Keeping the colour going.

Summer colour is now fading,

we still have roses and rudbeckia flowering as well as dahlias

and hydrangeas, but the summer flowering plants in the containers are nearly over. The geraniums will keep going for a while yet, until the first frosts so they are now being potted up to go into the greenhouse for over wintering.

 I have been replacing the summer plantings with cyclamens and winter pansy's, four have been done, only another eight to go and that job will be done.

The two pots either side of the wooden planter were made by Simon, they are concrete and weigh a ton.

All the planters have spring bulbs in them and I have increased the amount of anemones. Anemones seem to be very reliable, coming up year after year.

The spring bulbs that I ordered have now arrived,

four hundred and sixty five in total, add on the seventy five anemones waiting to be planted and I realise that I have a lot of planting to do over the next couple of weeks. Each year I say I wont get more bulbs, but then the catalogue arrives, and once again I get tempted. Once these are planted that will be the lot, I have run out of places to plant unless we make another bed, but that would mean encroaching into the vegetable area, so what I have is it!
The swallows are now gathering, ready for their flight back to warmer climes, we are always sorry to see them go, it really does mark the start autumn.
The late season vegetables are now producing well,

lots of cauliflowers, and

the calabrese is doing great, the ones in the photo are not the main heads, they are the side shoots.

This is the first year that we have grown celeriac, well that's not quite true, we did try once before when we lived in Spain, they came to nothing, but these have grown very well, easier than celery which always seems to be badly attacked by slugs, I guess the skins on the celeriac are too tough for slugs to get their teeth into.
Our potato harvest was as bad as we had feared, most of the spuds have been eaten by slugs, next year we are going to try growing them all in containers and one new raised bed. This bed will be sixteen feet by four, with the containers this should, hopefully give us enough potatoes for the year, we know that this year we will have to buy potatoes, a first for us for the last twenty odd years, it will be hard to find a spud that is worth eating, even the imported organic ones leave a lot to be desired, mainly flavour.

At last our front gate has had it's long awaited coat of wood preservative, it looks very nice, and it only took us five years to do it.

Misty, Freddie's sister.