The end of the growing season

Okay. Okaaaaaay. The hardware is sorted. The laptop died. The temporary laptop (that great missing ‘o’ machine) did a stirling job while the other one was being repaired.  The photos were transferred, mislaid, waylaid, and now I seem to be all back where I belong. One machine.

The iPhone screen also had to be replaced during this absence so you can well understand how thrilling it is to have all one’s toys back where they belong.

I can even email my photos to my repaired iPhone and size the pictures as I send. This will save me ages and ages each week. (I have been resorting to Gimp, the picture programme.) Hurrah.

And yes, let’s have that salutary reminder of how lucky we are that I am not writing out these blog posts in long hand and posting them all to you! With line drawings. Or the amateurish watercolour of the garden done by my fair hand.

So on with the show.

The curtain comes down on the potager for the year. I have done what I promised. Pesto galore. Three monster batches of tomato sauce.  I wish you had a scratch and sniff button here . The aromas from the kitchen were divine.

And I’m sure you all do this: but making and freezing the pesto in long ice cube trays makes for an insouciance in the kitchen come supper time so much easier to pull off.

I never make time for proper evening meals. I’m too busy playing outside.

Or in this instance, cleaning my potting shed ready for the pots that need to overwinter.  The north side for pots. The south (sunnier) side for the cuttings.

And yes, the whole enterprise (it took an entire afternoon) was spent looking for my favourite trowel. Yes, yes, I know it is somewhere in the garden; but I had rather hoped I had shoved it in a bucket in my very messy shed.

Still, nothing beats a good excuse to tidy. And take cuttings.

The sedums (oh mighty little plants) all took well from the propagation blitz last month. And now it’s the turn for the Choisya Aztec Pearl.

Fingers crossed these ‘take’. I will know next spring.

I haven’t found any plants to buy this autumn and the cold has already begun.

And let me wish you a Happy Halloween. Or Toussaint as we say here in France. All Saints.

Less dressing up as skeletons. More purchasing forced chrysanthemums from your local funeral parlour to lay on the grave of your ancestors. All across the country.