and then it started to snow!

After some mild, wet days today was bitingly cold and at about 4.30 it began to snow.

The following images were taken at 5pm when it was almost dark but I just wanted to share the initial magic, I’m hoping it will all be gone by tomorrow.

Looking down from the bedroom window

Looking out from the sitting room window.

I didn’t want to go out and spoil the virgin snow with my footsteps, if the snow does remain, I’ll venture out tomorrow.

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Is it snow?

This week has seen a big change in the weather.  No more kidding myself that it is spring or autumn, winter has arrived.  It is early for it to be so cold here in Lazio

On Monday I drove to Rome, I chose the road that goes over the Cimini hills (mountains) they aren’t that high so it rather depends where you come from whether you consider them mountains or hills, the highest point on the road is 850 m.  It was cold but also beautifully sunny, as I was driving I saw in the distance the snow tipped peak of Monte Amiata, but that’s higher than the Cimini and way off in Tuscany so I didn’t change my mind about my route.  Mistake!  As I climbed the trees began to be sprinkled with white.  Was it frost?  Then it became clear, the trees were coated in a thick layer of snow; it was amazingly beautiful and I regret not taking any photographs, but I thought the road was too dangerous to stop.  Cars coming in the opposite direction were driving very slowly and as I neared the highest point (860 m) there was a group of Carabinieri, stopping the traffic, saying the road was closed due to ice!  So I retraced my steps and took a lower road to arrive at my destination an hour late on a journey that should have taken 50 minutes!

Then yesterday, Wednesday when the forecast said it would be sunny, it first rained and then hailed, huge pieces of ice some about the size if a marble, others smaller – and it was so cold that many remained on the ground for two days!

Hail stones on the window cill

Hailstones on the terrace

Hail in the garden

White fields of hail stones

Today garden is white with frost, the clipped Lavender looking lovely outlined in white; but some intervention is needed; the lemons and limes that I had already moved from the north east side of the house to the west side to avoid the cold north wind (Tramontana) now need to be moved into the greenhouse, so a little rearranging is also called for there.

Lavender in the formal garden white with frost

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More threatening skies

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EMV – November a month to work in the garden

Thanks to Helen for hosting EMV; again it is so hard to believe it is the end of November already.

November has been the perfect month for a gardener; many days of warm sunshine interspersed with life sustaining rain.  Today (Wednesday) isn’t nice, heavy rain is falling, there is thunder and lightning which means that the internet is intermittent and it looks black outside, so not a gardening day today!

Not very much has changed in the garden since last EMV except that the walnuts trees have now lost all their leaves and the Mulberry will have done so after the strong winds today and tomorrow.

I have planted garlic (last week) and all the bulbs, except for 25 tulips, are all safely in the ground.

I have been tidying the beds, weeding and planting.  The smallest bed, the circular rose bed needed the most attention.  Gaura lindheimeri self-seeds profusely in this bed and I hadn’t cleared all last year’s seedlings which had grown so large they were swamping the roses; my plans to do a Chelsea chop didn’t happen so many plants were approaching 1.7 metres.  I potted up lots of smaller plants that should make good plants to swap and some with larger roots (almost rhizomes) I transplanted onto the slope where many of the existing plants had perished in the drought.  Gaura remains in the spaces between each variety of rose.  I also removed 3 large buckets of material to the compost heap.

From a distance all you can see is Gaura and Stipa tenuissima

You can see some of the Gaura in this image of R. Sophie’s Perpetual

I then decided to define the quadrants of roses more by planting Miscanthus Gracillimus midway to the centre of the circle between each type of rose and position a Pennisetum villosum in front of the Miscanthus.  There were already 2 Miscanthus and one huge Pennisetum in the bed.  I was able to divide one of the Miscanthus into 3 which gave me the required four; the Pennisetum is a bit of a thug, it spreads very freely so it was easy to divide it into four large pieces plus a dozen or so smaller sections that I planted onto the slope, replacing some Stipa tenuissima what had more dead material than green.  I think the Pennisetum will act well to hold the soil on the slope and they also make better ground cover and weed suppressant than the Stipa.

The finished bed

The bed is also very slightly sloping, so the edging helps contain the soil

Pennisetum villosum is drought tolerant in my garden and although it isn’t very pretty in mid-winter it soon puts on new growth in spring and then seems to flower until the first frosts.

The circular rose bed is (or was) the same dimension as the circular void in the middle of the formal garden and it forms the link between the formal front beds and the much more relaxed island beds.  Using a void and a positive space isn’t really to be strongly recommended because in fact you can’t SEE that they are the same, but it does give some rhythm so in this case it works.  The edge of this border has never been strongly defined before so I decided to use some crazy paving that had been on the front of the house (no, don’t ask why!) to sink into the ground to delineate the shape better.

Here are the roses that are still flowering in the bed this month.

Rosa ‘Queen of Sweden’

Rosa ‘William Shakespeare’

Rosa Sophie’s perpetual

Rosa ‘Tradescant’ also has a couple of flowers but I didn’t take a photo on the 24^th November when I photographed the above.

Rosa ‘Veilchenblau’

Even my favourite rose ‘Veilchenblau’, which usually only flowers in early summer has put on a few flowers to charm me.

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GBBD – Still Feels Like Spring

Well, mostly anyway!  The weather since the last BloomDay has been good for the garden; rain and warm sun.  Most plants have been tricked into believing that it is spring rather than the beginning of winter.

Rosa Sally Holmes is flowering more than at any time during the year

There has been a lot of rain in the last weekend; many of you will have seen images of Venice and maybe of road collapsing and swallowing a car in Tuscany.  For more about the rain click here.

There is some autumn colour, the walnuts have lost their leaves, the pomegranate foliage is butter yellow and all the Miscanthus are looking beautiful but other plants are enjoying a second spring and I’m enjoying it too; in a small way it makes up for the torrid summer.

Glorious yellow of the pomegranate

Ceanothus has a few flowers the blue of the blooms matching the blue Italian sky.

Ceanothus repans

One Cistus has one flower (yes, I know that one flower proves nothing it is an anomaly).  The moist ground has really prompted the roses into flower, there are more, even, than in October.  During the early days of November I was surprised and delighted to see that the ends of all the branches of the Philadelphus had flowers, they only persisted for a week or so, so can’t be included in Bloomday for November but they deserve a mention.

Solanum jasminoides Album is covered in blooms and will probably continue to be until some really cold weather arrives.  All the different varieties of Salvia are flowering profusely, I think I under-value them because I find it hard to get good images of them.

This post is late, yesterday I wasn’t feeling great so didn’t go into the garden to photograph the blooms, today it is very windy and the bright morning sun has made some of the colours a little strange.  You can see most of what’s blooming in My Hesperides Garden by clicking on the image below.

Rosa Rhapsody in Blue

Thank you to Carol at Maydreams Garden for hosting this interesting meme, take some time to visit some of the other gardens joining in this month to see what’s blooming around the world.

I’ve been reading some wonderful posts about autumn foliage colour, please feel free to link to Garden Bloggers Foliage Day on the 22^nd of each month – I think November may be the most colourful so far!

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Mud, mud, glorious mud…!

The weather has been pleasantly warm for most of November so far; the central heating has not been switched on and the fire we light in the evenings is more for the pleasure of looking at it than the heat that it produces.  September, October and early November has been perfect for the garden, the warm sunshine plus a good amount of rain.  There have been very sunny days and very rainy days so easy to decide what to do and to be able to enjoy the good days and be grateful for the rain when it comes.

Rain was forecast for last Sunday so I thought it would be perfect to have a lunch party for my gardening friends as none of us would want to be outside!  Often when I make plans like this, things go awry; the sun shines hotly down making everyone wish they were working in the garden rather than eating!  Last Sunday the forecast proved only too accurate!  It began raining during the night and continued heavily for most of the morning; about an hour before our guests were due to arrive we thought it might be a good idea to check the state of the lane to the house.  Last year when there was torrential rain the lane was covered by about 30 cm of topsoil from the neighbouring field.

So had the farmer learnt from last year’s disaster?  Had he decided to plough and plant seed early so that the precious topsoil wouldn’t be washed away?  NO! HE HADN’T!

So with only a short time before four cars would be arriving we found the lane in front of our gates with a thick layer of MUD and worse still the ditch into which our grey water drains completely filled with mud for a distance of about 100 metres.

This should be a ditch about a metre and a half deep, now almost level with the lane, the block of stone was washed here from about 50 metres away

Top soil filled ditch, it is full for at least 100 metres

Water rushed along this old stream bed carrying top soil, stones and boulders. The power of the water means the stream bed is now just tuffo rock.

Here you can see the path of an old stream and how the soil has been washed from the field

 

But I’m not complaining (well not much anyway).  People lost their lives due to the torrential rain; a car disappeared into a chasm created when a bridge collapsed; the three occupants of the car died of asphyxiation deep within the mud in Tuscany (not so very far north of us).  People have lost their homes and everything in them; it is not so common here as in the UK to have home insurance so this is truly a disaster.

The main north/south motorway was closed in places because it was under water (this is like saying the M1 is closed) and the train station at Orte with the fast line to Rome had the roads all around it closed because they were under water

We were extremely lucky, the shepherd came with his tractor and flattened out the mud and our guests were able to drive through with no problems, thank you Amadeo!

Water is such a powerful element, Global climate change means that many places in countries all over the world will suffer severe flooding on a regular basis.  We must all try to encourage our governments to reduce the causes of global climate change rather than them begging for help to deal with its results.

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Autumn light – dusk

The evening autumn light is magical; it washes the garden in warm colour.  Fleeting though it is it is one of my favourite times of day in this season.

The rays of the sun wash over the trunk of the mulberry making the seat under it even more enticing, if only for a few minutes.

Where would the garden be without grasses?

The light captures their ephemeral beauty.

….. and then of course there’s the sky!

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Autumn Evening Light

I love how the fading sun illuminates the garden at this time of year.

Here’s a few images of the garden and of course the sky!

Upper Drive border

Another view of the small island

Promise of a sunny day to follow.

Don’t forget Garden Bloggers Foliage Day on the 22nd, that’s Saturday.

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GBBD Rain Drops on Roses…..

Actually not just on roses but on everything.  For the last two nights it has rained and for a couple of hours during the day yesterday and most of the day today – I am very happy!

So when I went outside to take my photos for bloomday it was under the protection of an umbrella.  It wasn’t raining too hard and it was so god to see and feel the rain; the umbrella was more to keep the camera dry.  Today it is windy which isn’t so good, I want rain, soft and gentle to soak right into the soil.  Temperatures yesterday and today haven’t risen above 20° C.  It almost feels like winter, but it is so nice to feel cool; to go to bed and pull the sheet around me rather than throw it off in an attempt to be cool.

Next week the temperatures are set to rise again, but only during the day, at night it will be cool.  Even during the day it should just be pleasantly warm to work outside.

All the blooms this month have raindrops on their petals, for some this makes them even more beautiful.

Gaura are always beautiful with drops of rain on their stems

New foliage and new blooms on Rosa Clair Matin

Caryopteris is very reliable at summer’s end, even after the hot summer we’ve had this year it is flowering beautifully

To see what else is flowering in My Hesperides Garden in mid September, please click on the image below.

To enjoy what’s flowering in gardens around the world, some just entering spring and others beginning to look autumnal, visit Carol at May Dreams Garden,

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Well, well, well!

At last the temperatures began to fall a little on the 26th August (the day we celebrated the feast of San Fiacre (the patron saint of gardeners, he also the saint of haemorrhoid sufferers!)  The days following continued hot but with promises of rain and cooler temperatures that never arrived.  Then on Friday 31^st August it was overcast and cloudy all day and the temperature dropped by about 10° centigrade.  Sunday and Tuesday it rained wonderful gentle rain, I call it English rain because normally Italian rain is torrential.  But this was perfect garden rain, slowly, very slowly soaking into the ground.  Already the drought tolerant plants that had curled their leaves to help avoid water loss have uncurled them and the garden looks ‘fuller’.  The night temperature has also fallen by about 10° C, this means I can sleep and that the plants get further respite from the heat and sun.  In August the temperatures at night were between 24 to 28°, now they’ve fallen to a comfortable 18° C.

Thank goodness it did rain as on Friday night evening we discovered the pump in the well wasn’t working, in fact every time the pump tried to switch on it blew the main fuse of the house!  We isolated the fuse for the pump and called the plumber.  He came on Saturday morning and appeared to wave his magic wand and the pump worked for half a day; then during the afternoon the same thing started happening again.  So we had a third of a tank of water to last us until Monday morning when the plumber could return.

I’ve always valued water and been grateful for it and careful about how much I use.  When all your water, for the house and garden comes from a well you are very aware of its value.  We had been told that our well was 100 metres deep, this means a very powerful pump and an autoclave are needed to circulate water all around the house.  So, the plumber arrived, realised that before the arduous job of lifting the pump from the well it would be good to check all the electric circuitry.  Monday happened to be the day when Viterbo celebrates its Saint by carrying a ‘100 foot high tower’ around the town; my electrician is one of the 100 men who carry the tower (they’re called Facchini or porters) so he couldn’t come, every number we called was busy doing something for the BIG day.  Finally my electrician found someone he trusted who could help.  But he couldn’t fix the problem.  The pump was hauled out of the well, at this point we discovered that it is, in fact, 54 metres deep rather than the 100 we’d been told; the men were pleased about that!  The electric cable needed replacing and the pump itself was corroded by the minerals in the water.  However the plumber thought he could clean it and that it would work for a year or so longer and it was his advice that we didn’t need to purchase a new pump just yet.  He tested it above ground, it was working WRONG!  The pump was lowered back down the well, switched on – the main fuse blew again!!! Oh no! they’d have to heave it out of the well again and we needed to buy a new pump – it was lunch time so of course all the shops, including trade shops were closed until 2.30 (this is Italy – everything closes for lunch!)  The men went to eat (lunch time for them too, of course), there was virtually no water left in the tank at all now.  But at least with Sunday’s rain the garden didn’t need watering for a couple of days.

The new pump was fitted after lunch and hopefully all is now working properly.  But those 3 days with only the minimum amount of water really demonstrated that without water it is impossible to live (of course we all know that in an abstract way but actually LIVING without water SHOWS you).

If the pump had failed just a week previously I would have lost every plant in the vegetable garden and many other plants in the garden might not have recovered a further reduction in water.  I FEEL SO LUCKY!

Here are a few images of the 100 foot ‘tower’ that is carried through the streets of Viterbo.  The design of the ‘tower’ is changed every 5 years or so. This is not my favourite design but seeing the beginning, when they lift the tower in the air is very emotional.  The facchini take the last rites before beginning; as it has been known for a facchino to die during the transportation.

The ‘tower’ still inside its scaffolding support. The white figures are the facchini (porters)

The facchini praying in front of the macchina and being blessed by the bishop of Viterbo. Local dignitaries look on including the major.

The macchina is lifted to loud cheers, the band begins to play the special facchini tune and the transportation begins.

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