end of season

Yes it's finally the end of the season for fresh flowers here, ending with Alison and Dan's wild mid November wedding where we used dahlias, eryngiums, scabious, rudbeckias, lots of seed heads, yellow thistle like centaurea, purple little thistle like centaurea (I have got a totally blank spot about my late season centaureas but they are very useful!) and even the odd delphinium. Now we still have some tulips to plant and have just popped in 30 luscious peonies - I love planting peonies as this is thinking of the future, imagining what they will be like when we start cropping in 3 years time!

Then it's on to trees, I'm still cogitating about what to plant and where but I am planning on tree-ing up the field for more shelter and structure. I so wish I had planted more trees right at the beginning but I didn't know whether anything was going to work then and wanted to start slowly and feel my way. The hornbeams have now grown up well, it has taken 4 years to make a good solid windbreak hedge with then, the orchard is struggling in the face of all the wind but one day I'm sure it will be settled and productive. I'm seriously impressed with some of the big cotoneasters which grow like triffids, and I'm looking forward to the now maturing willow plot next spring....

Today is a landmark day as I'm having The Mound moved. Behind the cottage is a flat area which is currently taken up with shrubs and perennials and veg on one side, there has been a parking area on the other and in the centre a large circular earth mound with a little cave in the middle. It is not an ancient burial mound but was my husband's idea of where to put the spoil when we built on to the cottage in 2002. I went along with the idea but it's never been something I have loved. It looks glorious for six to eight weeks of the year when completely awash with ox-eyes, but otherwise is a maintenance nightmare and a block to the view and to everything else. So today it goes. Hurrah! Hooray! In the spring we shall have my daughter's wedding marquee in the same space, (a bit risky to put it on the field in case of what used to be normal April weather) then I'm thinking a bit of formality in what is otherwise a completely informal garden and field. All terrifically exciting..... I intended to post photos but once again the card reader is refusing to function. One day technology and I will have an improved relationship but not yet, I am currently waiting to see if Apple people have managed to salvage the hard drive from my last laptop which had almost all my photos from last year stored on it. I know I should always back everything up but No, I didn't. So I can blame no-one else but myself and say once again Must Do Better.

I'm not doing Christmas trade this year as it has been a bit of a year on the personal front and I need to enjoy a little less frenetic time and some proper planning. Maybe even get that book written finally! And we have saved lots of seeds which will be available in spring, and there is even a slightly new look in the offing thanks to one of my son's colleagues at the branding agency for which he works. It should all be launched in April, if I can bear to wait that long!