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 Sunday September 6th 2009

 

This is the first of the autumn roses.  I pruned too much at the end of their first flowering so there are only a few appearing but this is the time I love them best, when somehow their smell and their colour is heightened by the different light.  This is a big climber that I planted to grow up and through a privet hedge but instead of growing into it, it has grown out into the garden in search of light so that it hangs all over us when we sit out there to read in the summer.

 

One of the rituals of the new season is to change the shrub by the front door that represents the season. There’s been a standard lavendar there for summer and I usually have an acer for autumn and I’ll change it when its leaves turn, but this is a little bird-sown hawthorn which is going to be the first symbol of autumn.

 

 

 

Yesterday was the first day of sunshine in ages so too good to spend indoors.  I planted out lots of little violas and pansies into window boxes and pots to replace the petunias the snails have feasted on!

 

And here are purple pansies jollying along some of the verbena that have managed not to be eaten.  Now they and the tiny violas look cheerful as I come up the path. I also like them since they remind me of my first present to my husband which was a bowl of pansies at his door and a note telling him that their name came from ‘pensee’ meaning ‘thought’ in French and so they meant I was thinking of him.  He still thinks it the strangest present he’d ever had, but in a good way!

 

And after the garden a walk by the river, the banks of which were colonised by this purple plant which I think it Rosebay Willow Herb – it had a very strong honey-sweet smell which seemed right for a sunny September Saturday afternoon.

 

  

 

 

 

 

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