Some plants are hard to find, they're not your average garden centre fare. Case in point I've been looking out for Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) for some time. I noticed them in a bulb catalogue and purchased three. In fact they're not bulbous- they arrived in bare root form in a sealed plastic bag with some compost to keep them moist.

  I planted them in dappled shade in one of the damper parts of the garden which (in theory) should suit them. I've never seen them growing anywhere but I have seen pictures of M. virginica carpeting North American woodlands with sky blue flowers. Curiously this species was given the RHS Award of Garden Merit a few decades ago but it seems the horticultural trade hasn't shown much interest in cultivating it.

 Autumn is the season for seeds; the seed heads can be as distinctive as the flowers. Case in point the dry pods of Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena). The seeds within rattle like maracas when you shake them. 

 Still seeing some butterflies with the unusually warm spell we've had this month. The Holly Blue has two broods during the course of the year so is one of the first to be seen in spring and one of the last in summer. 

 Rosehips and apples. Autumn is here.

 I planted Allium sphaerocephalon in a sunny border on the allotment a few years ago and they flower profusely in July. They propagate themselves profusely too.

 The bulbs themselves increase rapidly in number...

... each bulb begats more bulbs in the form of offsets.

 Resulting in numerous bulbs that can be gathered from the soil for re-planting.

Moreover each flower head produces bulbils which drop and grow into yet more bulbs.  

 Pollarding maintains a tree at a lower level with a denser growth than its natural habit. Walnut is a fast growing species and this one at the music school had doubled in height since Jif pollarded it about a decade ago. So we set about lopping the branches to the point of the previous pollard.

 I don't get involved with tree surgery as such but pruning not too far off the ground falls within the scope of general gardening.

 A plate of dogs' teeth, by which I mean bulbs from the Erythronium genus which resemble the molars of a canine. Hence the colloquial name Dog Tooth Violet. The above are E. californicum, a mountain species from that part of the world.

 Presumably a selection from the wild originally because these are referred to as Erythronium californicum 'White Beauty'. Said to be a parent of the cultivar 'Pagoda' which does well in my London garden so hopefully these will too.