Sit back and enjoy
As the evenings are drawing in I'm sure that I'm not alone in feeling the pressure of trying to get my garden projects completed or at best a point to stop until early next year. Regardless of what needs doing sometimes I do like to just sit back, do nothing, but look around.
I love the rich tapestry of trees, shrubs, foliage, stem colours, shape, form, flowers and fruit. There are lots of fruits still developing on Cotoneasters, Pyracanthas, Sorbus and Hollies for the wildlife. The apples, raspberries and tomatoes are supposed to be for me.
The Parrotia persica, also known as Persian Ironwood, has been steadily turning red for the past few weeks, and behind it there's a beautiful Golden Elm with its rich green foliage that's highlighted with golden yellow, and a weeping Ginko that's already turning a lovely buttery yellow.
The most positive thing about all the rainfall this year is that my plants haven't had to compete against the two mature Poplar trees at the side of the fence; in fact everything looks really well, lush and healthy.
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I've also noticed how my Photinia x fraseri "Red Robin" has hardly dropped any leaves this year or suffered from black spot, which tells me it has always been under watered.
In my front garden the heavy rains kept the bees away from the wild flowers, but in the back garden the cotoneasters were covered with bees buzzing about the tiny creamy flowers, right up to the point of the berries appearing in early summer.
The most concerning thing for me is the lack of butterflies and ladybirds. There were lots of ladybirds early on in the year but I've not seen many since then. At the garden centre they are usually sunbathing on the wood stands and later as it gets colder gathering and huddling up together to keep warm under the tree ties.
My garlic spray didn't keep the slugs off, I'm sure they were laughing at me as they were devouring my precious Hostas, too wet for slug hunting so they grew. Despite that the hostas were the only slug casualties and I still have lots of big slugs.
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