The month I’ve spent some time pottering about the garden, and mostly cutting the lavender bushes - there are a lot!
My houseplants needed some attention and it was good to spend some time separating and potting on my promiscuous aloe vera - as you can see it yielded a good few plants. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but even so. I’d also taken some cuttings from my Maranta leuconeura or prayer plant - that’s the one with the colourful striped leaves. The cuttings rooted well in water and so with the roots developed I plunged them in soil, after first dusting in rooting powder for good measure.
They’re all still doing well, so that’s good - though I do need to find new homes for at least some of them as I’m not sure I need quite this many - I planned to put some on our doorstep in good weather, and then forgot in the recent warm weather, so I’ll try again. I’m thinking as long as it’s not absolutely torrid weather they’ll be ok, and should go, though we don’t get a lot of foot traffic past our door!
Elsewhere in the garden the potted border has coped with the continued mixed weather mostly well. I’ve a couple of plants with some dieback, and one of the trees in the external border is looking a bit crispy. Despite the amount of rain we’ve had recently during dry spells we’ve been dumping water on it to try and help it, though I’m not sure it’s really helping very much. We’ll have to keep an eye on it, and hope it improves rather than worsens.
The pots have fared better nestled amongst plants in the border, which is what I hoped. Some I will plant in the ground where we have some empty spots where the previous planting had failed.
As I’ve already mentioned it’s been a month of cutting our lavender bushes - from memory I think there’s at least seven of them, so it’s taken quite a while. But they look better for it, and another bonus is that our garden waste bin has smelt divine. Next year I hope to cut some of the flowers and dry them, but that’s for next year.
We’ve spent some time trying to get more organised in the garage, or at least get some of the tools organised after getting fed up of stepping over or walking around them as they lay on the floor. The result is probably the most organised our tools have ever been, I’m hopeful they’ll stay this way too!
The grasses in the outside border (and by outside I mean outside our wall) have also started to do their thing - this one looks especially fluffy! Others appear to be shedding grasses, and I vaguely remember seeing Monty Don ‘comb’ his hands through grasses to thin them, so I’ve been doing that with mixed results. I need to look up how to care for them properly though!
Also in the outside border is this wonderful berry-laden pyracantha, when I took this picture the berries were ripening and the yellow berries are now the brightest orange. It’s a favourite plant of mine, and I’m so glad we have one here - especially as it saves us buying one as I didn’t bring any of these from London.
It’s been another month full of the elements, luckily some warm weather as well as rain and wind. I’m always pleased to capture raindrops on leaves, and those on this alchemilla is no different. The raindrops just glisten and just make me smile. The wind makes me smile less so, twice now our large parasol has blown over despite the base being filled with water. Needless to say the parasol part was safely stored in the garage ahead of the severe wind warning ahead of Storm Agnes.
We continue to have mushrooms growing in our lawn, we think it’s a thing with relatively newly laid grass and it looks as if our neighbours also have them. They appear randomly across the grass rather than in a single spot. At the moment they’re more annoying than an issue, but we’ll see how it goes, and see if there’s anything we should do to prevent them reappearing.
October is already here, and the weather is already not always autumnal - but surely autumn must be just around the corner now?