August Bloom Day

Time for the monthly round up in the garden, and Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - thank you Carol!

When I got home from holiday last week, I ran out into the garden to have a look around our patch, it is like that if you are a gardener, you have to go see what has changed or sprung up in your absence - good or bad. Check the house hasn't been burgled, put the kettle on for a cuppa and out in the garden, just how it is!

I am always wide-eyed at the growth in a week in August, infact one of our kids said, "Mum the garden has had a mad hairdo whilst we were away!" and I know what he mean't - so much growth and bulk this time of year in just 7 days.

My other immediate impression is that the season has lilted towards Autumn, listing awkwardly like a ship caught by an an unexpected wind, trying to maintain a course but bowing to an inevitable sideways slide off course. Beyond the garden fence, the wheat has been cut and down our lane, the green and red combine-harvester sits in a field, ready for the next day's work. This seems earlier than usual, but the whole year has been wildly out of kilter - weeks of snow and ice before Christmas, two months with sunshine and no rain at all in Spring and now apple trees weeping apples in bucketfuls, blackberries blackening the hedgerows and in the garden, golden hues, burn't oranges and drying seedpods nudging the season towards Autumn. Days are still mild and there is no pinch in the air yet but early in the morning the grass is heavier with dew and in the late afternoon the rays of soft sunshine seem more slanting and illuminating than in midsummer. Everywhere summer flowers have peaked, and taking their place dahlias, cosmos, plox, Japanese anemones, perovskia and echinacea are keeping the garden in colour. And those colours are most often darker, richer, punchier and unrepentently so.

I have cleared two large areas of annuals in the cutting patch to plant seeds for next year - at least a month earlier than last summer. I just can't quite believe that the crumble-eating season seems to have arrived here already, but plums, apples and blackberries won't wait, so crumbles in mid- August it will be! Below I have posted some photos of the intimations of Autumn some whispering, sometime singing full blast across the garden.

apples ripening on the tree at the bottom of the garden

crocosmia 'Lucifer'

calendula 'Indian Prince' above and below

Fennel in flower

Dahlias in bud and flower

dahlia, single form beloved of pollinators

poppy seedhead

hollyhocks complete with pollen bar for the bees

cosmos sulphureus

dark cornflowers and poppy seedheads

annual scabious

bupleurum gone to seed