The end of the flower season

october flowersWell it is mid October; I ought not be surprised. But I fear I am coming towards the end of my flower season.

I just staggered out with my bucket and secteurs, determined to find enough blooms for Manou, Lydia, Aurore and Elodic.

It’s incredibly blustery today so everything was swaying down in the potager.

I paused to remove a few brazen slugs on the brassicas, and then surged in.

There were some dahlias left; but a lot of the stems had bent under the weight of huge neglected-for-a-week blooms.

And I still have tithonias, some zinnias, rudbeckias, and of course verbena bonariensis. october flowers 1

I have plenty of lovely pannicum flowers left – but not for much longer – and naturally green oak branches for cohesion in the bouquets.

So I managed to put together four bouquets plus one large one for the house.

That’s my favourite come back to the farm chore out of the way.

october flowers 3And now all I need to do is battle my way down to the stables to put away the newly repaired lawn mower.

The poor thing has the look of a machine that has just emerged from an urgent stay at hospital. Shaken and rattled but now repaired. But fragile.

The repair men took off a lot of extraneous bits as they are merely decorative. And this machine is forced to do work that suburban lawns just don’t encounter.   So it’s stripped down and a bit basic, but ready for another huge end of year session.

Not this week though; we have a lot of stormy weather coming.  were back

And for the Artur fans out there: he is very well indeed. He looks like he climbed into his favourite tin plantinng bucket a week ago and is not ready to emerge.

I went up yesterday and surprised him in a deep late afternoon snooze session.

He didn’t have time to be cross with me for abandoning him for a week. I had a lovely yowling, purring, drooling session on my chaise longue; and that was just me.