Tentative Signs of Spring

There were few things of interest happening in the garden. The Magnolia grandiflora had made several fat seedpods which burst showing their scarlet-pink seeds. 

Cornus florida buds fattened for the following spring and if you bent closely enough to the ground, the very early signs of Helleborus x hybridus seedlings are showing. 

One or two flowers of  Geranium ‘Rozanne’ remain and the hydrangea’s are showing beautiful shades of pink and green. Very little gardening could be done, for despite being mostly dry the wind was bitterly cold. 

Gusty Winds and Random Leaves

As difficult as September was – October proved to be too. Too cold and very wet, with extremely high winds; depositing not only another several thousand dead pine needles from the Stone pine we decided to retain. (I think Philip regretted this decision about 25 or 30 bags ago), but also after a night of severe gusty winds alien leaves that didn’t belong to any plant that we had in the garden, littered the garden and the lawn. Yet despite the cold we were still being annoyed by mosquitoes in the garden.

Several cyclamen (sold every year in the market, none named, just variable seedlings) have returned as well as the white seedlings that came from a white corm of Arthur’s that was possibly 17/18 years old. The hellebores are making new leaves; but I’m waiting a few more days (hopefully mozi free) before I cut the old ones away.

The Stipa is still looking pretty as is Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’, especially on the days when the sky is azure blue.

Rosa ‘Aloha’ is giving random flowers, R. ‘Sympathie’ is making one more bud; but everything else is looking quite sad except the Salvia which this year is more than 6 feet tall. A delight although very untidy, with the most beautiful soft velvety texture and loved by bees and the humming bird moth.

My most wonderful experience this month was a robin that after a lot of squawking outside flew in the open door, very agitated.  After a couple of attempts to catch it and several ‘messages’ left for me on the windowsill it stayed first on Philip’s hand and then on mine. We managed to get some great shots of it close up although it did look as if it'd had a couple of drinks too many. What a privilege.

Early Signs of Autumn



Geranium 'Rozanne'



September has been a difficult month – the garden was very dry. The meadow grass (lawn) was crisp and prickly from lack of water.  Not many plants that I brought from Sussex made a show of any kind. The gold-leaved privet setting its black berries early, Hydrangea heads turning and fading into their subtle hues of pink and green, small green buds on the pink Camellia already set for late winter flowers. The bank of Azalea died off in several places.  As this is planted on a slope watering became a waste of time, we will wait and hope for a recovery. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and G. nodosum ‘Saucy Charlie’ were both cut back at the end of August and Rozanne came back with a couple of flowers – the petals well chewed by some insect or other.

Sternbergia lutea

 When we returned from the UK after an eight day visit, Sternbergia lutea greeted us with one or two flowers already spent. Yet I’d not noticed the narrow foliage before we left.  This does come from Sussex but not from my garden but from the garden of an old friend Lady Hazel Taylor who had a wonderful garden called Duckyls not far from where we lived.  They didn’t flower for me in my Sussex garden but here they love both situations. One in the shelter of the large boulder, the others grows beneath the Liquidambar. These are more mature than the ‘daughters’ removed from them several years ago.

 A deep crimson Antirrhinum -

 grown from seed from my brother-in-law's garden proliferate

around the garden and it is my intention to spread them further.

They don't seem to mind the dryness - where they grow on the top of a granite wall; and some of the plants are now two or three years old with masses of seed to spread around. The photograph to the right shows a pinker shade than the eye sees. 

Phil’s plants produced hundreds of tomatoes.  The tiny plum-shaped ones were the sweetest. His peppers are still growing and his chillies will once again have to be washed and pushed into tall jars with olive oil. A self-seeded cucumber plant gave us sufficient fruit for several weeks.  There were rather too many large seeds in the centre but easily removed. Cucumber is good to eat raw and cooked.

Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’ just coming into flower and Stipa gigantea still holds on to its stems giving delight for several months.

 This cluster of white-flowered Cyclamen are seedlings from the enormous corm that came from Arthur's garden now sadly gone. It was a complete surprise to see so many - all perfect in their whiteness.

Yesterday when I walked around to study what was flowering and what was not – imagine my surprise when I came across the first of the white-flowered wild violets.

A Complete Contrast

In complete contrast to the weather in the UK when so many gardens have been devastated by too much rain; here the heat has been so intense with far too little rain, to make any difference to the soil.  Any watering that has been done was a complete waste of time as the soil is so thin that it just runs away.  A couple of times we managed to gauge the watering to coincide with a good downpour thus maximising the impact of the water but none of it was of much use. This August I cut all the Rudbeckia down before it died; a few plants have. It was setting seed in such profusion that I decided this year to remove them all before they spread across the whole of Lombardia!

Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ also set some seed; which I ripped off and spread before cutting the stem back. One or two white seedling Linaria received the same treatment.  Setting seed is a speciality in this part of Italy and is usually much earlier than it would be in Sussex.  I cheated a little with the photographs of the Rosa rugosa – it isn’t growing in my garden here but was growing around a car park near Morbegno.  We stopped here on the 2^nd August and the flowers had all but finished and these ripe juicy hips were already swollen and nearly ripe.  We had a Rosa rugosa hedge that ran the length of the east boundary of Orchards; so it was a reminder of a former garden.

Philip’s vegetable garden has been growing quite well despite the dryness.  We have had more than enough tomatoes to share with family and friends; green bell peppers too.  After several attempts to grow on the basil plants, they too began to flourish.  In one garden in Lenno the basil stands as small bushes. I am reliably informed that this vegetable garden is fed farm manure each autumn; the results are evident in the good growth of all their herbs and other crops.

Sparrows are always in the garden and for the most part welcome.  They bathe every evening; splashing the newly filled bath across the patio; the blackbirds too.  They all disappear for a few weeks when the sun is too intense; we guess to the woodland that clothes the mountains but then they are back.  We wondered what they were doing in such huge numbers in the vegetable garden? Being selective about the lettuce to pick. The lightest green (no names in Italy I’m afraid when you buy the plantlets from the local market). The mid-green they ignore and too the lollo rosso type.  I wonder why?

Awash with Yellow Loveliness

July was hot and humid with some amazing electrical storms to entertain – most dramatic in the evening just after the sun had set.  The sky washing pink through the navy blue sky with huge white clouds, lighting with sheets of yellow as if the gods were having a laser show.

The Rudbeckia have taken over this year – I’m not complaining – I applaud plants that give me a show now that I’m not to garden too much; but just maybe it’s all a little too yellow and they love the garden so much that the show goes on!

My Gladioli came back for another year, the labels faded by the bright sunlight. These were brought here in the local market.  My Echinacea was also brought here at a rare plant sale at Villa Erba in Como a couple of years ago.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven, the sale was so English, acres of plant stalls, an eclectic mix laid out across the lawns and in the shade of the splendid trees.  Further stallholders for all things hortiultural filled the rooms of the nearby building.

Even less gardening is done at this time of the year.  Philip harvests tomatoes, courgettes, lettuce and an obliging self-sown cucumber plant. Just the one so we won't be inundated like last year. You can’t venture far into the borders because the air is full of mosquitoes.  The peonies from earlier flowerings are making fat seed pods which will give me some autumn colour.

Our blackbirds suffered some fatalities – not we think from the marauding magpies but from one of the neighbouring cats.  When Phil went to take more pictures, the nest was pulled downwards and all were gone.  Then several days later we heard one baby and parents calling in their distressed tone.  Moments later it settled on the concrete trough of  pelargoniums; it was so unafraid that we managed several photographs before it flew away into the top of the Magnolia grandiflora – where it stayed well out of way of the cat and saving Philip a much disliked job (in the heat) of pruning.



Just a few tufty feathers on baby's head





Baby is on the right hand trough



June has been a glorious month with enough rain earlier in the year for some of my Sussex plants to thrive.  This season, the Stipa gigantea flower stems are a good 2-3 feet taller – still not attaining the 8-10 feet that they managed in the UK, but taller never the less and not minding the crowding of the seedling Rudbeckia plants. Alchemilla mollis is more robust too but still shows no signs of being a nuisance.

We’ve had an infestation of caterpillars on most of the rose leaves, which I’ve left, partly because the blackbirds, sparrows and other little birds are collecting them. 



Are they full, sleeping, cooling their back legs?

Many of our blackbird eggs/and or nestling blackbirds were taken by the marauding magpies.  At least three pairs of them were on patrol.  Last Sunday they held a tiding (more like a murder if you ask me); squabbling for half an hour or more before they left.  Were they discussing whether to stay or go? I am glad they took the decision they did. We’ve not seen or heard them since. 

Philip took pictures of the four nestlings blackbirds alive and hungry over a couple of days. 

 

27 June 2012

 

30 June 2012



We spend ages watching the parent’s behaviour.  The male appears to be the hardest working – swooping over the hedge and diving into the laurel hedge some distance from the nest with impressive accuracy. The hedge shivers as he makes his way along to the nest.  The female leaves instantly by the quickest exit – a couple of times when we watched her she flew away a little, turned and rested in the shade of the wooden bench, waited for the male to leave, pecked a couple of ants from the ground and went back in the hedge.

Of course the blackbirds didn’t come from Sussex, or the sparrows but it is a small reminder.  Here we have redstarts, blue tits and robins (which never stay).  We suspect that it is too hot for them and they fly back up the wooded mountain slopes.  A pair of wagtails has joined us in the garden this year too.

The tall lavender (don’t know its name) – a pale lilac is covered from sunrise to sunset with honey bees and bumbles making it difficult to pick any stems.  They are ruthless in their attention to the flowers taking from each open one on the stems.

Not forgetting the Peonies

Paeonia 'Bowl of Beauty'

I brought Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’ with me from Sussex and added a rather insignificant single pale pink bought from the market.  My ‘stock’ peony comes from the tree peony we bought here (at great cost).  This was a delicious dark carmine pink, with pinkish-glaucous leaves.  Within a year a rash of palest pink flowers encircled the single spindly stem of the tree peony.  Despite the advice that peony often dislike disturbance I pulled the plant to pieces and replanted the graft plus its roots on its own, with the shorter growing ‘stock’ in the front of the border.  This year we were rewarded with two flowers on the tree peony and every little stem of the stock plant producing a flower.  It adds to the general haphazard planting on this little border.



Tree Peony



A Garden full of Flowers




Eschscholzia californica



Eschscholzia californica seedpod





We arrived back from our May trip to the UK to a garden full of beautiful flowers.  Many of the roses were flowering, the herbaceous peony and the ‘stock’ of the tree peony, iris and the first of the Eschscholzia californica (that name makes me feel uncomfortable) – California Poppy - which I’d never managed to grow well in Sussex not even as an annual.  Here many are perennial and take care of themselves, seeding freely from their long bean-like pods, which once ripe (a light beige colour) twist and snap open spraying their tightly packed tiny black seeds.  The majority of the flowers are a deep rich orange, a few are a paler shade with a deep orange centre, even less of them are creamy white and last year we had a couple of a light maroon which I loved.

The clusters of tight red buds nestled like rubies against the yellow leaves of Spiraea japonica either ‘Golden Princess’ or ‘Goldflame’.  Unfortunately many of the shrubs in the nursery in our village are not labelled fully.  I grew ‘Goldflame’ in Sussex and I would say that the leaves are more golden but as the conditions are so different I’ll say no more.  It’s lovely especially in the bud stage.  Spires of Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ have survived several years beneath the canopy of the Liquidambar; this year joined by a white seedling.



The April Garden




Centaurea montana 'Alba'



Centaurea montana 'Parham'



We have had some very warm days in April, and some very cold and wet days. It hasn’t halted the roses from beginning to bloom before April was gone.  The garden has been a delight – Centaurea montana 'Alba' and C. m. 'Parham' (from Sussex) are both in flower but they don't clump up in my thin soil. 

Geranium ‘Sarah Louisa’ a G. renardii type, G. 'Elizabeth Yeo' and Clematis ‘Guernsey Cream’ have flowered too.  This clematis just doesn’t thrive – it is in sun but the roots are well shaded and the first bud had already flowered and was nearly spent by the time I noticed it hiding beneath Rosa ‘Aloha’ - which has also had two flowers.  The second bud had made it through and flowered at eye level.  Forget-me-nots proliferate – and we were pleased to see some seedlings growing in our neighbours garden.  A wild white violet that we inherited when we came, has spread rapidly almost at the expense of the purple one.  It is such a sweet little flower with a light fragrance. Geranium nodosum ‘Saucy Charlie’, named after my daughter Sorcha, will flower within the next few days; and a few G. nodosum seedlings are growing nearby – I will wait for them to flower with interest.

I have an article in the next Hardy Plant journal which talks about my garden in Italy – read it if you can and give me some feedback please.



White wild violets



Spring is in the air

Continuing rainfall freshens the greenness of spring and changes the soil from dry and pale to a rich deep brown; lifting the earthy fragrance into the moist air.  A host of sparrows peck hungrily in the grass, sourcing some edible feast.  Male blackbirds squabble noisily within the laurel hedge, dashing out and chasing one another around the garden; moments later followed by a female who is almost shaking her head in dismay.

A solitary robin sits beneath the hedge, pecking at the weedy growth below.

An unnamed yellow iris is flowering still, its secondary buds opening as the primary ones fade. 

A thrust of soft red growth pushes through the phlox, showing promise for new Rosa ‘Sympathie’ stem to be tied in when a little longer. 

It is barely half way through the month yet already the first flower on Rosa ‘Aloha’ has just opened and a rush of buds on the other roses are well forward. 

The Swallowtail saved the day

Last week the Swallowtails and Brimstones were flying over the garden but not stopping – last Friday a Swallowtail stopped by and stayed long enough for me to take a close up.  What a privilege!  Phil was already cutting the lawn – all set to mow the entire forest of Ajuga down – the Swallowtail stopped and he changed his mind.  In many ways cutting the outside edge has made the Ajuga look even more beautiful.  I also managed a brief video of a very large bumble bee – bumbling around the pretty blue flowers.  Nature is such a wonderful thing.

April is here

Today is cloudy so the daisies are sulking; not opening wide their petals as they did in yesterday's sunshine. 
I have a forest of Ajuga flowering in the grass. Fewer butterflies flit from flower to flower today.  Yesterday the lawn was 'alive' with all manor of visiting insects, little bees, hoverflies, a tiny orange coloured butterfly and a larger white (not as large as the cabbage white) enjoying the flowers. Brimstone and swallowtail butterflies fly across the garden, and over the hedge; we obviously have nothing of interest for them.

I lay on the grass to capture a photograph - never realising just how beautiful the tiny ajuga flowers were, in doing so I crushed the foliage of Calaminta, a minty fragrance lingered in the air and on my jeans.  Philip has allowed me another day to enjoy this wildness - only the front lawn had its first cut of the year.