Awful weather - typical Brits talk

YoungBlueEyes

Such nice photos I hope my grasses look like those Farway, they're ....elegant...? I bet they make a nice swishy sound as the breeze catches them. And I like your cobweb too. Very autumnal. Are all those things on the display yours Dusty? I was gonna say thing in vases but I don't think I see a vase among them! Nice watering can btw  

I can't bring to mind what's in my hanging basket either. I think they're only common and they are fragile so I don't know how long I'll get out of them. But being at the front (sunny) and out of the reach of slugs/snails I hope they'll be ok for a wee while. :fingerscrossed: If they die on me I'm hearing good things about pansies....

I'm not a flower-arranger either. The only trick I have, and I do this every time, is when you're putting flowers in a vase you should always have a least 2 types of flowers and one of those should white and the whites should be taller than everything else. I can't remember exactly where I got that from - poss an Ikebana book - but it's what they do over on that side of the world. The white is for Mount Fuji. That's it, that's all I've got. I've got carnations and baby's breath now, but the other week I had roses and white carnations. Does seem to work - it looks 'right' with practically no effort. 

So what's up with your lavender 2p? Will the middle bit bring itself round or will it want replacing? I know what you mean about changing ideas... that's why I've said I'm lashing something together from my 3 new (to me) books. My brain can't cope with endless choices cos I always want the next thing ha haa! 

Now that I've filled my phone with weather apps I've decided to just go with the forecast off of CountryFile. So, nice today and tomorrow (washer's on) but desperate Wednesday, then nice again. Windy but not cold. Even nicer and warmer at the weekend. Remember the days when we used to get by on that amount of info? And we coped fine so I'm regressing!

Farway

Sunny start, and seems OK until Wednesday when there is Yellow rain forecast

Managed to plant out my couple of foxgloves & six Cloth of Gold, all from seed this year. 

The rain should water them in, I do find planting harder these days with lack of bend & puff, no more carefully prepared holes for me, just a quick scrape and in it has to go regardless.

If I were younger, I think my garden revamp, apart from different fruit trees, would also include raised beds

twopenny said:

Wonderful photos, a joy to the heart in my dark and damp world.

Farway I'm thinking you recovered well from your bug? Running down to the volunteer garden and such.

Yes, thanks, just left with a bit of a cough but nothing to warrant any medicines or suchlike, if alcohol did not interfere with my prescription meds I expect a hot toddy would've helped

YoungBlueEyes said:

Such nice photos I hope my grasses look like those Farway, they're ....elegant...? I bet they make a nice swishy sound as the breeze catches them. And I like your cobweb too. Very autumnal.

Those pampas are eye catching, and a nice change from the giants, they are in a nice spot in Dr's car park but could be only me who notices
Flower arranging, I'm another bung in vase type, but DGD is covering it as part of her apprenticeship, very varied I must say, one day it's digging up spuds, then flower arranging for hotel displays, then back to harvesting beetroot.

Final flourish for the day, this photos was entirely serendipitous, I was looking out the window and noticed the sun was shining through my Durban canna and lighting it up, stained-glass window style, sort of Canna Henge, at Autumn Equinox the sun's rays strike my canna leaf

Still no flowers on it BTW

Dustyevsky

AWMoT  (Absent without MoT) this morning. A very early arrival time was advised by garage. This is Devon, so I made a specially early start to compensate for tractors and the milk lorry, only to meet almost no one. I wasn't even  held up at the level crossing where guards do some strange exchange process with tokens that's actually written into that railway's laws. It ensures there can't be an up train and a down train travelling on the same bit of track, so quite sensible.  

So, on arrival, I was invited inside to read the paper, because they weren't open! Formal booking-in happened on time, but that wasn't when the relevant mechanic was due to work his dark arts on the plug in computer thingy...... He would be along, 'dreckly.' Anyway, after reading several months' worth of the village magazine, the spell was complete, the offensive red light was extinguished and away we went, only £25 lighter. Apparently, there is nothing amiss with the safety system, but when we swapped the battery, some kind of extra resistance caused a ripple in the force and sensors picked it up...or something like that. All very Star Wars!

It's been a lovely day here with sunshine and light breezes, so it was a great afternoon to attach the sliding door rails to the polytunnel framework. They have to be just-so, and trying to be accurate in a strong wind  never seems to work out. We shall need the doors soon; it was like a wind tunnel in there yesterday!

No flowers on your 'Durban' Farway? As we've had Star Wars, I'll remind you of that other intergalactic saga, where a certain engineer with a Scottish accent used to remind his boss, “Ye canna change the laws of physics, Captain!” I guess it's the same with the laws of  nature, and it hasn't been the most sub-tropical of years in the UK.

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

 Are all those things on the display yours Dusty? I was gonna say thing in vases but I don't think I see a vase among them! Nice watering can btw  
Now that I've filled my phone with weather apps I've decided to just go with the forecast off of CountryFile.

The displays in the autumnal picture I posted are from a competitive arrangement challenge, and it looks as if that year vases were not allowed, so other containers were employed. I don't think any of them were by Mrs Dusty, but I agree, that brass watering can is a fine thing, so long as it's not me polishing it!
The farmer we work with always goes by Country File. It seems to work....most of the time.

twopenny

Managed to pressure wash the path from bathroom debris and put the beans back up again. Not sure either was worth it.

Bluey, the Hidcote lavender was my first little hedge 4.5yrs ago planted in mid winter after moving.

One got beaten about by the paving guys but it's coming good.

Then I added some scraggy ones which were rescues or bits stuck in the ground. They didn't fare well with the baking and soaking but also are coming good with some tender care.

I got a surprise the other day and saw this

It's one of the £2 clematis I put in. Shouldn't be blooming now but it has 4 more buds as well.

That's what I like about random gardening. You get a little surprise cheer every now and again when you least expect it.

YoungBlueEyes

Love your Canna Henge Farway, such pretty stripes. It's maybe got no strength left in it to produce a flower after giving you that leaf! 

Ooh I like the colour of your clematis 2p, so is it not a winter one and just confused...? Is that your bathroom finished now is it? 

I've relented and checked the forecasts for today. Ventusky and the drunkards reckon a big heavy downpour will blow across us at about 10 then it'll be nice all day, but the BBC and sobers and the other one have only given a small % chance of rain mid aft. Hmmm. I've another wash to get on so are the drunkards still on their roll? Are they more likely to be right when Ventusky says the same thing? 

@ArbitraryRandom - a bit more info for your garden design project. I was tootling about yesterday in my bare feet and the slabs I told you about are cold. Not just a bit cooler than the grass and concrete, but properly cold. I had to put slippers on just to sit on the patio with a coffee  

Farway

Today's weather is TBA, sunny start but gloomy now and Ventusky has rain very close by, at least it will water the plants I put in yesterday. I like the webcams attached just to see what I'm missing

Nice cheerful clematis there 2P, does it have a name tag or are the £2 ones unnamed?

I must admit I was tempted by some clematis when I was out pansy shopping in Morries, my previous one having suddenly taken a hankering for the fiords of home

I may well get one next time I see one around

All the talk of lavender has set the brain cogs whirring, I'm thinking about the volunteer Memorial patch, the soil is so poor & dry the roses struggle, but maybe underplant with lavender?

I've seen this done very successfully at Mottisfont Abbey walled garden. I will have to chat with the other volunteers first, but I reckon it could be a nice low feature at the front & near the main road passers-by

One for pondering over winter?

Today's pic is one of my dahlias from seed, the orange one, with a visiting hover fly that stayed put for once

YoungBlueEyes

If you’re thinking of lavender, I’ve got some from Lidl and B+M and the Lidl ones are far healthier. Bought about the same time, sat in the same conditions (on my little garden table, where it’s either sunny or rainy or nothingy). 2 big B+M’s cost the same as 3 wee Lidl’s 

I can’t remember what the other 2 things are but they like the same conditions as the lavender so I hump my table round the garden so they all get the sun. They seem happy enough  

twopenny

Those small ones look like Hidcote. Good buy.
The ones behind, ones with green cut the green back by half and hope they send out new shoots further down but they are a bit lanky.
The big one seems to have dead wood on one side. Scrape the bark gently to see if there is green underneath. If there is prune back to the green bit and keep your fingers crossed.
The blue one is Campanula - can spread like wildfire,or not at all. Difficult to get going from a pot.
The other one, who knows? If it survives we'll have another go.

The £2 clematis did have a name. But the only other one that I tried to grow that was paid for in gold bullion, then died I wasn't hopeful for these.
But they've all grown and thrived. I must have 8or so. Dark red, dark purple, white with purple stripes....bunged in the back of the border they scramble through other climbers and pop some flowers on and off through the summer.
I did have plans for how they would grow but they had different plans. Fair enough.

I'll post my front garden with the campanula and lavender tomorrow. 
The campanula has gone wild...That's what everyone loved, not my carefully curated bits!

Some sun, odd smattering of rain and cloud. Nice and warm though.
No gardening done. Just had a fun day.

YoungBlueEyes

Campanula, that's what it is, now you've said that I remember it. Thanks 2p The Oracle has some in a huge old stone pot by her front door and it looks well. I also asked her about nut and fruit trees - good and bad news. Good news is there's plenty a few miles away in the public parks they created when they were throwing up council estates. Bad news is nobody with in any sense in their head would go to those parks They've got them all down there she said, and the parks were really beautiful. So I might have to plant my own... how long do these things take to grow?   I like the sound of your clematis collection, they must be some sight if they all flower together eh  

The big lavender both have/had dead bits. It's not a very good photo now I look at it on here. One didn't want to give up it's dead looking stalks so I left it and now it's got more leaves round the base. The one on the left gives up it's dead easily but other than a couple of tall stalks I think it might be a goner. A bit of breeze can take them stalks out. Ah well. Now I've got a name for the little ones I can research them properly and see if they'd be happy out the front with my cyclamen (which are starting to look a bit unhealthy!) I don't know if they'd get too big there though. It's only a narrow strip and I don't want them getting so big I have trouble getting my car in.

That's a beautiful creamy shade of orange Farway. Are dahlias edible? If ever there was a flower that would taste like apricot....  I took a pic of flowers in someone's front garden the other night cos I thought they looked like little ball dahlias. Quick point and click so it's not a great photo but they were lovely looking in real life. Pic in a min.

Well the storm yesterday was an hour of rain, quite heavy in the middle but hardly a storm. Did you southerners get it worse? Desperate winds tonight apparently but it'll not start 'til late evening and mostly be overnight so I might get gardening today. Mind all I really seem to do is weeding... *sigh*