Standard Fushias

Outside Portmeirion pottery shop in Stoke. Standard Fushias are still in flower on 23.12.20,some of the leaves are looking a bit sad, but it’s testament to how warm it has been over the few months. My hubby found a ladybird on him last night after he had come in out of the garden. I dropped it off in a flowerpot so it would have somewhere to shelter.

The crazy temperatures that global warming is causing mean that things are staying in flower longer, but there are not many insects around to pollenate them. I pray humanity does work to regulate the worlds temperatures.

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Hanging around…

Looking out of the kitchen window and the hanging basket I have taken photos of over the months is still surviving. A lot of the flowers have gone. There are still five or six different plants with flowers on them. The other hanging baskets are wilting. But it’s almost the shortest day (tomorrow) how is it coping!? If we ever get a cold night or snow it might die back. In any case I will post again if it’s still going.

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December hanging basket.

How is this possible. The hanging baskets are still alive and flowering despite a few frosts and cold winds. It’s not just one plant though. The flowers are still on four or five plants. Maybe they are so tightly packed that they are sheltering each other. I also think the flowers were not pollenated because of a lack of insects? I will keep posting about this till they wilt and die off.

nasturtiums

I love the way they defy rain, it looks like the water droplets are being resisted by oil. And yet the leaves are not oily. The flowers (now long gone) and the seedpods are edible, I know. Not sure about the leaves. If you eat a ripe flower it tastes something like orange and pepper mixed. Beautiful as a decoration for salads or floated in a summer punch.

Why can’t summer stay all year round? I guess because sometimes you need the wind and the snow to let you know you are still alive and not just dreaming. Halcion days, something like that, does halcion mean kingfisher ( I have a vague memory).

Im sitting here typing in my front bedroom in a teeshirt, jumper, trousers and thick dressing gown and still shivering. Trying to save on gas and electricity. Not too cold in the rest of the house, but up here it doesn’t warm up easily. Anyway, I will dream of a nasturtium flower floating in a gin and tonic with ice… Nice!

Side window

On a cold sunny morning I like looking through the side windows of the house. This one is surrounded by orchids. Three plants live there, all different sizes. One recently stopped flowering after sending out a second flower spike. One keeps growing but hasn’t flowered again and the last was one we got in the summer and the flowers on it are fading. I think they all need repotting. They sit in clear pots as the roots like to get light to them, I have some orchid medium but last time I potted them on I think I used too much of it and crammed the roots of one of them in too tightly….

Theres a glass frog and another glass piece hanging from the curtain rail. Then the window glass is dusty and covered in cobwebs outside. It’s hard to clean as there is a large shrub in the way outside. Also there is a nesting box which families of Blue Tits use over the spring and summer. So it gets left, and the dappled light from the trees outside give it an atmospheric, olde worlde look. Which is why I like to take photos of it.

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Still growing

Fushia plant in a hanging basket, reaching up to the sky. My Fushias seem to last through the winter (you can buy standard Fushias that can be grown as hedging plants) I love the way the buds swell and their petal skirts swirl out, some are called ballerina among other varieties. I love the mixes of colour you get from pale pinks to dee magenta. The shapes from plain petals to billowing folds. You can get all sorts of flowers for summer but Fushias are at the top of my list.

Morning glory dies

The morning glory plants I nurtured in the summer have died back, their tendrils are collapsing. It took ages to get them to germinate, even in the heat of summer and I only saw one fully open flower. As the temperature cooled the flowers wilted, didn’t continue to grow. It was sad, but I think I will get some more seeds next year, possibly a different type, I would like to grow sky blue ones, not purple and pink which these were.

I jazzed up the photo in photodirector. Makes it more interesting.

Hanging baskets hanging on….

Yes they are still surviving. Plants and flowers that would normally have shrivelled away by now, a series of frosts due this week might do that, but the plucky baskets (OK they are not thinking or animated) have hung on together with the plants around the yard. I guess there must be a microclimate. I will let them stay where they are until its time to get them refilled again in spring next year…

There are various plants in the photos, including nasturtium, fushua, begonia, aster, pelargonium and many more.