Days are becoming shorter and colours more sombre. Nearly two months of steady rain have also contributed to the lessening of light where it seems each day is just one premature, sustained gloaming. Semi-evergreen penstemon with their claret-coloured blooms are still going as they have been since early summer therefore making themselves especially valuable for smaller gardens like ours where every plant must work harder and longer in providing visual interest regardless what season. In larger gardens, the gaps resulting from short-lived displays don't dominate as much because there's always something of interest somewhere. Root veggies, planted just six to eight weeks ago, are getting closer to harvest. Their lush foliage is a welcomed contrast to withered and falling leaves, but I must say I enjoy the satisfying crunch of dead leaves underfoot!
Violet turnips are gleaming like huge amethysts.
Carrots need another month to become mature.
But until then, the small, tender carrots which are thinned out to allow others to grow larger will have to do. And they do very well indeed when they are briefly simmered in butter and a bit of water. The water evaporates leaving the carrots with the most scrumptious glaze made by the butter and the sugar naturally occurring in these garden-fresh baby carrots.
The strawberry bed has put out many runners; twelve of them have been potted up in a recycled shallow container. The rest of the runners have been clipped and put on the compost so as not to choke the original plants' growth. Strawberry plants become less productive with each passing year, necessitating propagation every season. This coming spring, these runners will have developed enough roots to be transplanted into a bed which haven't had any strawberries planted for several years as strawberries are disease-prone and must be rotated. In early summer, four-year, hardly productive plants will be removed after harvest. As the bed empties through time, other crops are planted Strawberries are worth all the trouble as our freezer can attest: container after container of slightly sugared, delectable berries waiting to be put into smoothies, cobblers, and more simply, served in their own syrup and dressed with vanilla-flavoured whipped cream.
Autumn is an excellent time for planting new arrivals and relocating existing ones. Sixteen laurel plants which came from cuttings of established laurels on our property were transplanted from their three-year-old nursery bed. I did one most days. The steady rainfall kept the soil at the right moisture level throughout the three-week period so not only the holes could be spaded easily but also sieved compost from our pile could be incorporated readily with the dug-up earth. The newbies will lengthen the existing hedge to completely flank the back garden's eastern boundary. The splendid but self-seeded and rather large rose of Sharon which has pressed itself against the fence presented a problem but my solution so far seems to be working. After digging a few trial holes, I could see no competing roots. I did give the bush's expansive branches a good pruning so I could work around it, digging and transplanting. The 'hedglings' are positioned around ninety centimetres (three feet) from the wire fence so as to allow an alley where I can go to clip and trim behind the hedge.
Across the back garden, along the opposite boundary fence, the five Leyland cypress trees which were planted last autumn, mostly developed roots this season, reserving energy so they can grow an astonishing ninety centimetres (three feet) next year. They will fill in the space left by the much slower-growing ivy which has covered the majority of that fence and all of a cement wall. As with many serendipitous pairings, as the ivy became more and more of a background for the red rose already planted there I slowly realised that one of the most spectacular colour combos is a floriferous cloud of red roses being framed by a tall expanse of stalwart, dark-green ivy. The cypress will elaborate further on that theme.
The trees grew only thirty centimetres (one foot) this summer. But once they get going, they need at least four trims per year or else there will be a dark, brooding forest on that side! Therefore I use them very sparingly as they gallop away with growth before you can locate your shears. Since neighbours seldom appreciate being shrouded in gloom and gigantic trees are not able to be felled with clippers, it is not uncommon for these lovely trees to be the basis for legal disputes.
The potted bougainvillea has started to present their true flowers, tiny white blooms in the centres of gorgeous crimson sepals. That cheery yellow around the pot's base is provided by perennial snapdragons which have self-sowed in the cracked patio and have decided to perform a second show after their early summer debut.
Giant lavender which has been blooming since August is holding onto some of its flowers. A peony's burnished foliage complements the bluish spikes.
À la prochaine!
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Strawberry Cobbler
There's a paradoxical edge in the air. The pervasive mellowness of late-summer laziness when much already has been harvested, specifically rhubarb, asparagus, peas, potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, is brushing against the beginning bustle of sowing for autumnal crops such as beets, carrots, kale, and tansy along with picking plus preserving peaches, plums, the second flush of raspberries, and figs. Watering and mowing chores are being replaced by weeding and clipping hedges such as ivy, laurel, and the wild area's brambles. Ivy covering walls/fences and pergola pillars gets about four trimmings per year chez nous. This one will be the last until late winter/early spring. When the cutting back is vigorous, dead leaves tucked deep into the vines will show. Through time they will flutter down on their own accord or be covered with new growth. This final trim was done a little too late as clusters of berries which sustain starlings through winter already had started developing so though some unfortunately got the axe, I made sure the ones up high were spared as on the ivy-covered wall in the below photo's bottom left-hand corner.
But the bustle is not exactly a bustle. Even it is pervaded with a sense if not exactly of laziness, then one of satiety with the promise of more to come. This halo of contentment hovering over our little city plot is reminiscent of the much larger one that floated over a farming community we visited about ten years ago south of Grenoble. In exchange of our being custodians for a century-old country property while their owners went abroad we got to spend two weeks during late August in an active agricultural setting. The large house more in shambles than not is referred to on local maps as Le Chateau hence at one point in our stay a pair of hikers stared with confused disappointment over the chain-barred dirt road entrance at the rather dilapidated structure in process of being renovated. We made sure the horses got their daily water and the orchard's apples got picked and stored. As we hiked around fields dotted with bales of hay and walked through narrow village streets where workers were making sure roofs were in good repair for the coming winter, this dual sense of activity laced with satisfied fulfilment was everywhere.
At the moment in our urban garden, there's a bumper crop of peaches! As I pick up the fragrant ones volunteering easy harvesting by their dropping to the ground, I hear neighbours' chickens clucking, clucking, clucking along, in their own feathery universe, bringing memories of our stay in that farming village where the sounds of domesticated animals were everywhere, from horses to cows, and of course chickens.
The fig harvest looks to be a record breaker also.
Beets still have a ways to go in developing their roots, but a few leaves here and there have been plucked to go into minestrone.
It's a common saying among gardeners that the best crop yield often is found on the compost heap. Ours at present is covered with squash and tomato plants.
The front garden's lavender, abelia, purple plum tree, and potted heather are bathed in flitting shadows cast by the much taller and still fully leaved cherry plum and box elder trees. Within a couple of months the shadowy dance will become more subdued once those trees start to shed their leaves.
Companions to the heather are a solar lamp and floppy, chartreuse echeveria. The succulent will put out welcomed, cheery, bright-yellow blooms in late winter.
Lavender cradles pink, low-growing dahlias.
It will get a clipping after flowering.
Deadheading regularly will keep dahlias blooming right into autumn like these lovely, single, red ones set in a dramatic background of yucca with its sword-shaped leaves.
À la prochaine!
It's lovely to have home-grown goodies in the freezer. Here's an ample portion of rhubarb crumble (my recipe) with strawberries fresh from the patch drenched in cream; all which goes well with coffee.
The two beds of peas have been harvested/shelled with most of them parboiled and frozen. The spent plants have been ripped up, put on the compost, and soon the beds will be prepared for carrot and beet sowings. Yup, you are seeing right, that's two peas in a pod!
Despite the weather being more stormy than not, I took the shelling project outside under the pergola.
Partly curious, partly seeking shelter, Eli the Cat jumped up on the table to sniff and inspect more closely.
The pink flowers on the left are penstemon while those feathery, tall plants on the right are asparagus. Many young shoots were harvested back in March, but some were left to develop into what I consider to be a summer hedge. A hedge until . . .
. . . the storm. Their height has been reduced sharply and a good number have snapped at the base of the plant. I am trying to rehabilitate the ones remaining by freeing those trapped under the dead stalks and mounding the soil around them so they have a chance of resuming an upright position. Most importantly, regardless of trying to reclaim a hedge effect, the focus is to keep them alive because without fading autumnal foliage, the roots will not receive required nourishment, threatening the next season's crop.
However, the penstemon so far has weathered the storm perfectly.
The lavender in the front garden is blooming. Bees love it and there are a few in the photo below!
I love to catch a glimpse of lavender haze through other bushes, in this case, through the graceful, mahogany-branched, airy-leaved abelia also beloved by bees.
I have been trying to order this deep-mauve osteospermum for a couple of seasons from my online nursery but they sell-out this item before I can order. Not this time! They will bloom all the way through October/November.
À la prochaine!
The potager is humming along, revving up its growth rate to take on the summer push which will lead into late summer/autumnal harvesting: peas, potatoes, green beans, peaches, figs, and blackberries to name a few.
The old pear tree festooned with golden trumpet vine which borders the ivy-covered pergola marks the boundary between the back and west gardens. That soft-pink cloud off in the distance is the front garden's deutzia.
On the right of the back garden's main path is the pergola and a potted bougainvillea on an upturned planter. Before its lofty positioning, it was on the open patio across the path, basking in the sun and getting drenched in the rain. The sun part was fine, but being soaked frequently wasn't, at least not for abundant blooming. Last summer, after decorating the beginning of the path with two flanking potted plants, one being the bougainvillea, I noticed it put out many more flowers than usual even though it received less sun. After a little research I found out why. It needs drought stress in order to bloom. Being under the pergola protected it from rains. Presently, it is watered only when the top four inches of potting mix is dry.
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Its companion this season will be potted Thunbergia alata (Black-eyed Susan vine) which will as it grows be trained upon tuteurs. There were some dusty dried seedpod decorated sticks stuck in the wood cabinet under the indoors barbecue since moving here about ten years ago, and I finally found an use for them! The anticipated effect will be both height and draping over its pedestal. The pot in front which also contains the vine, but has a purple flowering ivy geranium to provide contrasting colour to the yellow-blooming black-eyed Susan, will go out to the front steps. The pot in front of that, yup, you guessed it, also filled with Thungbergia will be put on the balcony overlooking the front garden. The many Thunbergia along with trailing blue lobelia seedlings were started indoors late winter. The lobelia will graced the four, small casement window sills on the west side of the house, a basket under the pergola, and a huge pot on the shady part of the balcony. Here's hoping my grand plan works (historically they tend not to)! Since a path that goes nowhere, in this case, smack right against an unattractive back wall, begs for something to catch your eye, I plonked a garden chair at the path's end. In the future, a potted camellia and a mirror instead? At present, I love sitting in the chair, from which a very different perspective of the garden is to be had.
It is my wont to buy plants from online nurseries which often have much younger and less expensive plants than at the local garden centres. Greater choice, also. So where do these baby plants go when they first arrive as usually they are too small to make visual impact? In nursery beds of course. This year-and-half-old bed has penstenmon, moss pink, teucrium, a mum, three Mikado daylilies, and six laurels that were taken as cuttings from the existing hedge. They will be put in their permanent locations either this early autumn or next spring depending on their growth this season and the state of my muscle strength.
The front garden (looking towards a neighbour) is a pleasing jumble of drooping red weigela, overflowing pink deutzia, and exuberant lavender.
Bloom cuddle!
Peonies look good near bearded iris foliage and lavender.
If using for culinary and cosmetic purposes, it is best to harvest lavender when still in bud form.
Right by the driveway gate are pots of shade-loving plants as the terracotta roofing tile framed bed filled with our own wood chips luxuriates under cherry plum and box elder trees: three heucheras (tiramisu, Georgia peach, paprika), polystichum sword fern, tuberous begonia, hellebore, and the latest but not least, the centrepiece gardenia.
Gardenias and I go a ways back, first in California where it hardly bloomed because the soil was too alkaline but still made me fall in love with its beauty, then another specimen on our Grenoble tenth floor balcony, where it flourished for a decade while keeping me company and regaled me with its heady fragrance during long hours of day trading in a tiny room, and finally when arriving here, it was put in the ground and soon after perished in the cold. If ever a plant could be called a friend, that gardenia would have fit the bill. This one's container was filled with acid potting mix and will spend the winter in the sous-sol, thank you very much.
À la prochaine!
In about a week, it will be officially summer. There has been consistent rains for the last month which has delayed garden tasks that would have been best done before June such as sowing annual flowers like varied-coloured, long-term-flowering cosmos and zinnias; the last of the edible crops, graceful, stylish Tuscan kale with its smoky green-black leaves; fast-growing cover crops like mustard and tansy to revive the completely harvested pea beds (they provided about 5 litres of pods!). Hopefully, if we can believe the forecast, the next week will be sunny and the soggy soil should be workable fairly soon so those postponed tasks can be eventually completed. Regardless, the garden is humming along, with beloved-by-the bees, aromatic lavender, punchy poppies that reseed themselves through the years, and haughty Queen Elizabeth roses.
The potato variety, Daifla, flowers profusely. (That's the raspberry patch in the background, and if you look closely you will see the berries.) Potato blooms signify that the tubers are being formed. In about two months, when the haulms (the growth above ground) have wilted yellow, it will be time to harvest.
The dark green of ivy makes a good backdrop for rhubarb and potatoes. In the upper left, a drooping branch of a Mirabelle plum tree can be seen with its immature fruit looking like green olives. When ripe, they will be a glorious gold flushed with red.
Most of our potato blooms are pure white but there are a few which are tinted mauve. An interesting aside is that Marie Antoinette, a passionate lover of flowers, was known to have tucked some potato blossoms in her hair during the time Antoine Parmentier was trying to convince the movers and shakers that the New World upstart wasn't poisonous.
Every other day, there's enough raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries to fill up the dessert bowl. Since blueberries must have acid soil to flourish, our bush is grown in a pot with the desired potting mix.
The rambunctious wild area which harbours lizards, hedgehogs, birds, and insects is festooned with bramble blossoms. The middle bed is filled with bushy Roma tomato plants and in front of them are beets which since have seen the trusty cultivator tool which has cleared away the prolific clover.
During a month these well-established daylilies put out many blooms, each lasting just a day. There are cultivars which are everblooming from early summer to autumn which will soon find a place in our garden.
David Austin climbing rose, Falstaff, is beginning a second round of flowering.
In the front garden, yet more lavender and also Shasta daisies are just starting to bloom. The other day, our neighbour across the street told me that she loves seeing, as does her visitors, the small green haven in front of our home. After all this time, it is known by a few that je jardine comme une folle (I garden like a madwoman). The English lavender is putting on the show right now while the late-blooming French lavender waits to take the spotlight in about a month.
From the vantage point of a reclining, cushy chair under the pergola, this is what I get to see: foliage of mums, rose of Sharon, calla lilies, ivy, two enormous, neighbouring spruce trees, and the imperious blooms of a Queen Elizabeth rose. All of this exuberant growth exists in an urban space. Though I can hear the distant din of traffic, I pretend that it's the sound of ocean waves.
À la prochaine!
