Garden view

This week, my garden has been half warm autumn-half cold winter

November Roses

This is a gift from my garden.
An unexpected one - fresh fragrant roses in November.

I took the photos in the evening dim light, so the focus might have tricked me here and there :)

Colour Left-overs

It's the end of October and my garden has been neglected this fall. The weather has had ups and downs and the gardener was busy and tired and (at times) sick.

This morning there was light and there was mist and I went outside with my camera.
I found bits of colour and spider webs.

Let's start with the roses

Here is a group of buds from perhaps my best Tantau rose - Garten Traume.
The spiders used it as structure for their web.
Rather romantic, wouldn't you say?

 Another Tantau, not so successful in my garden, Gospel.
It's got red and fragrant blooms, but flowered really seldom in my garden and, as you can see, now its leaves are sick.

 

 Moving on to a David Austin rose, a great great fragrance and pretty foliage - it's Brother Cadfael who is putting out a few more buds just before winter

 This, as a nice gentleman suggested a couple of posts ago, might be Mrs. Isaac Pereire, an old rose.
It is a perfect rose and I feel so grateful to have found it in my garden.

 This one is maybe my favourite rose right now - Lady Emma Hamilton, by David Austin.
It's got it all: strong delicious fragrance, a prolific bloomer, perfect foliage, pretty flowers and no disease in my wet garden.

This is my favourite dahlia. The colour is more chocolatey than I could capture it and it has a slight chocolate fragrance, too.

An echinaceea purpurea with a nice seed head

Clematis Jackmanii finally decided to give me its first blooms in over a year since its planting - now, at the end of autumn!
Can't say I mind though...

Probably my favourite flower besides roses: geranium Rozanne. Such pretty flowers and such a long blooming time. Practically from spring to the first frost, when it dies back only to return stronger next spring.

I've still got some love (in the mist)

Pretty pink sweet peas that I've grown from seed 

And a new favourite: Japanese anemone. So very pretty and delicate

Even the back side of the anemone is very very good looking ... or is it just me? :)

Two of my primulas started blooming and I guess they'll keep on doing it through the winter.
Amazing little plants!

 

One of my blueberry bushes went nuts - it believes it's spring time. Look at that little flower!

Strawberry Mara des bois is still fruiting. I have some problems with the bugs who eat them, but I've got a natural insecticide that I plan to use this autumn and next spring. 

And my raspberries acted in a strange manner by setting their main crop in september-october. There are still a few pieces of fruit on.

My neighbour's Japanese maple tree has amazing autumn colours

And my tree is also nice. I don't know its name.

As you could see before, the spiders have done their way around my garden.
Here's an agapanthus seed head...

...and a nest in my Susan Williams-Ellis rose bush

 

 The colours of autumn are pretty amazing, but I already miss my summer garden.

 

This is a post that I began on the 31st of October, but finished a few days later.

September in My Garden Through Instagram

Summer is gone and in Luxembourg we've gotten straight into winter.

 

I happened to be in the garden with my kids and my phone, so on a rainy day I saw the beauty in the summer end and took some photos.

 

Geranium Rozanne doesn't seem to know it's cold and raining. I love this plant that dies back in winter only to come back stronger the next spring.

 

It's alchemille in French ... can't quite remember its English name, but isn't it pretty with all those rain-drops?

I bought this plant to use for my bouquets next summer.

 

Something that makes my kids go whooo! ahhh! in the garden :)

Other things, some not featured here, would be strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and ... cherry tomatoes :)

 

This year I decided I was gonna give my pretty roses the chance to put out some fruit. So I'm not gonna force them to give my more autum blooms, but I'm gonna patiently wait for these cute things:

(this is Graham Thomas)

 

All I can say here is: mums!!!

This is a picture my son insisted I should take, so I must post it in case he decides to read my blog when he learns to :)
If you can't quite tell, it's an ant's nest (yuck!) - he loves all bugs and thinks they're pretty

 

Lady Emma Hamilton must have been my favourite rose this summer - it's quite the perfect mix: gorgeous blooms, great folliage, almost care-free, very floriferous and - and - and that amazing fragrance that no other rose has matched.

Now it looks so romantic to me in its autumn colours

 

Artemis by Tantau was a good surprise. Although I was disappointed to see it's smaller than I had imagined and it's almost fragrance free (a very important aspect for me), it has these pretty blooms and it gives and gives.

 

This is a very pretty combo that I might have to let go for next summer, as the echinacea grows too big

 

This was a sunflower head - yeah, I bet you could tell. What you might no know is that the plant was a present from the birds who dropped the seed and, in return for pretty blooms, I let them have the seeds back and we've enjoyed watching them feed with great success as you can see:

...and since we're at the edibles, here are the colours of the blueberry bush and one last berry waiting to ripen

and tomato Marmelade, not quite there yet, but might make it into a jar of pickles

 

Welcome autum!

Please turn into an indian summer!

Celebrating the Fall

Some Flowers at the End of July

I've finally managed to take a bit of time in the garden with my camera instead of just using my phone while gardening.

I love to take pictures using my cam, but I always have so little time for the garden that I rather use it to tend to it.

I could not afford spending that long in the garden so I can take pictures of every bloom, but I went here and here, to things that are most interesting to me right now.

In the flower beds in front of the house, there is one bed with roses planted by people who lived in this house before me and this year I added some seeds in between the rose bushes and now I've got, among other things, these beautiful corn flowers – I confess they are among my favourite wild flowers and I would love to have a patch full of them.

Also blue, and also a favourite, is this very pretty love-in-the-mist. I simply adore this plant – its delicate foliage, its jewellery-like blooms, the cute seed-heads...plus, it makes for a great companion to roses.

Next year I will certainly sow more seeds

I also have white ones

These drum-stick alliums are a bit of a disappointment, as they don't stand upright and they bold in a very anaesthetic way. I will dig them out once they're done blooming and dig them deeper and close together, maybe that'll work better because I really like their flower heads.

Now, back to the roses in front of the house - this one is such a beauty! It has absolutely perfect blooms, it's very floriferous and it smells divine.
I wish I knew its name...

This is Garten Traume, a rose bred in Germany by Tantau. I have it as a standard rose and this breeder also sells them quite cheap compared to David Austin or Meilland. The thing is, not all his roses are of a great quality, at least they're not showing it in their first year. Well, Garten Traume is a good one - a lot of blooms, repeats well and has a very nice strong fragrance. A couple of things I don't like that much - the branches are rather slim, so they cannot properly support the blooms and the flowers never completely open and simply wilt from one day to the next.

 This is my most recent David Austin (Jubilee Celebration) - I found it at a local nursery that sells DA roses and I absolutely fell in love. The blooms are something else - a very nice blend of appricot and pink and pointed petals in a very impressive number. I must take its picture when it is completely open, but with this heat, the flowers are spent quite quickly.

Taking you back to the front of the house, another rose I found when I moved in is this one, that I identified as David Austin's Pilgrim. It formed a small climber, without a support to climb on, so this year it kind of fell to the ground – not a success from the point of view of its shape, but a profusion of blooms that made several nice bouquets.

Now it's all pruned and I can already see some new shoots.

And this is a present from the birds that I feed - they "planted" several suflowers around the garden. Although most of them are not in the right places, I will keep them all and let them turn to seed so the birds can take advantage of them once again.
Aren't they just amazing flowers?