The Gypsy Garden

September has been a beauty this year. With a flush in her cheeks and with a twinkle in her eye, she has begun casting her golden light over the land. I've remembered all that I love about this brilliant month. It is such a fleeting and magical time (and not just because my birthday is in this month!). Really, that deal summer made with winter, the one where winter agreed to her turning to gold and crimson and dancing out with an entourage of swirling leaves and flocking birds, was a clever deal.

 

It starts off with the subtlest blush in the mornings. Even green is a little weary of itself and longs for a bit of flash

 

The garden begins to look a little ragged around the edges, like someone who has spent too many nights out dancing under the moon and now they are a little muddied and their hair a bit wild

 

I've felt like dancing myself these last few weeks. Somehow, this season, with its insouciance stirs a little gypsy in my soul. (My English grandmother always claimed to my dad that there was some gypsy blood on her side. We never knew if this was true, but it seemed terribly romantic to me as a child.)

 

In recent years I've become interested in gypsy music. For an excellent radio documentary on the original gypsy music click here.

I know what is coming. I know the lassitude that deep winter brings. I know all about the days ahead of curling up on the couch with a good book and a glass of wine, candles lit in the late afternoon.

Until those days come, I am dancing in the golden light. To say goodbye to summer, my husband and I waltzed in the back garden in the late evening light. I said my own goodbyes in a field under the stars looking out over the ravine. But today it's time for one last joyous spin, and to thumb our noses at waiting winter. Join me, won't you?

Can the band stay late tonight...?

I am feeling the bittersweet ache of late summer when cool evenings begin to brush alongside warm days. Too soon, my heart calls out, I need more time in the garden. Time to sit, to soak, to pretend it will always be like this.

A star of my late summer garden is the hosta, 'Royal Standard'. I have a pair of them framing a collection of white astilbe and goatsbeard, fronted with some rose daphne. I love their gleaming, corrugated, almost lime, foliage. However, unusual for a hosta, the real draw, for me, is the white, scented flowers.

The flowers are just coming into their own right now and hold sway with their fresh evening perfume

The funnel shaped flowers look like the skirts of long, white, hem-stitched cotton dresses

Elegant, demure, and just a little flirty, they lead the evening waltzes at the beachside dance halls in the old summer villages.

I'm not ready to hear the last song yet, so keep dancing girls, keep dancing.

The Richness of the Season

Just a quiet photo to capture that perfect zenith of the garden before it turns to gold. I do love the richness of August - back lane raspberries, dragonflies humming, the first blush on the apple trees that hang over the fences.

A fresh flush of flowers on my Morden Snow Beauty. Only this time it is not alone. Behind it is a Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' and the Spirea japonica 'Shirobana', a lovely spirea whose flowers start off dark pink and fade through varying shades of pink and white. These shrubs are part of a larger bed with repeated plantings of these and other shrubs as well as a few trees.

This is where we start to feel like it has been like this forever - only screen doors between us and the universe. Skirts and shorts, flowered blouses, sandals by the back door, hair swept up in a ponytail, and, in my case, a few new freckles across the nose. :)

I'll be mostly offline for the next little bit, so hoping you are enjoying the richness of the season.

A giant spaceship hovered over my back garden and a door opened...

...a ramp was lowered and four little green men started wheeling plants down. They saw me in the window, one touched the side of his nose and winked at me before they silently rose up and zipped away.

Okay, it didn't quite go like that, but the plants did arrive! Trees, shrubs and perennials - the bones of the garden. Honestly, it did seem a little surreal.

I've been working on my dream list of plants for soooo long that to actually see them here kinda choked me up. Good thing it was pouring rain or I might have had to do a dance around them. As it was, the only dancing I did was when the mosquitoes swarmed every time I went out to look at them.

As you can glimpse, my focus for the bones of the garden are green foliage with some chocolate and burgundy foliage, mostly white flowers with a bit of pink to pull the various foliage together. I built on my existing plants and got more of the ones that were thriving.

We planted mostly in groups of three or five with some mass plantings of ferns and ground covers.

I went for a few drop dead gorgeous plants to add drama and contrast.

I also got a bit of blue for a special feature area I am working on.

Because those little "green" (Ha! Get it? Gardener's humour lol) men obviously zapped me with something when they winked at me, I am now madly contemplating more plants. And a water feature. Has this happened to anyone else? The more plants thing, I mean, not the spaceship plant delivery... ;)

Hope your gardens are full of pleasant surprises!

Edit: Here is link to where we left the landscaping last year. It has links to the previous stages of landscaping this back garden. Alternatively, you can click on the landscaping label and see highlights of the progress in this garden space - from bare gravel to lush retreat.

The flowering stars...

Here I go again, swooning for a silvery lavender rose. A couple years ago it was the gorgeous hybrid tea 'Sterling Silver'. These silvery phantoms have haunted me ever since I saw a pale rose shimmering in someone's front garden in Victoria, BC. I was smitten and have remained so since. I tried to overwinter the Sterling Silver to no avail. I shook it off and swore my obsession was satisfied and needed the silver rose no more.

 

Of course, I was delusional. I am so not over this rose. I was at a garden centre last week for a brief escape from the rain. It was there I spotted the miniature rose, 'Lavender Crystal'. I had no choice. It had to come home with me. I circled the table, elbows at the ready should someone move in on my rose before I could secure it. I told myself that at $8 it was the deal I was after, not the rose. Yeah.

 

I potted it up in a black ceramic pot with a pearl finish on it. The perfect foil for the rose. I had to put it by the front door so it is the first thing I see when I come home. I am telling myself that my time with this rose is fleeting. It will never make it through the winter. Besides, there are other silver roses out there.

 

But then I look at her, gleaming in the soft evening light, impossibly mysterious and regal. If I believed in elves or other magical creatures (which as a grown woman I certainly do not - harumph!) this miniature beauty would be of their garden.

What is it about roses that inspires such flights of fancy? I really have no idea. They don't affect me at all. Really.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

~J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit


BTW: Planting finally commencing in garden! Will post updates soon. :)