Hedychiums flowering. With our NGS openings I've acquired a dead-heading habit that has stood…
With every week that passes there is a sense of the spring slowly winding down. It's a chilly 12°C here this morning but the weather has been benign and most things are holding up quite well but a day or two of wind and rain will quickly change that. I'm not talking Ida wind and…
I took a few pictures yesterday but didn't write this on Friday evening as I usually do, so I went out again this morning with the sun just high enough to catch a few things in the garden. There's a whiff of winding down, flowers going over, foliage starting to look tatty. Most of the…
Our first season of opening under the NGS finishes tomorrow, not a moment too soon both from the angle that the garden is slowly starting to collapse under its own weight and that we have had enough now and want our garden back. If we do it again next year we will open less often.It…
While there are still lots of plants to choose from for inclusion in a saturday six, the garden as a whole is beginning to look a bit ragged around the edges. When things have finished for the season, they either sit there looking finished or get cut down leaving a gap. It's getting late for…
garden ruminations 