Free plants. Half a dozen Mulleins (Verbascum thapsus) are growing in this gravelled area courtesy of self-seeding. Obligingly several more have propagated themselves into the pots nearby. Fifty quid if you went out and bought them!

 

Entering the season of the autumn tidy-up.

 

One of Jif's beautiful borders at the music school. 

 I came across two of my beekeeping friends staring intently at a dense patch of Ivy along an old brick wall not far from their collection of hives. As noted in my previous entry Ivy has flowered very early this year and may finish early. Ivy is the last big hit of nectar and pollen for honey bees so that would have consequences. 

 Moreover they observed they were seeing wasps on the flowers but no honey bees. They speculated the flowers may be of less interest to the bees for some reason e.g. less pollen and nectar as a result of the drought. If so that would be double trouble.  

 Common Ivy (Hedera helix) is common indeed and has flowered very early. I saw it in flower in London in mid-August and not long after in Hertfordshire. This is undoubtably a response to the prolonged drought and heatwaves; many plants have flowered earlier and for briefer periods this year.

 Typically Ivy is in flower September/October/November feeding various pollinators well into autumn including honey bees. Ivy honey is known for its dark colour and deep flavour. My bee keeping friends are worried the Ivy season will be cut short and with it the honey.

 Gone but not forgotten. The triennial Giant Echium I grew in my front garden five years ago died after flowering in its third year. It shed thousands of seeds which have been germinating in the vicinity. A handsome specimen bloomed in my neighbour's front garden this year. [see entry dated 17th. May]

 More are on the way. The one by my gate I should be able to tease out of the mound of loose soil it has rooted in and transfer to the adjacent border. The blue flowered Echium pininana is becoming quite common around London but these will be the red flowered Echium wilpretii which is rarely seen. 

 That is assuming they make it through the winter. The former has become increasingly frost tolerant as it naturalises but E. wildpretii is probably closer to its forebears on the Canary Islands where they both hail from. 

 Late August is the traditional time for shearing Lavender, in this case Lavendula angustifolia 'Munstead'. The method is common to all Lavenders: trim the stems taking care to go no more than an inch into the new foliage and not into the woody sections of stem. Lavenders grow best from the green and do not recover well from a hard prune.

 The number of plants for pollinators dwindles by late summer. Even more so this year with the heatwaves and drought. Plants have flowered earlier and for shorter periods. So the various Sedums grown in gardens are especially valuable with their drought tolerance and autumn flowering.

 

 I went to fill up a watering can and found this frog stranded by the reduced water level after weeks with no rain. I gathered it up in a bucket and deposited it in the undergrowth next to a nearby pond.

 

 Time to harvest the Comfrey to make stinky Comfrey tea. The dark liquid in the bucket is from a barrelful I brewed several months ago so it's no longer smelly. The thinking is that the deep tap roots of Comfrey gather up NPK from the soil which makes a rich fertiliser when the leaves are steeped in water. Actually a bit like horse dung I don't mind the initial pong.

 Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) flowers in midsummer. An annual, by late summer the sky blue flowers have become equally decorative bulbous seed heads.

 Walking across Oughtonhead Common which has been described as a mosaic of habitats: grassland and scrub, wet and dry woodland, river and marsh with fen characteristics. The damp soil sustains a late flush of wildflowers like Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). 

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica)

Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum)

Great Willowherb (Eupatorium hirsutum)

 

 A stunner for long flowering late summer colour (and bees). I know it as Perovskia atriplicifolia but I see it has been reassigned to the Salvia genus and is now S. yangii. This one is probably the cultivar 'Blue Spire'. Common name: Russian Sage.

 There is a buzz around concepts like re-wilding and meadow making. Not a bad thing but it's worth bearing in mind that nature is always seeking to re-wild itself. Sections of this churchyard in Hitchin have been fenced off during restoration work on the church itself. The unmown and untrodden areas of grass are starting to revert to a meadow-like turf of their own accord.

 Five minutes walk away an exercise in urban meadow creation has taken place. A couple of years ago areas of this park were scraped back to bare earth and sowed with a wildflower mix. The grass quickly grew back (standard rye grasses are a very effective and pervasive ground cover). The wildflowers didn't amount to much.

 However the areas have not been mown over summer leaving the grass to grow quite tall. Among them an attractive display of wildflowers, mostly the "weeds" that were already present in the turf before the attempt to create a new meadow. Moral of the tale: don't cut the grass so often and the wildflowers will come. 

 The exquisite artistry of flowers: a close-up of Wild Chicory (Cichorium intybus).

 This has been a good year for butterflies. Last year was a disaster, cold and damp in spring through to early summer. I thought that would have a knock-on effect but the hot dry sunny conditions have had a positive effect.

 Be interesting to see how the migratory butterflies of late summer fare e.g. Red Admiral and Painted Lady. By contrast I wonder if the extreme heat on the continent will have an adverse influence? I'm thinking of factors like the spate of wildfires such as the huge one in France at the moment.

 Very clement weather in the UK currently after an unsettled period. Starting to feel like late summer, mellow warmth and sunshine. 

 Gardener beware! I gave myself a dose of phyto photo dermatitis. The sap of certain plants causes the skin to become ultra-sensitive to sunlight a day or two after contact. In my case I got splashes of sap here and there on my hands, wrists and arms which caused spots and blotches of raw red skin with some blistering and peeling. There are gruesome pictures on doctor internet of arms that resemble severe burns cases so I got off lightly.

 What caused it? Well, I trimmed the dangling stems of the Mulberry seen above and also cut back a rampant Fig growing hedge-like along a south facing wall. Both are of the plant family Moraceae which (I now know) is noted for this phenomenon. It seems to be one of those things that some people are immune to, some are susceptible to and some -like me- suddenly become susceptible.

 I have pruned an enormous Fig tree grown by my father many times but never had a problem. So perhaps it was the Mulberry? Or both? Perhaps the sap of one or other happened to be particularly potent at this point in the season?

 Anyway I will be very careful to cover up from now on. A friend of mine reports that he had a similar flare up strimming weeds wearing short trousers. Various species in the Apiaceae family have the same issue e.g. Cow Parsley, Wild Carrot, Giant Hogweed etc.

 

 Late summer beckons, flower heads become seed heads.

 

Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia)

 

Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)

Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare)

Common Blue pirouetting on Bird's Foot Trefoil. [best viewed at full size, click to enlarge]

 The Icknield Way runs through the pages of the diary on a regular basis. One notable aspect of this ancient route across Albion is that stretches of it are modern roads in current use. One such traverses Letchworth Garden City. So it was I followed the Icknield Way from Letchworth station to the edge of town.

 I was heading to an area known locally as "The Roman Camp" which is on the Way and as it happens next to my old secondary school. The footpath seen above runs along the perimeter of the school playing field. 

 The Romans were known for their roads but quite happy to co-opt existing tracks. In fact the camp probably dates back to the Bronze Age. Given the sweeping views this would have been a strategic location.

 More or less the view I used to gaze on in my schooldays looking towards the northerly Chiltern Hills. Perhaps it's not surprising that I continue to walk into that very landscape to this day. 

Scabious still in flower, Knapweed gone to seed.

 Teasel (Dispascus fullonum). The flowerhead has hundreds of tiny flowers. They start in a band in the middle then flower up and down the cone. So this one must be in the latter stage of flowering. 

 

 Common Chicory (Cichorium intybus) pops up here and there in the countryside. I had always thought it to be an introduction to these shores but various sources list it as native. Actually I don't think it looks very 'British'. I reckon it drifted in from southern Europe sometime in the distant past.

 Also grown in gardens and probably a garden escape in some locales. An edible herb, ancestor of culinary Chicory. 

 

Liminal space.

Couple more pics of the Sea Holly; Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro) in the background.

 Sea Holly (Eryngium giganteum) is a striking self-seeder in the borders at the music school. These were attracting many bumblebees, hoverflies and even Vespa crabro, the European Hornet...