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

Surely you should get a new shed in advance of the winter weather, Bertha, just in case?

I have been on holiday to Belgium. Can report that there were some very good window boxes and planters but hardly anything actually grown in the ground apart from hollyhocks and hydrangeas. We did visit Chateau Freyr though which has some very old formal gardens with 300 year old orange trees. During the war the owners reportedly used their coal ration to keep the trees warm rather than themselves.

Good luck with the MA Humph. I landed a Research Assistant post witn salary and fully funded Ph.D back in the day. DD came along rather unexpectedly, we moved and that was the end of that. One day I would like to have another go.

I was given so e Agapanthus that friend brought back on boat from the Scilly Isles. They were bare root so haven't got very far on the blooming front yet.

My Banana tree doesn't look particularly well - I know bugger all about them, any tips?

No Maud, it won't ever be finished as you'd hate that !!

A very good friend of mine 'downsized' to a place with 'outbuildings' which included a number of very nice sheds, some made from reclaimed wood, and including an outside loo fpr the gardener with a sign for 'toilet' carved into the wood in ancient Greek. All the younger generation, having read classics at one level or another, figured it out immediately. Not me though. I am a lingual pariah.

maud your garden is more 'finished' than mine because I suspect you have fewer pots on your patio that are waiting to be planted. Due to lack of digging ability, I am very nearly getting to the stage when I have more plants on the patio then in the beds!

Anyway in keeping with a lifelong battle to ensure that the state of 'being' takes up just as much time as the state of 'becoming' I have been admiring the clematis viticella Abundance, whose wonderful plum coloured flowers have reached the top of the ceanothus, and it has been flowering for weeks now!

funnyperson, so with you about the plethora of pots. In my case I've made the decision to keep some in pots so they can be moved around once they've flowered - spring bulbs. Permanent seasonal pots of orchids, velthemia, wallflowers move back under the carport for the summer months. I so wanted to grow a gardenia hedge, but nothing seems to improve the soil sufficiently, so in pots they stay, and do very well.

Hope your digging ability returns, soon.

I haven't gardened much due to the dc's being off.

I am picking a bowl full of cucamelons every day, after initial enthusiasm the dc's don't like them they are lovely in salsa, I will definitely grow them again.

Idiot award goes to me, a few weeks ago I pricked out 20 odd foxglove seedlings from a paving crack, now they've grown on a bit the majority are Plantain weeds

sugar no tips on the banana plant, where I am it's still quite cold at night 8 degrees in the greenhouse, could it be that?

Lol Geoff!
Glad it's not just me. I carefully nurtured a dandelion because I thought it was the only one of my rudbeckia seeds to have germinated.

Geoff, did you grow your cucamelons outside or in the greenhouse? I couldn't get mine to produce actual cucamelons in the conservatory even though I had huge plants and heaps of flowers. There's normally enough flying things in there to germinate everything else.

In the greenhouse bertha did you not get any?

Mind you your cucumber plant is pretty impressive, my very small Cucamelons wouldn't add up to as much cucumber that you have this year!

We got the odd one or two but that was it. The plants grew across the ceiling and were amazing but very little fruit set. I even overwintered one lot and they sprung back to life the following year. They were very happy plants. Just not very productive.

Nice day: did some much needed weeding and watering.

Clematis Polish Spirit has flowered! I'm very thrilled, as this was one of the first clematis, other than a Montana, which I planted which actually survived!
This is its third summer and finally, finally, it has 3 pretty deep purple flowers and more buds!

This weekend I shall do clematis cuttings!

Has anyone been watching 'the autistic gardener'? This Monday's programme was quite funny I thought, with some disparaging comments about traditional gardens.
It made me look at my garden in a completely different way.

DS came home telling me about 'permaculture' in a social housing regeneration project he is volunteering with. I googled it but couldn't understand it.

Hello! I have finally caught up after falling off the old thread and failing to board the new one. Life has been incredibly hectic, there's been lots if sad news around and then I had a silly accident last week which resulted in bruised (possibly cracked, who knows, makes no difference really) ribs. Gardening has been impossible for weeks and I've lost my mojo rather.

I can't see this changing for the foreseeable, but I missed you lot so thought I'd stick my head round the shed door and offer a bunch of sweet peas, which are going great guns despite neglect.

Sorry to hear you've been in hospital funnyperson and I hope your recovery is going well.

Bertha thank you for the seeds!

I am jealous of Countess's apricot tree. Like Maud's, mine died too. But that was in London, so I should try one here. My nectarine and peach are doing ok but too young to fruit.

Hey rhubarb I can't imagine you not gardening. I hope your ribs get better soon. and that you get your garden mojo back. I think perhaps you have been using your energy on your lovely children so maybe the garden has taken second place.

Gardening mojo is a strange thing. Sometimes I loose it because I'm not well. Sometimes I loose it because I've been round an impossibly lovely garden and mine comes nowhere near and sometimes I just get out of the habit. Sometimes there seems so much weeding, cutting back and watering and tidying up unused pots and just ordinary stuff to do that I feel I'll never get round to the good part of deciding what plants will go where. And then natural attrition can of course scupper the best of plans. Like my eupatropium bought last year after visiting Wisley , which is called 'Joe Pye weed' which seems to have died. A more vigorous plant at Wisley you cannot have imagined.

Anyway to tell you the truth I think it is a habit thing more than anything because when I do go out there and weed and water I like it very much indeed. I must be a very boring person really to like such simple things.

They're simple things but elemental funny. When people were living off the land, they were essential and maybe that is why those of us who like gardening feel such a pull: it's an instinct in some of us. Much like why people love being by the sea - given our ancestors lived in it and relied on it for survival.

Enough of the amateur philosophy. Glad to see you again rhubarb - sorry to hear about the ribs- ouch, and I hope they recover soon.

I usually lose my gardening enthusiasm about this time of year. It's growing stuff I really like and about now there is little new coming up, so it's a case of tidying and weeding, often in the heat. I'd rather sit under an umbrella and read, as I hate the heat, so my late summer garden is usually on the weka side.

Sorry to hear of your travails, Rhubarb. It's good to see you again.

I agree that one's gardening mojo can wax and wane. My spirit is always willing, but the flesh can be weak and prone to middle-aged problems that hinder one's garden. But I quite like this time of year, when nearly all the planting is done if you ignore the dozens of pots lined up on the patio and there's more time for pottering and admiring. I have a salvia Amistad, new this year, that's about to be stunning.

I find that when my enthusiasm for actual gardening wains that is when my mind starts planning larger gardening projects. Most of which never actually come to anything. Currently my fantasy projects include a boardwalk through the wood, a new shed/potting shed, a treehouse, a shady garden round the back with ferns of gigantic proportions (to hide the new shed from the house), a bench (but not any ordinary bench as I can't find one I like) to sit and ponder the pond...

Nice to have you back Rhubarb. Wishing you a speedy rib recovery & hope everything else settles down

Sorry to hear of the ribs, rhubarb and hope you're better soon. I can sympathise with the mojo loss though mine has been weather-related. It's been a colder winter here, made more so by a persistent, startlingly-chill wind from Antarctica, which has made it feel far colder. Not very encouraging for significant garden work.

However the wind has shifted to north now, and the birds get it, instantly shrieking at dawn, so I'll get going today.

I've mostly been moving pots around, the bulbs to the front garden to get them going. Also picked up a huge orchid bursting from its pot, from a man selling in his driveway, and a free hanging basket of burro's tails from a nature strip. The unwritten law is that anything left there can be taken. And is.

Thanks all. Reassuring to hear of other subdued mojos. I'm sure it's only temporary.

I am visiting df this weekend. It's a long time since I've been here (he doesn't like visitors). Had a poke round the garden and was pleasantly surprised to find it not as overgrown as I'd thought it would be. Stuffed my face with raspberries, felt sad about the dwindling ancestral rhubarb, and nostalgic about the old lilac tree that a long-gone much-loved cat used as a scratching post, and the solitary peony, which have been there forever. The flowering cherries which used to bury the lawn with their fallen pink blossom in spring are now fat old dames, and my mother's deep red damask roses are blooming still.

Inside the house, there is a dead potted palm on the hall table. I suspect it died about two years ago.

Your parents garden sounds lovely. Are you going to take cuttings of the damask roses and peony and crowns of rhubarb for your own garden , rhubarb?

I always regret not taking more stuff from my old garden when I moved years ago, Things like irises from Iona.

I'm doing cuttings today. It doesn't involve too much weight bearing and with the warm weather there is good growth on the plants and I think cuttings could take quite quickly if watered. Also, propagation is very cheering! The tidying can wait a bit.

I'd love a crown of your ancestral rhubarb if possible btw if thats not too cheeky, so please try and bring some back down!

Is anyone else a bit disconcerted by the constant changes of timing for Gardeners World? I like routine and organisation and so when I expect GW at 7.30 pm on Friday and time supper accordingly to find either that I've missed it or that it is on an hour later, or not at all, I get miffed. The same for the repeat on a Sunday morning. Today it isnt on at 6.30 am as previously , no it is on at 9 ish to clash with a non existent Andrew Marr programme. Gah.

Good morning, funnyperson. ::yawn::

I share your frustration with the constantly changing time of GW, especially as it's usually being changed for sport, which I loathe and resent on TV as there's so much of it already - whole channels, for Pete's sake. I want to know when GW is on, without having to check the schedule every bleddy week. Gah indeed.

That said, this week's programme was particularly lovely. I think my crush on Monty is getting worse. Sigh. Perhaps I should start a thread to match of rival the Mark Carney one. Arf.

My crush on Monty gets worse when he wears his brown wizard hat and coat and carries his wand staff. I have been wondering lately if he has a limp with a bad right leg but perhaps I'm reading too much into the stick.

GW is a wonderful programme, even with the plethora of gardening programmes available: love your garden, the instant gardener, the autistic gardener, beechgrove, carol kleins special, there is a gardening programme almost every night of the week these days. But Gardeners World seems to be one of the very few that doesn't involve teams of strong men with diggers ripping out someone's plot and replacing it with decking.

Morning. I'm tempted by the peony. I already have a couple of crowns of the rhubarb so I don't want to take more - df is down to two struggling plants now. I suspect nearby conifers have spread too close to the rhubarb patch and are sucking out too much moisture. Hopefully mine will do ok; when they have multiplied a bit I will let you have one, funny.

I haven't watched GW for ages - part of the mojo loss - but they are all recorded so I will eventually.

I always watch GW recordings, so I can FFW over Joe Swift's sections...

Hello, I've just found this thread, what a relief to have kindred spirits! My mojo's all over the place so glad I'm not alone.

I'm swamped with runner beans, not a single courgette from three big, healthy plants (which I've fed/starved/threatened), greenhouse tomatoes invaded by 'or rile emerald green caterpillars and Camilla clematis has died although Diana and Kate versions growing and blooming beautifully. I guess that's gardening for you, isn't it?
I must go and move a peony that's hogging too much room, hope it doesn't sulk, one of the downfalls of a small garden I suppose.
Courgettes were optimistically grown to make 'courgetti' so I can justify buying a spiraliser....... ho hum