Sharing

Once again I have plenty of nasturtiums to go around. So this wonderful hairy monster (not really it is only about an inch long) is very welcome to munch on some of the seeds.

Pretty weeds

Last year I had mixed successes with my “live and let live” philosophy, letting plants grow that I did not recognise to see if they would produce pretty flowers. This year I have learnt from some of my mistakes (no more deadly nightshade), but luckily some new plants have sprung a surprise.

I moved a tiny fern-like plant that I found at the boundary of our garden to a more prominent place: you never know! To my surprise after our holiday bright blue spikes of flowers appeared, outperforming my expectations and definitely not belonging to a fern. Google assisted in giving this freebee a name: Jacob’s ladder. A perennial which is likely to self-seed and spread further throughout the garden.

Right next to the Jacob’s ladder I filled a gap with a little blue violet. Or so I thought, because covered in pollen by its neighbour proudly stands a little blue lobelia. I love it that the garden keeps amazing me.

Also I might have accidentally introduced a “weed” of my own to our garden. Nasturtiums love our sandy, poor soil and are popping up everywhere, even in the garden path. They are so prolific that I don’t think this garden will ever get rid of them and they will keep brightening up the garden for several years to come.

Indian summer and micro carrots

After the first autumn storm that floored what was left of the sunflowers, the weather turned for the better and we’ve been enjoying fabulous sunny days for the past few weeks. This provided a great opportunity for getting all the spent annuals out of the garden, move some plants around and….guess what do some more hard landscaping! The undergardener still had some plans for more curves and better defined edging. And who am I to oppose, the more flower/veg beds the better!

Removing the sunflowers, which grew remarkably big root clumps, I also came across my experimental carrot planting scheme. When the garden was exploding with plants this summer I still desperately wanted to squeeze some carrots in. So, I planted them in the gaps between the sunflowers. I can’t recommend that method, as they have grown the size of my fingernails in all these months.

It is good to see that we’re not the only ones enjoying the last rays of sunshine. The masses of bumblebees have disappeared (I’d like to say they moved South, although I don’t think they migrate…), but the last bees are hanging on to the few remaining flowers. Preparing for the winter by soaking up as much sunshine and nectar as possible. Perhaps there is sufficient room in our garden, next to the bird box, to hang an insect apartment block where they can crawl into, protected from the weather, so we can enjoy their visits again early next spring.

to weed or not to weed

While I “designed” a planting scheme for the back garden at the beginning of the season, I let the garden at the front of the house run free. With two dahlia bulbs and some zinia seeds planted all the help was welcome, weed or not. Anything that looked pretty or potentially produced flowers was allowed to flourish. One of the results of this experiment was that I had to pull out a lot of highly poisonous, black nightshade. Beginners mistake, will recognise them by their smell next time!

Warned by my accident with the nightshade, I decided to find out about the names (and toxicity) of the other weeds. The euphorbia that was growing in large quantities and I thought looked rather pretty with its lime green leaves, remarkably resembled euphorbia helioscopia, a highly toxic variety.  So far I have failed to identify the exact specie, but I won’t put them in a mixed salad.

Something I was planning on using were the flowers of the “chamomile” plants. However, there is still much to learn on the weed front. Not all white flowers with yellow hearts are chamomile, and you wouldn’t want to be making tea from feverfew flowers.

Luckily there were also some relatively harmless accidents that happened out there. Out of nowhere ridiculous looking peony poppies shot up. And there were a lot of them. I keep checking for the seedpods to go brown so I can collect the seeds and sow them again next year, they just looked so funky.

And after a long cold spring, the two dahlias that I planted in the front garden finally put their heads above ground. They are still making up for lost time and although they do not have a lot of foliage, they do deliver on flowers.