Red peppers doing well
Here’s what I’m picking now, for more detailed information please go to the Vegetable Page.
The chillies became hotter as the season became hotter
These photos were taken at the beginning of the month and everything has grown a lot.
The days are now much cooler and mornings and evenings are cold, though not quite cold enough yet to need the heating on, but maybe this weekend we’ll light the fire to make it cosy. The plants are appreciating some rain and the condensation that wets them in the mornings. Rosa Molineux looks like it did for its first flowering in spring and the lemon coloured Hemerocallis is flowering to keep the rose company.
Best of all Rosa mutabilis is flowering like never before; they were planted last autumn and have now formed strong bushes that are full of flower, they have given me such a lot of pleasure all summer.
Yesterday, despite my tendinitis I planted the smaller island bed, today I will add some more bulbs. I intend posting about the individual beds as I finish planting them.
There is still lots to enjoy in the garden and still a lot to do; this is really my window of opportunity to complete as much planting, transplanting and bulb planting as I possibly can. There are not enough hours in the day! The sunset comes before I’ve finished.
Sunset, yesterday.
The garden is still full of blue butterflies and many different kinds of bees are still visiting to collect nectar.
Click on photo below to see all the flowers blooming today.
blue butterfly feeding on Perovskia
Bye the way I discovered that the strange mud nest I posted about in September is made by the thread-waisted wasp, Sceliphron spirifex. They put spiders in the mud case for the larvae to feed on.
There are lots of these wasps and many others in the garden. Some of them are keeping the brasicas free of cabbage white caterpillers.
Rosa glauca hips, Artemisia pontica & Schizachyrium scoparium
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Plebejus argus (Silver studded blue)
Sunday was a day of warm gentle sun and fluttering blue butterflies.
Many were camouflaged on the dried seedheads of Lychnis and were only visible when they flew up into the air.
Syntarucus pirithous (Lang's Short-tailed Blue)
It is so strange that when there wings are open they are so wondrously blue and the closed wings are intricately patterned.
There was also this amazing moth, though I didn’t see it fly and wouldn’t have seen it at all if it had been on a tree trunk.
Convolvulus Hawkmoth (Convolvulus Hawkmoth)
Inspired by the beautiful day and by reading how much everyone else is doing in their gardens I began some autumn sorting and planting.
In the tiny triangular bed near the shed and gas tank there was a Trachelospermum jasminoides, on the wire fence that protects the gas tank, a myrtle, planted a year ago which I’m hoping will grow into a nice round bush, and the bed is edged with a variegated pink and cream sedum which doesn’t cover the ground as well as I’d hoped it would and rather disappears into the colour of the tuffo. I wanted to fill this bed with plants that don’t need irrigation so I added Artemisia Powys Castle, 3 x Delosperma with tiny crimson flowers. I thought this would also be a good spot to add some tulips (I have a lot to find homes for – why do I order so many?) 25 Tulipa Gabriella and 100 muscari. When I have some gravel available I may put gravel under the sedum to make it more visible and hopefully discourage weed seedlings.
Behind Rosa mutabilis I transplanted some stipa tenuissima that had self seeded in other parts of the garden and added 50 Tulips Dordogne which should be a similar colour to the roses.
Creating my own garden of the Hesperides 
