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Is it grey, damp, dark and chilly outside? Need some warm colour and a reminder of the beauty your spring and summer held? Do you want a flower fix?! Then join me for A Week of Flowers! On Monday 1st December my annual meme will begin, where I invite you all to join me in posting a colourful photo (or even several photos) of a flower from your garden each day for a whole week. Simply leave a comment on my daily post, leaving a link to your own post so that everyone can find it. Together we can chase away the winter blues!  

An unusually early hard freeze took us by surprise last week.  Although temperatures often dip this low mid winter (and even much lower), the -11°C at night and  -4°C daytime high on Sunday signalled an abrupt end to the gardening season. All the lovely Chrysanthemums I was counting on for indoor colour are probably history, but when they thaw out perhaps I will be able to salvage some. (Always the optimist!) In the meantime I found some other materials for a vase this week, as I join Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for her weekly meme. This lovely pansy was looking sad in the greenhouse, so I picked one of the last remaining flowers. I hope it will recover and carry on flowering a bit longer as it is well protected. I actually found two Scabiosa ochroleuca still intact, with one of the pretty seedheads too. Then I added the Allium seedheads (from A. ‘Millennium’ I think) and a sprig of Perovskia and one of Miscanthus. And now a brief update on the greenhouse for tho...

My seven larches (the Lärchenwald/Märchenwald), planted exactly five years ago today.

Once again I am joining Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for her Monday meme. The Euphorbia ‘Miner’s Merlot’ I used last week still looks fresh, so I have simply added to it today with two flowers: Aster ageratoides ‘Ezo Murasaki’ and Chrysanthemum ‘Anastasia’. Join us for a cuppa in the greenhouse! Anastasia not only looks lovely in the November garden, she smells lovely too. I am not sure I had noticed this before, but while trimming my Buddleias in preparation for the winter yesterday I could detect a light and delicious honey-like perfume and kept wondering where it was coming from. It wasn’t until I brought the flowers indoors that I realized it is this pretty pink Chrysanthemum. It is a very delicate scent and not at all overpowering indoors. What a bonus! The other aster-like flower is a very late flowerer too. To be honest, I am not keen on Aster ageratoides ‘Ezo Murasaki’ as the foliage is (to me) ugly, and the flowers are so tiny and so late that they make virtually no i...

In October I started a new ‘series’ of posts where mid-month I choose my five favourite plants of the month. Please do join in if you wish to. On looking back, did anyone notice I posted SIX last month!!! Whoops! Well, this month there is less to choose from, although that makes it easier to pick out just five plants that really stand out while others are dying back. The first one I have picked for November is my Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ … In August I was worried she might not flower at all, as it was so incredibly dry. I gave her some water in late August and a week or so later she was in full bloom – later than usual, but perhaps she is now making up for lost time!  Even after several frosty nights, she was still keeping her chin up until well into November and is only just starting to fade. Another white flower making a statement in the late autumn garden is Aster ‘Ashvi’ . This is the last aster to flower in my garden, from mid October until the end of November....

Today we are celebrating the 12th anniversary of this wonderful meme thought up by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden . Thank you Cathy, for hosting so tirelessly and never missing a week, and for inspiring me to go out into the garden on a cold November day to find something to pick, to bring indoors and share!  Cathy has invited us to participate in her anniversary challenge for our vase this week, to make it more fun; use a pun and a prop . Well, despite the cold and damp I found a gem. In fact I struck gold with this ruby red Euphorbia amydaloides ‘ Miner’s Merlot ‘. The full-bodied red caught my eye while tidying up some dying stems last week. I immediately started digging deep into the depths of my min(e)d to find some puns about miners and red wine…. And as props, I unearthed a silver ‘ spade ‘ spoon and a  glass of – blackcurrant juice! (No wine glasses or wine here I’m afraid!) and my Man of Many Talents found this (miner’s?) hard hat and a headlamp for m...