GBBD October 2011

I am late with my account of what is flowering in my garden on the 15th October.  We have had such strong winds for the last 5 days it has been almost impossible to take any photos at all.  I waited until today hoping that the wind would drop and it has slightly but I’m afraid not all my blooms are here – many of the photos were just too out of focus to be shared.

With the cooler days there are more pale flowers on Rosa Mutabilis

Thank you Carol at May Dreams garden for hosting this meme; visit her to see blooms from around the world.

Since GBBD in September we have had some very strange weather here in Lazio.  On the night of 18^th September we had thunder and lightning, sheet and fork , that lasted for most of the night; there wasn’t any rain for hours of the storm but in a two hour period we did have 30 cm of rain fall; yes! That’s not a mistake a foot of water in 2 hours! And then it continued to rain so that in all we must have had 40cm in one night.  It is said that London and Rome both have the same amount of rain in a year but in London it probably rains 280 days where as in Rome it all falls in less than 100 days.  So that when it does rain – it literally floods down!

In the lower part of the garden we have what was 2 thousand years ago an Etruscan tomb, converted and used as a stable for animals from who knows when until about 25 years ago – we use it as a store; it’s not very useful as it is so damp that wine bottles stored there lose their labels within a month – so we have had to find somewhere else to store our wine.  There is a step down into the store so that when it rained and washed most of the topsoil from the surrounding fields over the lane that is the only access to our house, water and mud flooded into the store leaving the mud and showing the depth of water and mud to have reached 60cm – I am only grateful that the garden wasn’t flooded or indeed washed away.

Datura continue to fill the evening air with its wonderful perfume

Even the soil on the steep slope that I have been featuring in ‘The end of month view’ was held in place by the planting of stipa tenuissima and other plants; proving that bare soil is always a bad idea that leads to erosion.

Mud filled the ditch that takes our downpipe water had to be dug out; it also covered the area I’d been preparing to plant some trees, the weeds had been removed but the fields had just been reseeded with grass so now I have a beautiful crop of grass!

The rain was followed by beautiful days with sunshine and temperatures returning to those that we expect in August.  We have enjoyed some days at the beach; the hot weather continued until the beginning of this week when the wind turned and blew from the north bringing cold air, so much so that the bed has gone from having just a linen sheet to a nice warm duvet which has been snuggled under in a 10 day period.

The autumn work I wanted to do in the garden will have to be compressed into a couple of weeks – September the temperatures were too high to transplant anything other than tough Iris and Hermerocallis, and this week it has been so windy it was almost impossible to stand……

Miscanthus 'Morning Light' blowing in the wind earlier in the week

I’d be interested to know what you think the first flower is in the slideshow – I sprinkled several, very old packs of seeds by the side of the drive, I think this is from these but I don’t regognise what it is.

The rain combined with the hot sun means that most of the plants blooming in September are still blooming now with the addition of Asters which hadn’t really started last month.

If you click on the image below you can see some of what is blooming in My Hesperides Garden this mid October.

pathway by the back border

Don’t forget to join in GBFD (Garden Bloggers Foliage day) next Saturday the 22^nd October.  I hope you’ll have some lovely autumn colour to share or of course, maybe it is spring where you are in which case you can cheer us northern hemisphere gardeners with images of the promise of spring!  Where ever you are I look forward to seeing how you use foliage in your garden.