equinoctial garden

The carnival of Sunflowers is over for the bees and the people (seeds left for the birds), and the long Fox Glove bombus party is a season ago but there are many Survivors in the garden, budding and blooming and playing on.

A Cobea bud! Also known as Cup and Saucer vine and Cathedral Bells, i grew this plant last year but had no flowers. I was fearing the worst again this year but spotted a couple of odd shaped leaves while i was washing up and rushed out to find they were buds!

Each stage of the flower's development is distinct and wonderful

and surprising: the flowers are unfurled for a day before they become purple.

i think this is a tea rose. My (nice side) next door neighbours were having their last remaining patch of earth concreted over several years ago and thoughtfully offered me their only cultivated plant. I rushed round with my spade and a bucket and rescued this lovely rose. I took these pictures at dawn last Thursday. These particular blooms have now been deadheaded but there are a few buds left on the bush.

i love Dahlias. I grow them every year from seed as i have usually slipped into a seasonal decline around the time i should be digging up and storing the bulbs. I am hoping to try and do the right thing this year, although i am a little disappointed to have had none of the big scarlet pompom blooms promised in the picture on the front of the seed packet. Nearly all of this years Dahlia are white and chrome yellow. These two are the exceptions.

When i became a gardener, my Mother told me i must grow Morning Glory and so i have done every year - sometimes a bit late, like this year, but they have obliged happily at the last minute. My friend Sally is a gardener now and i have passed on the lore.

This is a Helichrysum flower, on it's way out but fading with such grace, humility and quiet elegance - an example to us all. Snigger. But doesn't it look like a young Edwardian girl, gazing at the sun setting on the sea? Perhaps the Channel, perhaps she can hear the artillery....oh stop it.

I grew some new Astors this year. The colour hasn't transferred to screen very well, they are much mauver. I have a clump by the fish pond that i transplanted from my Grandmother's front garden when the family house was sold which are much paler and more delicate, proper Michaelmas Daisies.

The Datura are coming into their own now. I grew 10 this year, gave some away and have 5 or 6 in the garden. They deserve an entire post to themselves really. Sally alerted me to their extreme toxicity so i have a wash after hugging them now.

 These 2 little flowers are doing very well. Queenie is 5 and a half months old now! We assume NoNo is about a month older, 'though Queenie is taller all of a sudden. I'm hoping to be able to make a double appointment at the vets for their spayings so that they can get through the difficult day and convalescence together.

 

Nana will look after them.