I’ve had a lot of satisfaction from the garden this year. Firstly, earlier in the year, we planted a couple of pieris, a second hydrangea and a rhododendron, as well as bedding plants, of course. The pieris are in addition to those we already had, and we bought them because of the success of the earlier ones in the garden. A week ago, they were sprouting bright red leaves; now the leaves have changed to a yellowy green; they are a nice backdrop for the cotoneaster, which is just starting to produce red berries. We are soon going to have some lovely autumn colour, but there’s no sign of it yet, because we had too much rain earlier on.
The hydrangeas – this year’s and last year’s are at the front of the house. They started fading after one particularly cold night, so the colours now are muted, though they were an attractive pink and mauve during the summer, the mauve one having started out cornflower blue. We have, in the past, suffered from a lack of summer colour, and they were bought with this in mind and have been successful because we watered them regularly from our rainwater butts. The New Guinea busy lizzies have been lovely, of course; they always are. Come the first frost and they will be finished, but for the moment there is still a display of pinks, reds and whites. In amongst them are three rose bushes, which have flowered for the first time in many years. It’s been such a pleasure to have them back – and all due, I believe, to my neighbour removing her electric fence, so that now it’s her plants that get eaten by the deer, instead of ours. We also planted last year a second potentilla, and that started to produce more small yellow flowers when we had an oak tree at the front pollarded for the first time, and some of our shrubs received more light than in previous years.
Today is grey and rather depressing, so it’s good to think of the recent summer colour.
I had an email recently from Allromance ebooks, offering me the chance to promote myself by sending them a short story, to be downloaded free by their readers. I was pleased to do this and sent them a copy of A Gift of Gold , a short story written about two years ago. I re-read it and was quite pleased with it; a few days later, I received a contract, which although no payment is to be paid to me, protects my rights over the story. I’ll mention it, when it’s available for a free download.
Last week I made a second trip to Wisley to follow the Sculpture Trail and I’ll post some photos, probably next week.
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