Category Archives: Garden

Poppies in November

Blackbird at dawn on rowan tree (may have come from the Continent)

Watching Autumnwatch the other night, Chris Packham was so frustrated by the lack of migrating wild birds coming into the UK due to the unseasonably mild weather that he took to throwing the magnetic birds on his migration map on the floor!

An unseasonal poppy

In my garden, there is a perennial poppy which has thrown up a giant red flower, and the honeysuckle is rampaging along the ivy on the back wall.

Honeysuckle

Nearly all the leaves are down though, apart from the evergreen shrubs

The weather veers between clear blue skies one day, see the moon at 9.30 in the morning, and damp and grey like today. England and its weather, a source of constant change and mystification.

Early November Garden

The silver birches still have their leaves, though they have all turned to gold now and the sun is getting lower in the sky each day even at midday.

The Glastonbury Thorn is flowering early for a change, it flowers twice a year, traditionally it should flower on Christmas Day.

My old fatsia japonica, bought as a pot plant fifteen years ago and planted out when I moved to this house,  is now an enormous flowering beast, for some reason being visited by lots of wasps. 

Verbena bonariensis has self sown everywhere and throws up its lovely purple flowers

These are almost the last of my garden vegetables, though the rainbow chard will carry on even through the snow and there are self sown leeks coming up which look promising.

And, don’t laugh, one perfect red pepper survived the rampages of the snails, the others were all devoured silently in the night.