Well hello poppy

Back home again and it's amazing how in just a few days the garden has moved on a season. Husband did quite well on his watering chores while I was away. The alliums are already fading and the sweet rocket is now positively luminous with purple blooms.  And sadly, the last petals on my favourite tulip of the year - the marvellously frilly Cummins pictured below - have crumpled and the equally gorgeous, crepe-like oriental poppy is now the camp centre of attention in my backyard.

Meanwhile, I'm even more behind with my potting on. This year, for the first time, I have almost run out of plastic pots. I must have gone overboard on my seed sowing - sunflowers, tomatoes, courgettes, chard, beetroot, marigolds, molucella, sea kale, basil, cosmos. Quite a lot for a small town garden. The loft bathroom-cum-greenhouse is full and the garden is littered with some of the lucky ones that are being  hardened off. I think I might have had a good hit-rate with my seeds this year.

Where will they all go? Some will go to a plant sale to raise funds for our newly inaugrated Friends of St Mary's Burial Ground Group and, the sunflowers will be planted out tomorrow in our monthly gardening session. So at least I will regain some pots...

Negligees, blousy blooms and leeks

It seems only moments ago that I was swooning at snowdrops and buying summer flowering bulbs at the first show of the year back in February. But now I really have to come to terms with the fact that it's the end of the season and time for the RHS Autumn Harvest Show in Pimlico. I took advantage of a sneak preview of the show this morning, before the crowds arrived.

At this time of year, the flowers are bold, dramatic and voluptuous, like a bouffant, buxom, chiffon-negligeed seventies starlet. The last big blooms of the year like to go out in style. The first thing to stop me in my tracks was this mauve colchicum with petals like tissue paper. Then the chrysanthemums made me smile - they really need dusting down and a bit of an image makeover. With our love of all things vintage, they must be due for a high fashion revival that goes beyond wallpapers and curtain fabrics. This pompom yellow Chrysanth 'Misty Cream' is fabulously retro.

 

There was a lot of pink, courtesy of gladioli and of course, nerines. Gorgeous flowers that bring a little psychedelic passion to these dank, darkening days. I would have bought an armful had I not been dashing across town - next year, I vow to plant many bulbs. I'm picturing the nerine-filled tub that Edith Hope has so eloquently described in her latest post.

Blousy colour aside, the perfect textures and geometric rosettes of succulents was equally seductive and I was smitten by the giant Aloe polyphylla, courtesy of  Trewidden Nursery.

Last but not least, it being a harvest festival there were plenty of apples and other fruit and vegetables. But I say God bless the giant leeks. 



Colours

This week's colours in the garden are: nasturtium red, orange crocosmia, pale pink succisa, ruby valerian, blue ceratostigma and yellow courgette.