Definitely autumnal...

...and yet there is still beauty to be seen in the garden borders.  Some folk find autumn to be a rather sad season, where the voluptuous bounty of summer rapidly fades away, but really it's just the garden taking off it's clothes and pulling on it's pyjamas ready for the long refreshing sleep of winter.  And before we know it spring will be here once more, and we can renew our friendships with all of our beloved plants 😊

I love the glossy red hips of rosa rugosa ~ as do the blackbirds if the half-eaten remains left on the lawn are anything to go by!  These are actually growing in our neighbour's garden but we get to share the beauty of their blooms.  The hips always remind me of my Mum telling me how much Dad liked the rosehip syrup I had as a baby 😄  I wonder when ~ and why ~ giving rosehip syrup to babies stopped being a thing?  I know it certainly wasn't something I gave to the gruesome-twosome almost 30 years ago (omg, how can my kids be nearly 30 years old 😲), so things must have changed sometime between the early 60s and early 90s.

I was having a poke around in the ornamental garden that is currently masquerading as a wilderness when I spotted that this poppy had decided to have a second flourish of leaves ~ and pop out a flower bud, too!  I have read that if they are cut back after flowering is finished then some poppies will have a second flush in August but I think this one has left it a bit late this year!

Apologies if you are arachnaphobic ~ I'm not that keen on the eight-legged little beasties myself, to be honest.  This one, though, wasn't really scary despite it's looooong legs and apparently isn't even a spider!  It's a harvestman according to the RSPB, and they are Opilones, which is a group of arachnids closely related to spiders 😉

Moving swiftly on from that little natural history lesson...

...take a look at something that's much prettier than a spider-that's-only-pretending-to-be-a-spider, a sweet little potentilla Pink Whisper.  The bees really like potentillas, I guess it's easy for them to get to the pollen with those flat open flowers.

This is potentilla nepalensis Miss Willmott.  It's a very different-looking plant to Pink Whisper despite them both being in the potentilla family.

Autumn is, of course, the season for asters.  This is aster novi belgii Jenny.

The verbena bonarensis is still going strong.  We've had some high winds but it seems to cope admirably.  I love the way it is rising up behind the montbretia, and the contrast of the blue against the orange 😊

Despite being moved all the lupins bloomed, and some have even put out a second flush of flower spikes.

More of those beautiful rosa rugosa hips, this time in the bed beside the pond.

It seems that the sedums Autumn Joy turn a deeper red every day.

Fungi-opolis!

We've had masses of these cute little fungi this year.

I don't know anything about fungi, I'm afraid (other than the ones in the supermarket are very tasty 😋), but have been told that these are probably from the Coprinellus family.  They like to grow on or near rotting tree stumps.

And finally, I couldn't resist taking a photograph of the view from our house.....we are very lucky to live here 😍

On the home stretch

There's still work to be done but the light at the end of the kitchen garden tunnel is definitely visible, thank goodness!  Mind you, we'll be tackling the ornamental side of the garden next year which will also be something of a mammoth task 😩  Oh well, no rest for the wicked, I suppose LOL

I thought long and hard about how to set out the fruit cage area, and it took me a while to make a decision on whether to plant straight through the membrane into the soil or use raised beds.  As you can see, in the end I decided to use beds which Adrian is gradually filling with sieved soil from the raised beds in the back garden.  We haven't yet decided whether to just cage the individual beds or the whole area; I suspect we will end up doing the latter.

I have three vertical cordon fruit trees on order which are all supposed to be suitable for the climate up here (let's hope so, eh!): Scrumptious, which is a red-skinned dessert apple; Victoria plum; and a dessert cherry, Summer Sun.  They can be planted as closely as 2'-3' apart and are going in the bed where the rake is in the photograph.  Hopefully the stone walls will provide some protection.  I am considering planting spring bulbs with the trees next autumn, which I would like to use as cut flowers for the house rather than them being simply ornamental.

The other two beds will be for the black- and redcurrants which I've been growing from the cuttings a friend sent me.  We also plan to grow some raspberries.  I need to do a bit of research first, though, on which varieties would be best and which need the least amount of space, as they will be going in a long narrow bed in the remaining area in the lower part of the kitchen garden.

I also have strawberry plants on order, which will be going in one of the raised beds in the lower kitchen garden.     

We are a step closer towards "losing" the weed membrane ~ we had a couple of one tonne bags of Orkney Blue stone chippings delivered last Friday.  We originally thought we would have to have the bags put on the grass in the ornamental garden, but the delivery guy was able to swing them into the kitchen garden which has made life a little easier.  Our first task is to make the paths in the fruit cage, then we can spread out what's left in the lower garden ~ well, on the area that has membrane in place, anyway.  We thought that two tonnes would be such a lot of chippings but it's not going to go as far as we thought it would!  Adrian reckons we will most likely need at least another tonne ~ I see a lot of shovelling in our future 😉 

The broccoli has been a bit of a disaster ~ I have a lot of vegetable growing research to do over the winter LOL  But there are some florets that look as if they may be harvestable, which is a miracle considering how decimated the plants were by the cabbage white caterpillars!  Still, it's all a learning process and hopefully I will be more successful next year.

The plants I ordered from J.Parkers arrived and have now been put in a "nursery" bed until next spring.  They are supposedly garden-ready ~ which, to be fair, they would have been had we still been living down south ~ but I know from last year's experience that it will be better to let them sit out the winter in a raised bed.  I may also get some windbreak netting to protect them a little.

It's not the best photo, I know, but this pair of erigeron karvinskianus have spent a couple of months growing on in the raised bed and are now very much bigger than when they arrived.  I may plant them in the garden before the winter weather sets in.  I have quite a lot of these sweet little daisies dotted around the borders, and in the alpine bed too, but I can always find room for a couple more 😍 

And finally, I thought you might like to see a photograph of our neighbour's cat who plainly thinks that our garden is his judging by the amount of time he spends out there!  I can't actually remember what his name is but it's General somebody or other, named after a character in a book apparently.  I have to say that thus far he hasn't proved to be a very friendly cat, in fact he has been known to hiss if he thinks we are getting too close ~ I took this photo from the porch! ~ which is a tad rude considering this is our flippin garden LOL

A busy day!

It was all go here yesterday, one of those days when everyone turns up at once!  We had an appointment already booked with SSE to install a smart meter and as luck would have it, the engineer arrived early in the time-slot.  The job had originally been booked for Wednesday of last week, but Adrian got a text with about 40 minutes of that time slot left to say that it was being cancelled due to "operating difficulties" ~ whatever that means 😒  Anyhoo, the job was done yesterday so Adrian can now amuse himself by telling me how much electricity we are using at any given minute of the flippin day ~ hopefully the novelty will wear off soon 😉

No sooner had the SSE engineer got here, than Shaun arrived for our monthly window-cleaning!  And then George and Dylan came along to do a concreting job for us.  They have been really busy catching up with work postponed during the lockdown, but had some free time yesterday so came over to Stromness.  It was good to see the pair of them; they are such nice guys and it's always lovely to catch up.  At one point we had three work vans parked outside the house!  Oh, and we also had a Tesco delivery in the afternoon 😄  

You may recall from this post that this part of the garden had grown pretty wild whilst we were busy creating the kitchen garden lower down.  Adrian worked really hard clearing everything out and for a while we had a big blue tarp there, held in place with bags of the rubble that he had dug out from the raised beds in the back garden.  Dylan popped by on Sunday to take a look at what we needed done, and told us that we could most definitely lose said rubble as a base for the concrete which was a great relief.  Mind you, there will still be a load more of the bloody stuff to get rid of by the time we have finished dismantling the beds in the back garden.  Oh well, we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it!

Ta daa!  Our new patio area 😊  I know that a large area of concrete doesn't look terribly attractive, but we're having to work with what we have as the steps and paths in the front garden are all concrete.  In time the two new sections will hopefully weather down and blend more with what's already there.  I can almost hear your minds ticking away, thinking that the little lip of the wooden retaining wall is an accident waiting to happen, but fear not my friends as I have a cunning plan!  We already have a pair of tall, narrow wooden planters that we haven't actually got round to using yet, so the plan is to place these against that lip to create a barrier.  They won't cover the whole of the space but we also have an old galvanised water tank that came out of the bathroom roof space when the roof was re-tiled, which should fit between the two wooden planters to fill the gap and add that little bit of contrast.

It will be lovely to have a nice space to sit next summer and in the meantime I can have a good think about what to put in those planters 😊  

A walk around my garden

Still catching-up with my recent garden photos 😉  I took a lot of these on a somewhat windy day, so I apologise in advance that they are not as sharp as I would have liked!

This little bellflower (campanula cochlearifolia) is such a pretty flower and has had masses of blooms.  The little red berry on the left has dropped from our neighbour's rowan tree 😊

The trailing plant in the old chimney (chaenorhinum origanifolium Blue Dream ~ I think that's what it is, anyway!) is lovely but was threatening to swamp the other two plants.  I've since moved it down into the border, where it can romp away to it's heart's content 😄 

I'm so glad that I was able to find this holly before it was battered to death by the weeds wildflowers that took over it's border!  It's recovering from the trauma very nicely and makes me smile every time I catch sight of it.

The feverfew was another "rescue" and it too has come on in leaps and bounds since being liberated.  I really like the scent of the leaves and can never resist gently squeezing one for a good sniff when I'm working near it.

The fuchsia was moved from the front wall border and is growing rapidly.  I like it more or less the size it is now ~ methinks a fair bit of annual pruning is forecast for this one otherwise it will take over!

I never really think to take photos from behind the pond area but as you can see, there are plenty of plants here too.

The pond looks very different from this vantage point.  I'm really happy that the slugs seem to be ignoring the hosta ~ perhaps the frogs have kept them under control 😄

You may recall that I planted bellis in an old wheelbarrow last autumn, and moved them and the bulbs out once I'd got this pond border finished.  The bellis have flowered profusely all summer, and this plant has been particularly good.

I really like these sedum Autumn Joy.  They certainly live up to their name as they provide a lovely hit of colour now that summer has waned.

Our pond is only tiny but the purple loosestrife (lythrum virgatum Rosy Gem) doesn't seem to mind.  

My word, creeping jenny is another plant that really lives up to it's name LOL  I have to keep it in check but it has such a sweet little flower that I don't mind at all.

The mahonia is really thriving now that it is in a nice shady spot.

The astilbes have been beautiful, with their fluffy flower plumes.

I can't remember what this geranium is called but it's another plant that has settled well into the shady border.

Mrs Bradshaw is flowering again, even though the neighbouring geranium is encroaching on her little patch of ground!

This is one of the buddleias I had to rescue from the "wildflowers" in the ornamental garden.  I didn't find it's plant label, though, so I can't tell you the variety I'm afraid.  It was covered in butterflies a few weeks back.

And finally, a close-up of New Beginnings ~ isn't she just beautiful 😍

Little words of wisdom

 

A butterfly kind of day

Well, I did say yesterday that I'm very behind with my photo-sharing ~ these were taken a good three weeks back LOL  It was a glorious day, warm and sunny, and to be honest I could have taken gazillions of photos but I was restrained for a change 😉

It was like a convention of red admirals were having a "last hurrah" before autumn came along!  They were particularly interested in the sedum and buddleia plants.  It was wonderful to see so many of these rather lovely butterflies flitting around in the beautiful Orkney sunshine 😍

Catching up

 Wow, I am a bad blogger ~ it's almost a month since I last posted a "proper" post LOL  We're still plodding on in the garden, albeit a tad more slowly now that autumn is upon us, and I am still finding pretty plants to take photos of out there.  I'm so happy with how the borders in the kitchen garden have filled out ~ the plants have really thrived over these past few months.  I just hope that they will all survive the upcoming winter months!

All the roses have bloomed beautifully this year, and still have buds on them.

This little fuchsia has settled in very nicely since I moved it, although I confess that I thought it was going to die on me for a while!

I've been amazed at how well ~ and quickly ~ all the plants I relocated have settled into their new positions.  This potentilla has such delicate little blooms.

I have three of these spiraea Anthony Waterer in various parts of the garden.  It's recently dawned on me that I actually have a fair few pink flowering plants and shrubs, which is a bit of a surprise in a way as my favourite colour is blue!  

These photographs were taken a couple or so weeks back, so the sedums are well into flower now.  This is Autumn Joy.

One of the dwarf buddleia I moved; this is, I think, White Chip.  I really didn't think this was going to make it but after having me worried for a while, it finally decided to live to fight another day as it were LOL

Most of the campanulas have flowered for a second time, despite being moved whilst they were all in bud.  Their leaves looked terrible, all crispy and dead-looking, but most of the buds still opened.  When their flowers had died back I cut the stems down to new leaf shoots.  I'm pretty sure that my gardening techniques would make professional gardeners shudder but hey, it works for me.....most of the time 😉  They have virtually all gone over now but this one was looking lovely a couple of weeks back.

I am so happy with my little alpine bed, the plants have thrived beautifully.  The test, of course, will be the coming winter months.  Not so much the cold but the rain as our winters can be pretty wet (to be fair, our summers can be pretty wet too LOL).  I'm still trying to decide whether or not to top the bed with fine chippings, or just see how the plants cope.  I've got some miniature spring bulbs to put in, so I'll make a decision after I've done that.  

Adrian spotted this gorgeous song thrush and called me over to have a look.  I had to wait a while whilst it was poking about in the undergrowth, but eventually I managed to get a not-very-good photo of it through the dining room window.

This chap, on the other hand, was much more obliging and posed very nicely for quite some time LOL  Like the others, this photograph was taken a few weeks back.  It was a lovely day and we had a gentle stroll down to the harbour in the sunshine 😊

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)