I missed last month and am late this because I've been on holiday in Australia. The main impression on arriving home is that it looks pretty much the same as it did when I left. The Hakonechloas are deader and brighter, that's the orangey blobs; there's an Azalea flowering. I've just been out clearing up…
End of month view, November 2015
The wind is howling, the clouds racing across the sky. Every now and then the wind comes loaded with rain. There's a trellis panel down and for now it's going to stay down. My end of month view is the view from indoors. Earlier this year I paved the various gravel paths we had in the…
Autumn flowering Camellias
I paid a visit yesterday to the Camellia National Collection at Mount Edgcumbe in the hope that their autumn flowering camellias would be putting on a show. I was not disappointed. The autumn flowering camellias are often referred to as "the sasanquas" though some are forms of the species C. hiemalis, others hybrids. Many originate from…
Camellia update
I've had blooms on a number of camellias over the past couple of weeks, mostly on small, under cover, pot grown plants. First out was Camellia sasanqua 'Gay Sue'. This New Zealand raised variety is described in the Camellia Register as having 12 petals and cream anthers. All the blooms I have seen here are anemone…
To dig or not to dig.
This year was my third season on my allotment, time that has passed with unseemly haste. I inherited a plot that had been pasture and had been badly ploughed before the first tenant took it on. A year later, when I started, they had done almost nothing and the grass and weeds had grown back…
