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

Eek at the huge moth. I know we must learn to love (nearly, lily beetles are exempt) our garden wildlife, but I prefer it to remain in the garden.

Thinking about the concrete, my local council is seeking to enact local laws that will stipulate an amount of land that cannot be built on when building a house (here many, if not most houses are demolished and a new, monster boundary- to-boundary behemoth erected).

About time, I say. I've also noticed that the tidy merchants are always out with their leafblowers to keep their concrete spotless. Which, in Australia, with year-round leaf drop, is a colossal bore. For folk like me who have to listen while resisting the urge to yell: use a brush, you'll live longer. :o

And breathe.

I've spent this arvo going round the botanical gardens in Kyoto. Beautiful trees and water gardens, but the flower beds oddly municipal.

I'm very jealous Echt Did ask DD to take lots of pictures whilst over there, she was much to busy socialising.

That's awful about the concrete and the chequer board garden I too prefer th garden wildlife to stay outside, the cats are not so obliging.

Started pottin up some plants from the border where the drive will go and took a couple of stones out of the little wall, just so I could say I've started. Have been sensible for once and am labelling the plants.

You're in Kyoto, echt? I am off the scale envious.

Kyoto: Were the gardens affected by the earthquake or was that in a different place?
Yes I want to know all about the gardens and what you think and whether they are as beautiful as they say!

Searabbit - I'm lucky in that the garden is actually my neighbours opposite, so it won't affect mine at all. I do wonder about the planning situation, but it's a bit late now and obviously would cause far too much bad feeling to be worth it.

Echt - I went to Japan for my honeymoon, to see the gardens! Kyoto was stunning - and I mean simply jaw-droppingly amazing. I couldn't believe the phenomenal level of attention to detail in the great gardens, down to the placing of every twig on a tree. It is such a different ethos, and very, very controlled - but boy is the result out of this world. Enjoy your trip!!

As I understand it, paving over a front garden now requires planning consent unless a permeable surface is used. I don't think the same applies to back gardens, but the RHS website (as ever) has useful information about this - it has been mentioned in The Garden - because it's one of the issues that is dear to them. As it should be.

I had a lovely afternoon at a local fete and have come home with a big pot of schizostylus (with free mystery plant/weed) and some Bowles golden grass.

I would really like to go to Kyoto at cherry blossom time. Last year when I thought this I looked up famous old Japanese cherry trees and compensated by buying my mother 3 cherry trees of different exotic varieties: they should blossom this coming spring! In time they will become ancient and astound passers by.
I had a lovely time in the sun deadheading plants in the garden, sorting out bulbs to be planted, and at the garden centre, buying some more terracotta pots to put bulbs in
The Yorkshire terracotta pots were on special offer: buy one get one free, but one had to be vigilant as one of the pots the assistant put in my trolley had no drainage hole, which would have been disastrous for any plant planted in it, so I suspect they were seconds.

It is wonderful to be mobile again.

I am envious of your shizostylus Maud. Must get some. V. glad you've had a nice & mobile day funny. I like Yorkshire pots - they sell them in one of our local garden centres & are always buy 1 get 1 free. The shapes are so nice and simple.

It was also selling really nice varieties of bulbs at £3.99 for a litre pot full, so I got ahem rather a lot... I then split and moved loads of plants around in the warm sunshine. Bliss.

If the schizostylis thrives, I will divide it and give you some, SeaRabbit. I fear, though, that it won't, as it is one of several things of which my mother gave me a clump when I started this garden, and it soon perished. However, I have much improved our soil since then and know better what it needs, so perhaps there is some hope.

I must not buy more pots. I must not buy more pots. I must not buy more pots. I must not buy more pots. I must not buy more pots.

I love Schizostylis. Wonderful late summer colour.

The solitary Nerine bud that came up has been eaten. But two more are now peeping up so hopefully they will survive. It's been far too wet for Nerines really.

I like those Yorkshire pots too.

And I'd love to see the cherry blossom in Kyoto. I've been to Japan, but never Kyoto and never at the right time of year.

I was browsing yet another gardening website last night and seem to have bought myself a crab apple tree. Ooh err.

Lovely. Which variety?

Schizostylis is a wonderful plant, and one of those that, upsidedownly, blooms in mid-winter in Au.

Maud's pot chant reminded me of my frequently-broken vows in this regard. In Kyoto, pots are often the only garden many get, and are so inventively used. I'll post some pics when I get back home.

DH and I already think if we get back to Japan again, we'll do it for the cherry blossom season.

Ooh, weather forecast for tomorrow on TV... scorchio. :o

Red Sentinel. It's going to live in a giant pot, which I hope will keep it a manageable size (and if it doesn't it'll have to be rehomed).

I cannot resist the Yorkshire pots and am joining in your mantra Maud. If I have empty pots I have to put plants in them and then get cross with myself, during the Summer, as I spend all my time watering the buggers!

I have just been going through my collection of bulbs awaiting planting. I need to be ruthless and eliminate the contents of some of the less successful pots - byebye agapanthus - to make space for more tulips.

Red Sentinel is fabulous, good choice.

We have spent the entire day pressing apples; both ours and those of a friend who is very ill. The dc had a whale of a time.

I was going to make an apple cake this evening, but I'm a bit appled out now.

Do you freeze your apple juice Rhubarb- or make cider?!

We went to Wisley. It was lovely - being such a lovely afternoon it was very busy but peaceful in the orchard - 400 different varieties of ripening apples all different sizes and colours. It was gorgeous.

Red sentinel looks fab. I'm not surprised you succumbed Maud. Here's a Wisley crab apple:

Yikes! I hope mine never gets as big as that. I admit I chose Red Sentinel largely because, of all those in the sale, it had an AGM and was red rather than orange (which were my criteria). I think I'll underplant it with tulips while it's still a baby.

I would love to go to Wisley soon. Sigh.

Must find time to pick our apples.

Two female Emperor Dragonflies laying eggs around the pond this evening. They really are massive.

We've frozen it, Searabbit.

Great dragonfly shot.

We picked some apples yesterday, they aren't quite ripe but are falling off in droves. I made apple shortbread, I'm planning on giving most of them a way there is only so much apple crumble one can/should eat!

I've just bought the last of my bulbs online Allium christophii, and princess Irene Tulips.

Crab apples are lovely, would have succumbed too maud

And for those of you that like cats and hedgehogs ..............

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/23/cat-nurses-kitten-four-orphaned-baby-hedgehogs_n_2004549.html

Aah to the cat and hedgepig video. I miss hedgehogs, though the native equivalent is cute, too.

What is the native equivalent for you, echt?

I bought some new plants at the local Hardy Plant Society sale this weekend - a pink pulmonaria, a very light pink schizostylis (which have now apparently been shown to be hesperantha), and a dragon heart geranium. Then I got home and realised that to plant them, I needed to move a couple of things. Then to replant those things I realised I needed to move more things. And to move those, I realised I needed to do lots of dividing and replanting. (I am clumping up, funny, as you advise).

And then I had a lightbulb moment and realised that if I moved a sketched-in path a couple of feet it would all look so very much better. So I did that too.

Question about foxgloves - I have dozens of little Pam's Choice seedlings, having planted from seed earlier in the year. They're 2-3 inches now. Should I put them out in the border over winter? What about hollyhocks (roughly the same size now).

I have now basically moved about 40 plants and a (very provisional) path and I am still only half way there!! All for three plants. . It's fun, though.