"in the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer" Potting shed chat continues here

[funnyperson]

So as agreed (by 2 other people!) I have started this thread for spring gardeners follwing on from the previous thread : Welcome one and all. experts and novices alike and draw up your chairs and join in discussion on all things garden related (and even not garden related)

A rose garden parterre sounds delicious castleough
I suppose you have the choice of marking out and planting the box borders of the parterre now or in spring and then the actual plants (eg roses) now or in spring. In one of Monty's books he mentions taking lots of box cuttings one autumn and planting them up into larger pots in the spring, said it was cheaper than buying large plants

Wonderful bench!
Lush garden!

Is that with Glenda Jackson as Lear, Maud? I keep trying to persuade my loved ones to go & see it - we saw Simon Russell Beale in it last year, and DS is studying Lear for A Level so I thought it'd be an interesting comparison (but maybe I'm being too Tiger Mother? )

Don't be too hard on yourself Castle that is a long bank, and you have little ones I recall. How about having it grassed and then introducing wild flowers gradually as you have time?

That is a very lush bench indeed. I love nasturtiums.

It's Antony Sher at the RSC, although I would love to see Glenda in the role.

I have always found Lear to be the scariest of all his plays. Macbeth and Hamlet and the Dream and so forth I always enjoy thoroughly because for me the characters can be appreciated from a safe distance. But the pain and madness of the old king, and the selfishness of his daughters, always makes me shudder as being far too close to home.

Nasturtiums start up in midwinter here and are most vigorous in very early spring, quite finished by summer in Melbourne, though they do well in the template rainforest areas. I'll have to tear out some of the more unruly ones this weekend.

Template?? Temperate. Though they are excellent examples of such rainforests. Second to none in my opinion.

OP - I see Lear in so many people!

thanks for the advice on the dianthus. This is a steep learning curve for me as I haven't even potted the spring bulbs yet. I've lost the plot where it was suggested but someone suggested putting the summer bulbs in a bigger pot with the spring bulbs which is also possible. So before the weekend I have to decide what I'm doing.

I'd be interested to know what others would do. I suppose what I could do is wait for the end of spring, see whatever summer bedding is going cheap and get that.

My sister said to me "this is an awful lot of planning for about 4-6 pots" - it is, I am just enjoying all the "fantasy gardening"!!

I know what you mean about fantasy gardening planning. Do plant bulbs in layers. Lilies at the bottom then tulips then daffs then crocuses and snowdrops on top. You can put the summer bedding in when they are over.

Today I dug out the seaweed based tomato feed, which has been lurking in a cupboard unused all summer, and fed the rhodedendrons, azaleas and camellias. Somewhere I read that they set their buds round about now and need water and food. Anyway Maud has fed her Camellas so it must be time!

I had missed your bench echt: it's lovely. So free.

Nasturtiums are one of my favourite flowers and I love the new colours that we are getting now. Some apricot coloured ones, the seed for which I liberated from Woolbeding last year have been fantastic for me this year, although the rosy pink ones from Gravetye curled up their toes.

Yes I like nasturtiums too. And hollyhocks which I always think of when I think of nasturtiums for some reason. I have been unable to grow either.

Gorgeous sunny Autumn weather here. No new beginnings as when one was younger and the new term started, but still a time of great happiness and clear blue skies.

I went to Chenies Manor in Buckinghamshire yesterday with Maud who came to cheer me up (successfully) and it is a truly stunning garden with dahlias incorporated into beautiful planting, loads in flower but not over the top, and a lovely white garden too.

The dahlias we liked best were David Howard, Cameo, Karma Choc and Bracken Ballerina. Though writing that sounds a bit stark , and the beauty was that the dahlias weren't planted in regimented rows but placed so that the foliage of neighbouring plants such as Eunonymous or Miscanthus or Shasta daisies set them off. The cosmos were really tall and swayed in the wind. I think the plants must last this long due to deadheading and feeding.

We met the friendly young owner. Yummy tea and cake were had in the October sun. Nice place. Good company.

So anyway although someone has probably written a better poem here is quite an evocative one from Helen Jackson (nineteenth century)
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
October's Bright Blue Weather

O SUNS and skies and clouds of June, 
    And flowers of June together, 
Ye cannot rival for one hour 
    October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste, 
    Belated, thriftless vagrant, 
And Golden-Rod is dying fast, 
    And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight 
    To save them for the morning, 
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs 
    Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie 
    In piles like jewels shining, 
And redder still on old stone walls 
    Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things 
    Their white-winged seeds are sowing, 
And in the fields, still green and fair, 
    Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks, 
    In idle golden freighting, 
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush 
    Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts, 
    By twos and twos together, 
And count like misers, hour by hour, 
    October's bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June, 
    Count all your boasts together, 
Love loveth best of all the year 
    October's bright blue weather.

This is also a v good poem for October
(Dylan Thomas)
Poem In October
by Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.

It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

sounds lovely
I always hate autumn - the slide into darkness, ugh, I get bad SAD too.

I have a bug at the moment, but it has been nice and sunny here so I would have been going for after work walks to make the most of it - hopefully next week will be nice!

that place in Bucks sounds lovely.

If laid up on the sofa with a bug you might like to read a book called 'the garden of evening mists' by Tan Twan Eng, which has, as its turning point, the garden of a mythical Japanese emperor's gardener in Malayan hills.

There is a lot about the Japanese gardening concept of 'Shakkei" ie borrowing in a garden: borrowing the landscape, the sky, the weather. There is a lot about other things as well. If not laid up, the blue October skies are definitely better appreciated with a walk!

While the spring here has been slow in Melbourne, definite signs are about with the first day without heating in the evening on Thursday, and Uggs being too warm as slippers.

This weekend I'll be able to get into the veggie patch and sort out the bolted chard. The tomatoes I planted two weeks ago, before going to the UK, have barely grown at all, testimony to the cold spring. On the other hand I have more daikon than any reasonable human could possibly want.

Certainly feels like the first day of Autumn here. I capitulated and put on the heating last night. Think I'll go and look up Keats, so I can get beyond the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ...

Thanks Funny, sounds beautiful! Added to the list.

I might buy hyacinth to plant indoors. I have a really nice bowl that someone gave me - I thought it was too shallow for hyacinths but looking at this pic I think not? It's about the depth shown here. What you lovely experts think, will it be okay?

www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/hyacinthus-orientalis-delft-blue/classid.2000025930/

Today was beautiful; none of the cloudiness promised and sunny. I tied in the broad beans which, despite their dwarf description are tall. Daikon were pulled up, and so different: three were sturdy, one like a golfball, and the last like what I imagine Clive James meant when he said compared a post-Christmas balloon to the parts of one of Germaine Greer's used-up ex-lovers. :o

Tomorrow is for the chard. It's bolted so I'll pick out the leaves and steam them. The stems are a bit tough-looking, but might still be amenable to chop and boil. Waste not, want not.

I tore out lots of nasturtiums which were crowding some native ground cover, though lots left for colour and salads.

The afternoon involved sitting in the front garden, reading the papers and having a while the the cat curled up on the bench and the dog slumped in the shade.

lovely to hear from you echt - and getting so much warmer. Cats seem to beable to soak up any amount of heat :) Tall broad beans are good though - much easier on the back to harvest!
(I suspect you were too far away to get the storm my friend near Adelaide went through this last week - seems it knocked out the electricity for quite a while. )

Err, thanks, Echt, for that troubling image from Clive James (who I admire greatly)!

I was trying to not think of that Maud

Lol. I remember going to some basement dive off the Tottenham Court road and listening to Pete Atkin singing Clive James' lyrics e.g 'for the damned there is always a stranger, there is always a beautiful stranger'. So he is a right one to talk about used up ex-lovers!

Googled Daikon and then went out and planted up cuttings: trailing rosemary, persicaria, lavender, rosemary and santolina from my neighbour's garden. Decided to feed the magnolias as they too are setting buds. Happy moments.

I think hyacinths for Christmas flowering are planted fairly shallowly.

Lorelei - that has brought back memories of my Dad, he always did hyacinths for Christmas for my Mum - in a shallow bowl , hidden away in the cupboard under the stairs :)

bookbook, northern Victoria copped the tail end of that storm, with bad floods, though today (Sunday) we've had a severe weather warning of very high winds, so I'll be putting the orange, mandarin and avocado trees into the garage. They've all put out lots of flowers and I don't want them stripped.

The avocado has never fruited for this very reason, so fingers crossed as it is covered with buds. When they open I'm going cross-pollinate a neighbour's avocado that has stopped fruiting because so many people have cut down their trees.