Brr...
Silver Pear Blossom
Welcome to October - I'd like to say a 'warm welcome', but those words are sadly inappropriate. October is teasing me by being rather chilly. First thing this morning it was zero degrees Celcius in my house. Brr... Yesterday I stayed inside all day with the log burner blazing merrily. I did web-gardening and fell asleep twice, reading my book by the fire.
Hopelessly busy...
Have a hopelessly busy weekend full of singing commitments. Came home from a long rehearsal this afternoon - what was that lovely smell? Aha! Freshly mown grass. Non-Gardening Partner had mowed the back house lawns. Sooooo happy!
What's new?
So what's new in the garden? The crab-apple trees are in flower. Yeay! My pots of bright daffodils flower on, seemingly with no end in sight. The cherry blossom wave continues - two trees in the Driveway Garden have finished, one is mid-flower.
Soon the Pond Paddock trees will start up, as will the pink Kanzans (the big tree down the driveway, and the smaller one in the Island Ned which marks the resting place of dearly departed Fluff-Fluff the cat). Very fluffy flowers for a very fluffy cat. Nice!
Corydalis
Blue flowers...
And there are blue flowers everywhere - Forget-Me-Nots, Corydalis, clumps of Muscari, self-sown pansies. Totally charming.
Right. NGP, that supreme mower of lawns, has just arrived back with fish'n'chips for our evening meal. All is well, if a little cool.
Sunday 2nd October
Was out singing all day, came home to more freshly mown lawns. Yeay! Slumped on the TV couch, not intending to do any thinking. Didn't last long! Peeped out the windows at my garden and started wondering if there were any more blossom trees flowering. And also wondered if the deciduous Azaleas had started. And then did absolutely nothing to check either of these wonderful possibilities out. Shame!
Monday 3rd October
Today I have two more singing rehearsals to go to. This is all getting a bit silly - quite the wrong time of year to be busy going out, not able to be home in my garden. But have checked for new blossom. Yeay! No Azaleas as yet, but said hello to Mount Fuji and the two weeping Silver Pear trees in the orchard, reached by ducking underneath the big pink rhododendron, getting paler but still looking very beautiful.
Big Pink Rhododendron
And now there is possible bad news for the next few days. A cold snap (actually a 'polar vortex', which sounds much more serious) is forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, with hints of snow to sea level. Humph. Not appropriate at all, and totally unacceptable for October.
Better than nothing?
But I have managed a half an hour's weeding around the house, accompanied by some discrete blasts of weed-killer on the dandelions. Better than nothing, yes?