Look I try, goddammit, I try. But sometimes other things get in the way. So here’s a round up of the last quarter – mainly in pictures. I am determined to keep this up, though, However sporadically, because the comparisopns between this and the last two years are telling me something about how the garden works.

So starting in August, though my photo album tells me the moth was largely spent shopping for wedding dresses in Belfast. So few pictures it’s hard to compare this year with others. Let’s call it a score draw.

Tiny pink flowers showing on the mint – have grown mint for years and never noticed it before. Japanese anemones in flower, and flowers starting to appear on the small white aster from the garden museum. Echinops/achillea and fennel combination in the west-facing bed looks great. Cutting back the dead stems of the euphorbia shows that something has planted a sprig of holly in the bed behind the anemones. Three heucheras planted close to the bay to try to stop the cat using that gap as a litter tray. Put a Pennisetum in a pot – (it waited an unconscionably long time to be planted in the ground but seems to have survived). Rescued the red heuchera from being overrun by the loosestrife. moving it to beside the geum, which has had a truly terrible year: not a single flower. I have grown the world’s smallest sunflower.

A big clear out the the pond showed how much the oxygenators had multiplied since a few sprigs were chucked in 2 years ago. Repotted the water lily and the sedge in bigger pots with hessian liners and proper pond compost. Split the red sedge into three smaller chunks and potted them separately, ditto the flag irises. Killed many, many slugs while two toads stayed to watch. Emerged from the process stinking like a bog women, a smell which lingered in the garden for days. Water level is so low after the summer I’m not sure the toads can get out so I have propped up a brick against the edge as an escape bridge.

Into September, though not a photograph was taken.

Lots of berries on the pyracantha. Slugs finally found the hosta, but only a few leaves were nibbled. We had flowers on the sedum though I wish they were taller and more impressive – I may try to restock next year. The cotoneaster started to grow back after it’s savage pruningl but that side bed looks scrappy and needs some thought. There are flowers on the salvia I thought had been killed by slugs, but the plant is being overwhelmed by a self-seeded buddleia which has started growing next to it. I may give up the fight and let the buddleia win – some colour for next year at least. Planted 24 allium bulbs in groups along the west-facing bed, let’s hope next year’s display is better than this.

And finally, October.

Beginning of the month looked like this:

Planted a small sanguisorba in the bed next to the guelder rose. It will die right back but hopefully come up again next year. The acer is now in a big square pot after another wind-related fall cracked its terracotta pot. I hope this will be the last of what have been annual moves. This pot is big enough for it to grow and still be stable in high winds. There are still lots of leaves on it – noted in July last year that the leaves had already started dropping. Have dressed it and the hosta with layers of gravel to deter snails and foxes or squirrels digging, but both have had deep holes dug in them already. Grr. Flowers going strong on the white aster and by the end of the month were starting to appear on the fatsia.

End of the month looked like this:

Back from Italy to a dried-out garden and the pond almost empty after days of temperatures in the 30s. Pelargonium in the pot is flowering as are the nasturtiums. First blooms on the day lilies, but they are small and stunted compared to what they used to be when the original clump was in the opposite bed.

Ch-ch-changes

Re-arranged the tripod holding the rose in an attempt to make it cover more of the trellis. Money is on it falling down in a high wind – the ground is so hard it’s difficult to get the supports in deep enough to be stable, but the rose is responding with new shoots. If I hadn’t been so quick to cut it back when it flowered in previous years maybe I’d have had more roses years ago.

Successes

Hydrangeas are tip top. Sprays of flowers on the nandinas. Valerian has been dead-headed and is getting ready to flower again. The echinops is showing hazy blue flowers and is alive with bees. The lilac has survived being cut back and is putting up new growth, Black-Eyed Susan is flowering well. Fennel is flowering again.

First sign of the flowers on the crocosmia, but they are very small compared with what I remember from previous years. Fuchsia is flowering.

Hmms

A strong gust of wind blew over the acer. The plant is undamaged but the pot is cracked and will need to be replaced. The cotoneaster is looking Miss Havisham-esque –  the moths seem to have done for it. Deciding I want the plant more than the moths, have cut it back down to the stump, new growth was showing before the end of the month, so it’s survived its guests, let’s see if they return.

Weather

Month started blazingly hot, but the weather turned – lots of rain and cooler though still high humidity. The garden has appreciated it.

Ch ch ch changes

More cutting back and tidying up than adding new stuff this month. Cut back the long stems on the forsythia and a lot of browning growth on the cotoneaster revealing lots of starry white flowers on the remaining green growth. What I thought was spiders’ webs on the brown foliage turns out to have probably been a sign of hawthorn webber moths. I am horrified to have inadvertently destroyed a habitat. Let’s hope they can recover. I promise they will be left unpruned from now on.

Put a muehlenbeckia in the frame by the back door. Potted up tarragon, sage and Thai basil in pots for the garden table where they join the rosemary which has survived me and the winter and is growing well in its pot. Planted  nasturtium, sunflower and morning glory seeds as an experiment to see if they can grow this late in the season (reader, they can). Put a Hosta in the low, round red pot which felt like a sacrificial offering to the slugs, but which has, miraculously survived a month unnibbled. Black eyed susan in a pot placed underneath a wigwam – cheat’s approach to adding quick height and colour.

Successes

Valerian looks fantastic and the rusty red colour picks up the heuchera further down the garden. The campion in that corner is getting ready to flower, the honeysuckle is flowerless but growing strongly up its wigwam and into the ceanothus. All the heucheras are flowering well. In the corner of the east facing bed near the patio, the loosestrife is flourishing and the alchemilla is wonderful. The pond continues to be a delight, the water boiling with tadpoles. I have hopes of raising a toad army to take on the slugs. There is a week each May when the towering white bush and the elders next door are flowering at the same time as the pyracantha and the ceanothus in my patch and the garden looks magnificent. (the picture for May 24 captures it, this years was obviously taken in the dark) The achillea has survived its mauling by slugs last year and has grown back, but is a good foot shorter than usual, as is the echoinops.

Hmms

Guelder rose started the month infested with blackfly, though they’d cleared off by the month’s end. Lilac doing the same bending over whippy thing it did last year. Not sure what to do about it. Slugs might not have found the hosta (yet) but they have demolished the flowers on the flag irises in the pond. All the feverfew, which was such a feature of last year’s spring garden has disappeared without trace.

Weather

Tricky. Some hot gorgeous days, some downpours. Temperatures ranging through the teens up to 25 and back again.

I took no photos – all of the pictures here are from late March. Also, I didn’t make many notes (see headline).

From what I did note  it started being cold and stormy in December and kept on being cold well into January – temperatures down around 0 degrees for a couple of weeks, which counts as cold around here. Even so the garden kept growing all winter – the daffodils started coming through before Christmas, there were lots of leaf buds on the guelder rose, the lemon verbena and valerian hung on gamely through the winter and there was growth on the honeysuckle and the Japanese anemones and shoots on the flag irises and water lily in the pond. The white skimmia in the back border has been great (photo doesn’t do it justice) and the forsythia and euphorbia have both given splashes of colour. Finally the toads did what toads do in springtime and the pond filled up with toadspawn towards the end of March

The lily of the valley was late coming through – there are photos from last April of them in full leaf and at time of writing (mid -April – see title) they are only just about visible above the ground.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Moved the Alchemilla from the back border, where it’s not done much this season and is covered with sooty stains from the sticky lime, to the bed in front of the fatsia where it can be eaten by slugs. Survival of the fittest (actually it looks as though it’s thriving)

Moved a couple of self-seeded grasses from the side of the pond to the east facing bed in front of the cordyline. They seem to be able to grow anywhere so maybe they can fill in the gaps in that bed.

Ten daffodil bulbs planted in the back bed in front of the hydrangea; 10 more in the west facing bed in front of the fatsia and a final 10 in a pot for the patio steps. Cleared weeds and put down layer of straw mulch to the bare earth in the back, east and west-facing beds.

Pulled up the teasel, pinks and Japanese anemone in the bed between the echinops and the bay. Planted the japonica from the pot on the steps to that bed in the hope it will brighten up that spot and cope with the shade from the thuggish bay tree. Planted a replacement, smaller japonica in the pot so there will still be something green to see from the kitchen this winter.

Moved the wigwam supporting the honeysuckle slightly to the right to get out of the deep shade of the ceanothus. Planted cornflower seeds int the bare earth around the ceanothus and down towards the cordyline, digging up the Verbascum in the process. An accident but not a major one, it hasn’t performed particularly well since it was planted.

Successes

Buds/flowers still coming on the rose, flowers on the sedums. Took all the dead wood out of the hebe a while ago and notice that the remainder is putting on lots of green growth.

Hmmms

Pulled up the tomato plants. Not a great crop this year – loads of green tomatoes which didn’t ripen and the ones that did at the top of each bunch mostly split before the lower ones were red. Not enough heat this year? Too much water?

Weather

Weather this month has been patchy – some great late summer sunshine, but also some absolutely torrential rain. Pond is close to overflowing, the sedge floated off its shelf and had to be temporarily placed on the shallower shelf at the other end. There is apparently a national shortage of butterflies and wasps which couldn’t cope with the long, cool, wet spring. End of days.

The image at the top shows the garden in sunshine. Really the most common view of the garden this year has been through the back door, watching the rain bouncing off the table.