An autumnal feel with pops of summer colour

I've been meaning to write this post since last weekend when I popped out into the garden and found more colour than I was expecting to see. I'd convinced myself that everything had turned autumnal almost overnight - and it almost did - but it seems my garden isn't quite ready to give up its colour. With a blast of sun shining on it too, it'd be easy to convince ourselves that maybe it was more like summer after all, but only for a moment!

The blue geranium seemed to be enjoying the sun as much as me, I'd not noticed before but it almost has a white ring at its centre as well as tie and dye like petals!

The patio pots I planted up at the start of June are only just coming into their own, as you can see I've still flowers in bud but these impatiens are doing well, even if they're a bit nibbled. I'd bought some really small lucky dip plug plants and while they were good value, they've taken a while to actually flower in our north facing garden so it's not something I think I'll be doing again next year.

The hardy fuchsia provides another pop of colour as we walk up the garden and despite giving it a serious hacking earlier in the year, it's still flowering and is giving the pyracantha berries in the background a good run for their money.

The sedums are just starting to add some autumnal pink in the garden, we've these throughout the garden in clumps which works to unify our space. I was especially pleased to see these looking so well as these are the ones planted in my gabion planters, I'm taking it that they're happy there!

In the sleeper bed I'd randomly planted some of my seedlings - and then promptly forgot about them - until now that is, this beautiful cosmos has just started to flower and it's great to see its vibrancy as I turned the corner of our garden.  I quite like the idea of forgetting where I'd planted seedlings, as it does bring a nice and unexpected surprise, well as long as MOH doesn't mistake them for weeds as they're not marked that is!

I've also discovered a little friend looking for a new home. It must have been quite traumatic for him/her while I was watering the plants.  I hope I haven't washed away any chance of a family they'd been busy with.  He was persuaded to look for alternative accommodation gently, and encouraged to hop over the lawn back into the beds for safety, so hopefully he'll be fine. We see several toads in our garden, and hear them rustling their way through the garden after dark "on manoeuvres" and we definitely have less slugs and snails where we see the toads, so they're a good thing to have.

Not such a good thing to have right now is squirrels.  They are fast becoming the bane of our garden, what with their digging and sudden penchant for my succulents. I've many leaves that have come away from the plant, and while I know I can grow new plants from them, and I'm in danger of being overrun by succulents, it'd be much better for the leaves to stay attached in the first place.

The squirrel is also popping into the greenhouse and digging, not in a helpful way though. In much the same way as he's - or they've - been digging in the grass. MOH is far from pleased about how many holes he has in his grass at the moment, and if I were the squirrel I would be giving MOH quite a wide berth.

On the plus side I should be able to fill another trug with all these new succulent plants, or start my own succulent business!!

Near the patio the hibiscus has continued to flower, it seems to still be enjoying the weather although I've got my eye on it and the forecast. I'm still in two minds what to do with it over the winter, but a more pressing concern is what to do with it when we're away in October, in case there's an unexpected cold snap.

I found some pots at the back of the garden which I'd also potted up with those tiny bedding plants that are in full flower and conveniently they were red and white so they've been brought down to the front of the garden to keep the hibiscus company, and with the added advantage of giving the illusion of colour throughout the garden when looking from the house.

The pear tree at the back of our garden is full of pears. We gave the tree quite a severe pruning in the Spring and this is how it repays us, I'm not hopeful for the fruits being edible though as we've not had much success in the past. They are rock hard and the longer we leave them on the tree, the more likely that pesky squirrel is to have sunk his teeth into them.  

If you've any ideas on how I can win with these pears, I'd love to hear them.

Fox-proofing my greenhouse

Before we left for France as well as getting as many plants as we could planted in the allotment - it took at least two hours just potting them out! - we also needed to rig something up to make my greenhouse fox proof.

This wasn't on a whim, but because I wanted to leave the door ajar but as our neighbour has four fox cubs living in her garden I knew I'd need some kind of barrier.  Looking around in MOH's shed I found the chicken wire I was looking for and some random bits of wood he'd sawed for, actually I'm not sure what for.  But they were both commandeered for my plan, along with our staple gun and MOH.

I had a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve and MOH set about stapling the chicken wire to the blocks, which I hoped would act as a weight at the bottom of my chicken wire contraption.

And once it was in place, it looked as if it might work.

Now we needed to work out how much chicken wire we needed, we did that and added a bit to be safe,  MOH cut the wire and added a further block of wood to the top edge.  I'd hoped to be able to use the fixings of the greenhouse to attach it, but that wasn't to be as on closer inspection they were rivet-type things, not removable screws.

And with it assembled, in true workman style MOH downed tools. Most likely with permission as I'd yet to ready the greenhouse for our holiday. I sowed some squash and courgette seeds, hoping they'd germinate while we were away and so far six of them have and if I'm lucky there'll be some more yet.  I also upended plastic bottles full of water into my greenhouse bed so that they wouldn't be entirely without water for the two weeks (if you try this, don't forget to pierce holes in the lids otherwise it won't be much use).

With the greenhouse ready it was time to hang the chicken wire contraption. We stuck the ends of the chicken wire around the greenhouse fixings and used some extra wires to attach it to the left-hand side of the door.  On the right-hand side I hooked it over the handle twice and that seemed to secure it.

To be extra sure - because I don't trust those pesky foxes - I put a couple of bricks on the wood at the bottom of the door and strategically placed some pots to make it awkward for them if they wanted to try and to provide and extra barricade and make it clear that there was really "nothing to see here."

Was I being overly cautious?

It's true the foxes (cubs or otherwise) hadn't tried to get into the greenhouse before, but they have increased their forays into our garden as they've grown. The advice to deter foxes is to make things tricky for them, and this certainly did that.  We're often in the garden of an evening and at weekends and our presence is a deterrent, with the garden empty for two weeks I had a feeling they'd be making use of the extra space so I wanted to be sure that my cucumbers in the greenhouse and other seedlings didn't come to any damage. Once you've grown plants from seed you have a feeling of responsibility, don't you?

So did it work?

That has to be a resounding yes! It was still in place when we got home on Saturday and there was plenty of evidence of the foxes in our garden, yes that and they'd started to dig small holes in the lawn - which MOH wasn't too impressed about. 

Infact it's worked so well it's still there!  It's a bit more awkward to get into the greenhouse than before but knowing I can leave the door open is well worth that.

Do you have trouble with wildlife in your garden? What measures do you take to deter them?

Black & White photo: Is it real?

Today's black and white photo is from one of our cycle rides towards Tower Bridge on the Thames Path.  At one point in Rotherhithe the path leads you into the car park of the Hilton Docklands Riverside. We cycle through the car park and around the dock and out into Rotherhithe Street before picking up the Thames Path again a little further along.

The hotel is right on the river and has great views over to Canary Wharf and it's not where you expect to spot any wildlife. So when we saw this fella on his pontoon, it took us a while to work out if he was real or not.

After staring at him for a while - yes I know, how rude - he moved his head. So yes, he's real and quite a beauty who looks proud of where he lives!  

And it'd be great if this was Heron Quay, but sadly it wasn't.