It will not always be summer; build barns. The potting shed goes on...

[echt]

Please ignore my first, illiterate thread. I'll try again.

I hope this quotation from Hesiod captures the moment of movement from high summer to the splendours of harvest and the planing for the new year.

:o

Just clambering back onto the thread.

We've had a lot of rain here today. My best dahlia is about to flower (which is good) and my authentic German gnome is disintegrating (which is bad).

Hello Maud! Hope things are ok.

Well done for chopping back your Buddleia FP.

Your Gravetye pics are wonderful, Searabbit. It's such a lovely place.

It was our village horticultural show on Sunday. I won one first, three seconds and a third. The dc got prizes for their sunflowers and their seed pictures. There were very few entries in the Children's classes. There must be something we can do to get more kids entering. I'm going to trundle along to the AGM in November and get involved.

Things are grim, Rhubarb, but thank you for the kind thought.

Well done on your prize haul. We also struggle to get children to enter our shows in any numbers - most of our regulars, including DD, have graduated to the adult classes. I have tried in the past to enlist the Brownies - could you promote the shows to the pre-school and local schools?

Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that.

The plan is to badger school/preschool/toddler group, yes. There is much that could be done - or at least attempted. I know a number of parents who could/should have organised their kids, and that's just in my immediate circle. There is potential to turn this around.

Maud.

I'm still waiting for my chrysanthemums plus dahlia cuttings to flower. I'm a bit behind with thread again, life still somewhat hectic.

Thinking of you and your family Maud

maud

Thank you for the flowers and kind thoughts, everyone.

For anyone who, like me, subscribes to Margery Fish's dictum of if in doubt, plant a geranium, van Meuwen are currently offering five different plug plants including Rozanne for a fiver. Let me know if you'd like the code.

Ooh yes please Maud.

I am sorry to hear about your difficult times.

Thanks, SeaRabbit (what is the origin of that name, by the way?). You're very kind. I'll PM you the code tomorrow.

Thanks Maud!

The source of the name was BabySeaRabbit - when he was going through his mad keen on animals phase. We watched a programme about sea otters (so cute, lying on their backs in the sea cracking shell fish open on their tummy), and he decided there are also such things as sea rabbits, and he was one, and i was Mummy SeaRabbit. He denies it now of course...

(Just googled sea otter images. Overdosed on cute.)

Ha ha Searabbit! Had a look at the collection and if I have the right one it has geranium elke in. That has looked lovely in my garden this summer. Rozanne is still flowering and one pot has made a fair few new plants.

searabbit that's a lovely story.

Some good offers on the secret gardening club. - brunnera, acanthus hungaricus and bergenia. I've yet to buy anything but only so long before I cave!

shop.secretgardeningclub.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/3-x-liriope-amethyst-9cm-pots

That is indeed a great story.

This may be the year I relent about bergenia. I've always had a Thing about the coarse leathery leaves and that knickerish shade of pink that the common or garden variety displays, but if that offer includes some of the dark pink varieties I may be tempted!

It's bergenia rotblum apparently red flowers although they look pink to me. £3.99 for 3 plants including delivery. It's a really brilliant site, you have to subscribe to their emails and then they send weekly offers.

Go on maud

Actually I'm not keen on Bergenia either. NDN grew it when I was a child and discovered a dead cat in it. I can't look at without remembering the poor kitty.

for Maud and everyone else having a rotten time.

at geoff - that's enough to traumatise anyone for life.

I do like the reddish bergenias. They are a cut above the green ones. Wish I'd gone for them instead.

I wish to have a completely unreasonable rant about the fact that I am sitting here watching my neighbours concrete over their lovely 80ft back garden. A big truck came this morning and dumped tonnes of cement and now there are people making prints in it to look like bricks. They don't look like bricks, though. It looks like someone drew lines in concrete to make pretend bricks.

I realise it is NOT my garden and their tastes are NOT my tastes and we are all different and I should just mind my own business and get on with my weeding and that I am being completely and utterly unreasonable BUT I STILL WANT TO CRY ABOUT ALL THAT LOVELY SOIL THAT IS NOW UNDER CONCRETE.

Oh holly no ,that sounds awful ,beyond awful .And bad for drainage and oxygen and stuff .

And for the money spent think what could have been done .

That would really upset me ....

Not an unreasonable rant at all holly

I feel genuinely sad about it even though I can't actually see the damn back garden from my house. It's not any aesthetic concern - my sensibilities in said area are robust - it's just... sad to see someone not enjoying what could be a lovely green space.

I think at the bottom of this is probably my refusal to admit the truth that some people do not really like plants and flowers!! Which is deeply unreasonable of me. But it is really visceral - when I saw what they were doing I had this insane impulse to go streaking across the road in my nightie and mount a mini-Swampy style protest. Then I realised that this could probably get me arrested on several counts, as well as making those neighbours very cross. But it was a real desire for a second!

cries a little

. Why do people do this? Why? Why? A good friend of mine paved over her entire back garden with red and white concrete tiles, like a chequer board. I can't look at it. When I visit I have to avert my gaze from the kitchen window. It nearly destroyed our friendship.

I'll join you both in weeping over concrete gardens. Around here, it tends to be front gardens that are concreted over to create off street parking. It really pains me that, even in gardens that are big enough to accommodate both a parking space and some planting, people go for wall to wall hard surfaces with nary a plant.

Arrrgh how awful Holly. Awful. And your friend rhubarb. How can they do it?

It's going to have an impact on you too holly I would think, as when it rains 1/2 of the water is going to have to go on your garden, (unless it goes into their foundations...) I wonder if they should have had planning permission to do it. There was a thread a while ago about someone concreting over their front, and people muttered about planning permission

Dcat just brought in an enormous moth. I've looked it up and I think it was a Convolvulus hawk moth, which appear in autumn and feed on Nicotiana flowers - which grow alongside the patio. She was beside herself with excitement and growled at me when I went to see what the commotion was. She used to growl when in possession of a favourite toy when she was a kitten; I've not heard her do that for years! Moth was returned to the patio and dcat was locked in, with a couple of treats in compensation.