New paintings and regular art updates.
Two hanging baskets, one below the other, have gone mad this year!
A column of plants
Chlorophyll filled
Turning a house
Into a garden.
Green with splashes
Of colours, gaudy
Reminds me of
The sculptor
Gaudi!
A mosaic of flowers
Crushed together,
Late summer skills
Gardening thrills!
🔥
And humid
Watering the yard
The moisture level outside is about 85%, I’ve got the fan on and the windows closed to keep the heat out. All my hanging baskets had wilted this afternoon despite heavy rain a couple of days ago. Sorry to go on about my garden but I enjoy showing it off. It does need work though. X
We don’t have droughts like other countries but we do sometimes have heathland fires occasionally. We are more prone to flooding. Apparently we have tornadoes but I’ve never seen one and they’re only small scale here.
Weather, what the British talk about. X
We bought home a boot full of hanging baskets today. We went a bit mad and ordered a few too many. With these and the ones on the back seat we had eight in the car. We have got to go back and collect two more. I hang them two at a time, one under another so that when I water the top one the bottom gets watered too.
We order them in April dand then wait for them to grow for a couple of months. They are usually ready for collection in the second week of June. It is mad, but I love them. They finish off the garden. Now I’ve got to hang them!
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.
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.
They are wilting…
Every day they are declining, wilting, leaves and flowers crumpling. We still haven’t had a frost but we have had cold rain.
Once they are gone we won’t have flowers till April or May. A few plants might be able to overwinter. I’m still thinking of getting some winter flowering pansies and a few cyclamen.
The main decline is amongst the plants are the begonias, their soft stems hold lots of water but I think their cells are only thinly walled and they split in the cold weather. Fushias are stronger, their woody stems hold out against the cold….
And then I’ve got baby raspberries… Weird!
I’m still waiting, on the 3rd November, for my hanging baskets to get knocked off by the frost. October was the fifth wettest since the 19th century. And it was wet, and windy. A couple of ex hurricanes blew over us, the sky stayed battleship grey for a lot of the month. The wind makes our windows whistle and moan in the kitchen if its from the South West, and the noise moves to the front of the house if the wind shifts to the North East. That’s why the plants do well round the back, they are in a little sheltered micro climate. So I’m waiting to see what happens tomorrow… And not just in the garden!
It’s mid October and the baskets just keep flowering. This ones on the garden shed, another sheltered spot. I would recommend ordering them from a small nursery or farm, they generally end up filled with more and different flowers that have matured more by the time you get them. I usually ask for lots of colour and the lady that plants them up will put in lobelia, begonias, fushias, trailing petunias, and other flowers I can’t remember the names of. Then we fill our own baskets with pelagoniums, small sunflowers and trailing tomato plants (this year). I hang baskets one below another. Then set up pots on the wall and the ground. Finally we’ve grown a few, like this one, on the shed. Those have had nasturtium seeds put in them and have given a lovely late flowering display. In all the sadness of this year they have given me great joy.
Views of the pear tree. They are getting bigger and a small branch has broken off. The sun was out again today although the wind is coming from the north and cooling things down. My hanging baskets have just started to wilt a bit since we hot this dry spell. I’m watering them, but the coll nights and the big gaps in the new fence are making the yard a bit cooler. The time will come when everything dies back. I’m pleased though that I’ve found a small courgette on one of my plants!
Today we had the task of replacing the plants, hanging baskets and pots in the back yard that we had taken down to have a new fence put in. The next door neighbour had allowed us in to get at his side of the wall so we’ve helped him by clearing back the brambles and Ivy and cleared his path so he can get to the back gate.
Now the pots are back I can see which ones have suffered from drought and the cold. They were all crammed together in our garden (on the other side of the house) but it was cold last night so some things have wilted. We have a real microclimate in the yard and it’s always a bit warmer there. Hopefully they will bounce back in the coming days.
